The body's delicate. This tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else
Save what beats there. (3.4.13-17)
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Paraphrase: If your mind is at ease, then the body is more fragile. This raging storm in my mind takes all my senses away from my body except for my mind and thoughts.
Lear is admitting that had he experienced this storm long ago, before he was caught up in his fall from power, he would have cowered in the storm, but now that he has changed and is troubled, his mind isn't free, that his body's needs are insignificant to the "tempest in my mind".
Kent, while in disguise as a servant, attempts to lead King Lear into a hovel for shelter from the storm, but Lear responds with delirium, rejecting Kent's plea to get Lear out of the "contentious storm". King Lear says that the storm Kent thinks of as such a huge deal is really nothing to what is going on in Lear's mind. Lear's "greater malady" is the dilemma with his daughters while the lesser malady is the ongoing storm, which is only a reflection of Lear and the falling traditions. King Lear is turned into a humbled, almost naked vagrant, much like how he was rejected from his daughters. His clothes must have been relentlessly torn apart by the tempest, like how his daughters greedily and without any other cares or thoughts. Lear's phrase "Save what beats there" means that he is turning primal. The main drive in a marching army is the pulse, or beat, of the war drum. The source of life is the beating of the heart. This seems a bit ironic because in Lear's mind, he is laboring over chaotic and confusing things. Perhaps the stripping down from bodily senses to just pure thought, King Lear is conceding to the chaotic nature of the natural world, the tempest, and the heavens above which govern life.
The tempest in which Lear is exposing himself to is the embodiment of many aspects and ideas that have developed in the play. The idea of perception appears most strongly in this passage. The mind, which interprets the body's senses, will ignore the body's senses when overwhelmed by its own musings and thoughts. Perception also falls into the things that one focuses one. Since the mind is focused on itself, it can't really notice true intentions of other things. When Lear asked his daughters something along the lines of "Who can say they love me the most?", he wasn't really paying much attention to the daughters' meanings because he already knew that Cordelia loved him the most. His preoccupation with his "darker purposes" led him to look onto one goal and be blind to other things, like his older daughters' guile.
Also, this storm can be viewed as the falling apart of the political structure in King Lear. Lear's daughters are overthrowing the King and Edmund is overturning his "illegitimate" status by disposing of his brother and tricking his father.
KING LEAR = THE STORM
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