CUTTING OFF THE STREAM *
CONTEMPLATING THE BODY
CONTEMPLATING THE BODY
Only those who have wisdom can perceive the foulness of the body according to the truth. The true nature of the body is dirts, not be beauty. Even when it is bathed and cleaned, the dirt is never completely eliminated. If one does not bathe for 10 days, the foulness shows, and it is disgusting to others. Hair, body hair, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, tendon and bones are not beautiful objects. Beauty is something dictated by defilements, compounded thoughts, delusion and ignorance. It is a misconception of the mind. The body seems beautiful because of love, passion, and sexual desire. If the mind does not have love, passion and sexual desire, nothing about the human body is beautiful. The make-up or decoration covering the skin are only superficial, just like the decoration with colours and design of a coffin which contains a rotting and foul-smelling corpse inside. Our body or other bodies, covered with make-up and perfume to hide their foulness inside, just so that we can tolerate living with it Contemplation with wisdom teaches the mind the truth about the body; its birth, its existence and its death. Even though we cannot see the birth of each part of the body with our own eyes, we must learn through reasoning and imagining. The whole body is not developed in one day. Organs do not occur at the same time. In the beginning, there is a cell, resulting from a fertilization of the mother's, by the father's germ cells. The cell develops further and looks like a clear oil droplet. Then blood begins to circulate, and it becomes an embryo, successively. The lump later on develops 5 protrusions; the head, the two hands and the two legs, and organs are gradually formed. Hair, body hair, nails, teeth, skin, muscles, tendon, bones, bone marrow, spleen, heart, liver, lungs, ligaments, colon, intestines,bile ,mucous, lymph and blood, including eyes, ears, nose, tongue and tactile sense, develop from that bloody mass during 9-10 month gestation in the mother's womb. After birth, the helpless baby has to be fed milk and liquid food and tendered by its mother until it grows into a child, then eventually dies.
Once one is bom, suffering of the body and the mind is like a shadow of birth. The impermanence reveals itself from the beginning. There are changes through time from an embryo to a baby, then an adult, an old person, an invalid and a corpse in that order. After death, the body is naturally decomposed according to the rule of no-self (anatta). There is no self, no T or 'you.' The belief that one's self exists is only misunderstanding. There is no truth to it at all. The truth is that the 4 elements, i.e., earth, water, air and fire, of which the body is composed, will soon disintegrate and return to their original states. The no-self is revealed through disintegration of these elements in the course of life. There it no such thing as 'myself or "yourself in reality.
RATIONAL DISCERNMENT OF THE TRUTH
The dead body, the living body and the developing body are all anatta or no-self. This is the truth that one must discern with one's own wisdom. Even though wisdom at this level is only worldly wisdom, one must base one's thinking on reason according to the truth. Every part of the body develops from its cause. It functions by a cause, and it dies from a cause. Contemplation according to the truth is to teach the mind and to develop wisdom. It is unreasonable to expect such wisdom to occur automatically, or the mind to perceive the truth by itself. Even though the truth is here all the time, without studying it there is no way of knowing its value. This is like valuable natural resources, such as, diamond, gems or minerals, available in the land, but without studying them they are of no use. The truth is valueless for those who do not study it, just as a valuable gem is meaningless to a chicken. They then see things distorted from the truth, even though the truth is always there. The mind without wisdom tends to attach itself to such distortions. For example, when things do not go the way one wishes, the mind suffers, because it always wants pleasure. If everyone got what he wishes, the world would not be like this. It would be full of rich, famous and happy people. Or if the world was full of poor, and unhappy people, no one would wish to be born again.
But the truth is that there is no such thing as happiness all the time. We may wish for something we like very much to laal forever, but it is impossible and we suffer. We try to go against the truth of nature, but no one can ever succeed. Everyone has to experience aging, illness and death without exception. So one should try to develop wisdom to teach one's mind about it. As you contemplate, focus on the matter until the mind knows and sees the truth with wisdom. Like a flash light in the dark, the light is wisdom, and the eyes are the mind. Let the mind see the matter as it really is, that is , seeing suffering, impermanence and no-self as they really are until the mind becomes enlightened by wisdom and perceives things according to the truth.
Phra Acariya Thoon Khippapanno
