What is our relationship to nature and what should it be? We begin this talk with the question of what nature is, and how we are, as the most minded / mindful creatures, are ourselves an extension of nature. But what difference does it make for us to appreciate and/or understand ourselves, as human beings, as extensions of nature? After a winding discussion about the relationship between Nature and Spirit, George advocates for the position that human beings need to grasp themselves as phenomena of Nature, and alludes to the possibility of human “mindedness” as something that is inherently or natively maladaptive or neurotic vs. the way in which other animals cope with their environments. From there, the discussion launches into the dimension of culture, symbols and language as being the unique province of human existence, versus that of the pure instincts of creatures and other living forms. George then offers up the importance of being in and around Nature as a condition to finding higher forms of mindful and/or mindedness, and notes how it seems no coincidence that silent meditation retreats are typically done out in nature. The inquiry turns back to James when George points out the hobby of spearfishing, wherein the need for using metaphor and story to describe our encounters with Nature (particularly the ocean) becomes palpable, especially in terms of the need to find an unmediated, unspeakable, tangible connection with Nature as the primordial, ambivalent Mother, who both gives life and takes it away as she sees fit. The discussion then goes to the Buddhist concepts of craving and aversion, and how when we are at one with Nature and “riding the wave,” we aren’t possessed of these compulsive (and perhaps unnatural) forms of mindedness. We then move to how the condition of distinctively human suffering is also the condition of us living in better harmony with nature, by means of harnessing our powers of self-reflection and mindedness to become more mindful, especially when it comes to confronting and accepting the natural constants of change and impermanence. We then turn to discussing how suffering brought on by craving and aversion can help us to come back to the every day, natural reality of our physical bodies, in the form of mindfulness meditation and other practices of inhabiting one’s body and nature, which itself can be curative of that self-same suffering.