Description
Our fascination with the Titanic endures. Even the name of the ship was the beginning of its loss; the titans stand in the psyche for whatever is gigantic and careless and ignores the laws of fate. The ship had to sink because it was unsinkable.
Summary
There is a classic Zen koan about going to the bottom of the sea and bringing back a stone.
Here’s the koan:
12,500 feet deep down, in the midnight zone of the North Atlantic, lies a sunken ship.
I want to swim down and find the treasure there.
Our fascination with the Titanic endures. Even the name of the ship was the beginning of its loss; the titans stand in the psyche for whatever is gigantic and careless and ignores the laws of fate. The ship had to sink because it was unsinkable.
In the spiritual world, we often want to ascend immediately without offering anything of ourselves. But imperfection and loss are in the depths and are linked to the treasures of the deep. Sacrifice frees us.
Perhaps the ship itself is a huge gift placed on the altar of the deep but we can’t leave her alone, and she has become a restless dreamer, calling people to her and sometimes destroying them.
We don’t need to be superior over nature, and the more we prove that we are on top, the more we suffer.
—John Tarrant & Tess Beasley
Sunday Zen dharma talk from July 2, 2023.