Douglas M

Hi KKK,

An even better feel when you are on it. I haven't done a lot of sailing, but i have been in the south china sea on a warship when it was like a mill pond, with the flying fish jumping out of the bow wave. I have also experienced it in a typhoon.

Sea, wind and mankind have had a long and fascinating relationship. Wind and steam powered ships having a special attraction for me, the designers , craftsmen and sailors must have been special people to create such things and then to sail around the world in them.

regards
douglas

TDK

Wow - it sound amazing and like a real Indiana Jones style adventure Remy so thanks for sharing that with us, and i'm also intrigued by the Mayans and the Incas (although i know very little about them), but i also heard the Mayans were deadly accurate with astronomy and partial to human sacrifice! It must've been incredible to actually be there and experience the vibe of the place also and i totally agree with you Douglas when you said that:

''these sites were the result of man looking upward and having similar thoughts and then constructing objects and developing systems in an attempt to better understand what they experience & even climbing physically closer to the heavens.''

TDK

I also agree with you Remy, Tony, Douglas and KKK (a warm welcome BTW), that just being innature and looking at the night/day sky and the mountains, trees and the oceans and lakes etc can be a truly numinous experience, and can really help to put our egocentric lives into perspective!

I also feel that, just as many of the great saints, seers and spiritual/religious leaders and philosophers spent at least part of their lives meditating in the wilderness (which usually made their interaction with the world later on more effective);i believe that to get real insight into the nature of mind/reality requires spending atleast some time in solitude/retreat, ideally in remote but conducive places (such as in sacred sites used by other practitioners) in nature (away from the daily distractions), which provide the peace and vast spaciousness to observe then cut through the mental/emotional confusion and baggage in our minds, and allows the innate, spacious, sky-like truth to surface (speaking of which i really need to get back into retreat)!!!

KKK when you asked what people feel when observing the sea in its rough and calm states, i immediatley thought of the often used analogy of the meditator trying to observe her mind which at the beggining appears to be completely wild and crazy and uncontrollable like the rough sea or the disturbed waters of a muddy lake, and the waves that rise and fall are like the infinate thoughts and emotions that come and go & dissolve into impermanence and which lack any inherent existence. Then once the waters calm and the mud/sand particles settle, the meditator can clearly see into the bottom of the lake/ocean (reality emerges once dualistic thinking has ceased and when the meditator just observes 'their' thoughts with out actually buying into them/acting on them).

Finally as the saying goes, 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder' which i think rings true for the 7 Wonders and everything else, as ofcourse theres no inherently existant 7 Wonders or whatever as its completely dependent upon individual perception/conditioning (even being told such and such a place is a1 of the 7 wonders can influence our belief) and also our state of mind (which could observe the same place & yet perceive heaven or hell within the blink of an eye)!

KKK

Thanks TDK

Couldn’t agree with you more!
But I feel there is also another side to mankind, when we delude ourselves (that's my opinion) into believing that we have 'conquered' nature by our science, then we sometimes grow arrogant. If only we could remember that when we 'conquer' nature, all that we have done is actually discovered some if its laws and we must respect those laws all the time, if we try to go against the laws, nature is bound to hit back. Our goal therefore should not be to conquer nature but to live with nature, while we continue to discover its laws

Nice analogy TDK.

Also Douglas, in relation to what I said about "conquering" nature do you think we ride the seas, whether we sail on a boat or we go on the big things, we have a very different feeling towards the sea to an extent that of a conqueror, compared to when we sit on the side and watch it, feel its power, its grace and our own insignificant power against it.

TDK

Thanks for your response KKK and i share your opinion that to think we can conquer nature with science is deluded and arrogant, which is why i think the modern world still has so much to learn from the cultures that have/had a deep respect for the planet such as the native American Indians, the Australian Aboriginals the Pagans/Druids and so many other indiginous people/cultures.

TONY P

Surely science is just a method for understanding nature, it's what people think they can do with it that causes all the problems. Without physics we couldn't understand our position in the Universe, without chemistry we couldn't understand how we are made and without bio-sciences we couldn't understand how living things function.
regardsa
Tony P

TDK

Good points Tony and i guess it boils down to how this scientific knowledge is used as the knowledge in and of itself is neutral.
regards -TDK

Remy-Ireland

Hi All,

I guess at the end of the day you need to 'get away from it all' to clear your mind and try and find that place where you can 'get close to God.'
Most of the time when our life is going great- we think we dont want or need that spirtual contact with our creator- its only when we feel desolate and in total despair that we begin to look upward and cry out to God for intervention.
Maybe this is part of the reason why Religion and Spirtuality plays such a big part in the lives of so many Indians.

When you look at a star filled sky or the wonder of the mountains or the vastness of the oceans it begs the questions.....Why am I here? or How can i contribute to the circle of life?

I think we get complacent, 'content to dwell where we are.' I mean they build boxes all over the land and we buy them to keep all our earthly possesions in. We close the door at night, pull the shades down and lock out the world........then we get up for work in the morning so we can earn enough money to keep the box that our stuff is in and go back there at night, close the door, pull down the shades and lock out the world............after all that is why where here.........isnt it????

Kind Regards,
Remy

noni

Have sailed around here! icky, icky, icky!. The rest of my family sail. Hubbie used to sail on a 50ft. yacht in local races and then went to the Caribbean with the local boys racing the yacht, in their equivalent to Cowes Week. The worst experience I have had, the children were with me on the Yacht Club roof and we could see what turned out to be a "tornado" come across the Bay. In front of the Club house, the yachts had just passed the start line towards the Pier, when the Tornado caught up with them. It picked the 50' yacht up and threw it at the Pier, just like a piece of paper, the fishermen all ran away, I was hysterical on the roof of the Club, the other Club members could not believe their eyes. We nearly lost a crew member who was thrown over the side as the rope he held went around his neck. One of the boys held onto him and thank God he was saved.

You must always respect the sea. When it is calm it is lovely, but when it is angry BEWARE.
(Just like me)

When the sea is calm and the sun shines on it, it is wonderful, beautiful, one of the wonders of the world.

When it is angry and rough, we sit in bed and hear it crashing in the Bay, and often mostly on Bank holidays hear the maroons and the Life Boat being called out.

Always Respect the Sea.

TDK

Hi Noni, and thanks for sharing that and your experience with the tornado must have been a a real reminder of how we are Nothing against the forces of nature, and the crew members of the yacht certainly had a close shave!

Your story reminded me of a few other incidents connected withthe sea:
One was when i nearly drowned when i was swimming in the sea at Kovalam, Kerala in '92. Just to warn any of you incase you ever hear down there,quite a few people drown there each year due to the very strong currents and although there are a few local 'life guards' sitting on the beach and flags to warn you if safe to go out, i soon learnt that both were unreliable/as effective as a single celled amoeba, as i don't think the life guards can swim and they certainly didn't want to get their uniforms wet!

Anyway, although a reasonably strong swimmer i swam too far out and suddenly a succession of huge waves came and churned me around like being in a washing machine and just when i came to the surface the same thing happened again (about 5 or 6 times) by which point i had practically surrendered myself to the ocean, when by some stroke of luck there was a break in the waves and i swam like a bedraggled bat out of hell to the shore!
Funnily enough as young child i had reoccuring dreams of tsunamis (i'm probably also a shrink's dream) but that experience was the nearest i came to it so far.

One final true story which you may of already heard about, and which i think is an excellent reminder to us all that whilst death is certain, the time/manner of death is uncertain, which i think took place in the US some years ago,was when a man in his full diving suit, mask etc was found dead in the middle of a forest. It turned out that there'd been a forest fire and the flying fire department had scooped him up by accident from the sea and dumped him on the forest fire with the water!! What a way to go!!

Douglas M

Hi Remy,

Your last para contains a thoughtful analysis of the human condition. This piece isnt a criticism of you, you are already well on your way up the development ladder.

Maybe we could develop your analysis further and add in relativity as a main driver, ie the box and stuff in it has to be bigger , better , newer, more expensive than the ones we had before and likewise bigger, better etc than our neighbors, friends and colleagues.

The problem with this internal and external competitiveness, is that it is essentially destructive , as it requires massive amounts of energy to both create and sustain it.

Unfortunately,these energy sources are finite , currently we use oil as the main input, giving us massive bang for our buck in terms of calories expended and return on exploration and extraction. Because it is currently freely available to the highest bidder, we use it in an inappropriate and unjust way, our farming practices for example are highly inefficient in terms of calorie input versus calorie output.

When the oil runs out massive changes will be forced upon us, if not in our own timescale, certainly in our childrens and grandchildrens lifetime.

So it should be about more than locking out the world, more like understanding it and engaging with it, for our childrens sake. When i say children, i mean the children of the world and the offspring of all species.

regards
douglas

TDK

Thanks for your reply Remy and i agree with what you said about the sad human predicament that so many of us get caught up in the rat race of working just for the sake of keeping our 'boxes'/us & our stuff safe, and somehow miss the opportunity to delve a bit deeper into the reason for our existence. I agree with who ever it was who said, ''A life unexamined is a life not worth living.'' (which the spiritually wealthy Indians have known long before the Western philosophers such as Socrates, Aristotle etc). I also often think of Bob Dylan's words, ''If you ain't got nothing you ain't got nothing to lose'', but sadly i have a bit of a way to go before i'm that renounced!

I also agree with you that when everthing is hunky dory most people aren't too interested in more than maybe superficial spiritual or religious practices, but when the tide turns and things fall apart, maybe through discovering a life threatening illness/a near death experience for example, i believe that can in a strange way be a real blessing in some cases if it acts as the wake up call that shocks one into action to honestly examine ones life/purpose/aspirations and to make the necessary changes to make ones life as meaningful and beneficial as possible for others as well as for oneself.

Finally i think the tiny Bhutanese (Buddhist) kingdom has the right idea in using 'Gross National Happiness' as a measurement of their progress as opposed to GDP/GNP!
regards to All - TDK

Remy-Ireland

Hi Douglas,
That underlining paragraph is pure masterpiece.

Kind Regards,
Remy

Remy-Ireland

Hi TDK,
In total agreement,
I sometimes think when you have nothing you learn to appreciate life not for its material wealth but for what it is.......a gift from God.

I am not a religious person but i do believe in God and i sometimes wonder ......when i stand before him and he asks me, 'What did you do with this gift of life that i gave you?' what will my answer be?

Kind Regards,
Remy

PS. I hope i dont answer him with, 'I worked all my life to keep a box to put my stuff in.'

KKK

As a child I have been hearing this grandmother’s tale:

A rich man was wandering in the woods and he came across this woodcutter, poor and with any clothes on, who was sitting under a tree and playing his flute. The rich man was disgusted with the woodcutter slothful ways and asked him, "Why don't you come to town with me to work"
The woodcutter looked up to him and asked "And what good would that do?"
The rich man: You would get a lot of money
Woodcutter: And what would I do with it?
Rich Man: You can build a house, and have a garden and get jewels for your wife and toys for your children"
and so on the story went, the rich man increasing the material things the woodcutter could get and the woodcutter repeating as to what good would that do for him
In the end:
The rich man: All that wealth would make you happy,
The woodcutter turned back to his flute and said, “But I am very happy”