Eckhart’s Recent London Talk
I saw Eckhart speak in London on Saturday, and Summer has given me permission to indulge in rambling on about him so….
The question and answer session was very powerful. One lady who had recently lost her mother asked him about grief. He said that last year he lost both his mother (in August) and his father (in November) saying it was strange because they didn’t even live together. He said that he cried and that waves of grief occurred and subsided. He said that it was important not to deny the grief or push it away, but to bring acceptance to it.
Another guy asked a long rambling question about having an impulse to go to America, and wondered whether he was just emulating Eckhart, or how he could tell if this was an impulse he should follow, finishing his monologue with “Oh, yeah, and what about sex?”
The audience just collapsed with laughter, it was sooo funny! lolEckhart too! Then Eckhart said “Well, maybe that’s the REAL question!”
He said that when he was doing a retreat in India there were a lot of monkeys roaming freely around the village, and one day he encountered a pair of them having sex in the street. They then separated and walked away without any fuss. Eckhart realised that they just don’t have a problem with sex. The impulse arises, may or may not be satisfied, then the monkeys move on. It’s only the human mind that gets fixated with sex, using the subject for its own perpetuation (ie more thought) and creates endless complexities and dramas out of it.
He said that as the mind becomes more still, a person’s sex life can therefore become easier, more ermmm satisfying.
Then right at the end, he was winding up the talk, was literally about to deliver his last 4 words when….and I had my eyes closed because it was quite meditative….I heard the audience gasp and opened my eyes in time to see one of the giant screens that Eckhart was appearing on, fall backwards across the stage. Eckhart laughed, finished his sentence “…there is no teacher” and walked off to a standing ovation.
It was such a joy to see him in person. I could swear he was talking to just me most of the time!
By an anonymous attendee
