The body is extremely important to investigate because most human desires are connected to it. Looking around the world, we can clearly see that people are deeply trapped by sexual desire and obsessed with the human body. As meditators, we must honestly face the challenge of our own sexual desire, which comes from a deep craving for sensual pleasure. During meditation practice, this defilement becomes one of the greatest obstacles to spiritual progress. The deeper we investigate the body, the more obvious this becomes. No other mental defilement weighs down the mind or controls it as strongly as sexual craving. Since this craving is rooted in the human body, exposing the body’s true nature gradually weakens the mind’s strong attachment to it.
Body contemplation is the most effective antidote to sexual attraction. Success in this practice can be measured by the gradual weakening of sexual desire in the mind. Step by step, wisdom uncovers the true reality of the body and cuts away deep attachments in the process. As attachment weakens, the mind becomes more free and open. To truly understand the importance of these results, meditators must experience them personally. Trying to explain them in words would only encourage imagination and speculation. These results arise naturally within each meditator according to that person’s own character and temperament. Simply focus completely on the causes—the actual practice—and allow the results to appear naturally. When they arise, you will recognize them clearly and without doubt. This is a natural law.
When body contemplation reaches the point where understanding and direct experience become fully united with wisdom, the mind becomes completely absorbed in these investigations day and night. This stage is extraordinary. Wisdom moves through every part of the body with incredible speed and skill, examining every detail and every aspect in search of truth. At this stage, wisdom begins to arise automatically and becomes a natural habit of the mind. Because wisdom is now so quick and sharp, it can immediately detect even the most subtle mental defilements and weaken even the strongest ones. Wisdom at this level becomes fearless and unstoppable. It is like a powerful river crashing through a canyon, impossible to stop or turn aside. Wisdom rushes forward to confront every form of craving and attachment created by the defilements. Since sexual craving is extremely stubborn and powerful, the battle against it feels like a great war. Because of this, only a bold and uncompromising effort can succeed. At this stage, the meditator instinctively understands that nothing less than a total struggle will be enough.
As wisdom gains greater mastery over body contemplation, it constantly changes and improves its methods so that it does not fall into the traps of mental defilements. Wisdom always tries to stay ahead of them, continually searching for new approaches and adjusting its methods. Sometimes it changes emphasis; sometimes it uses different subtle techniques. In this way, wisdom remains flexible and skillful in its investigation.
As practice becomes more advanced, there comes a stage where all attachment to one’s own body and the bodies of others appears to have disappeared completely. But in truth, a hidden attachment still remains. It has only gone into hiding and has not yet been fully destroyed. This point is extremely important. Although it may seem as though attachment is gone, it is actually concealed by the power of body contemplation. Therefore, do not become careless or overconfident. Continue strengthening mindfulness, wisdom, and diligence. Mentally place the entire body in front of you and examine it carefully. This is your body. What will eventually happen to it? At this stage, wisdom has become so fast and powerful that the body immediately breaks apart and disintegrates before your inner vision. Every time you place the body before the mind—whether your own or another person’s—wisdom automatically tears it apart and destroys it. This process has now become completely natural and habitual.
Finally, when wisdom becomes fully skilled at penetrating the deeply unpleasant nature of the body, place the whole mass of flesh, blood, and bones clearly before your mind and ask yourself: Where does this feeling of disgust come from? What is the true source of this repulsiveness? Focus carefully on the unpleasant image before you and observe closely. You are now approaching the deepest truth. At this important stage of body contemplation, do not allow wisdom to break apart or destroy the body image. Keep the unpleasant image fixed clearly in the mind and carefully observe the feeling of disgust itself. You have created a feeling of revulsion toward this image, but where does that feeling actually arise from? Who is it that considers flesh, blood, and bones disgusting? These things simply exist according to their own natural condition. Who is creating the feeling of disgust toward them? Focus directly on this question. Watch carefully to see where this feeling moves and where it goes. Wherever it moves, follow it closely with mindfulness and wisdom.
This is the decisive stage of body contemplation. At this point, the root of sexual craving is destroyed completely. As you focus continuously on the feeling of repulsiveness created by body contemplation, the feeling of disgust toward the body gradually withdraws inward until it is completely absorbed back into the mind itself. Without being forced, it naturally returns to its original source. This is the critical turning point in body contemplation, where the final truth about sexual craving and the body is fully understood. When the mind fully absorbs this feeling of repulsiveness, a profound realization suddenly appears: the mind itself creates feelings of disgust, and the mind itself creates feelings of attraction. The mind alone creates ugliness, and the mind alone creates beauty. These qualities do not truly exist in external objects. The mind projects these ideas onto things and then deceives itself into believing that they are beautiful or ugly, attractive or repulsive. In truth, the mind is constantly painting mental pictures of itself and of the world around it, and then believing those pictures to be real.
At this stage, the meditator realizes with complete certainty that the mind itself creates both attraction and repulsion. The flesh, blood, and bones that were previously the object of investigation contain no real ugliness or beauty within themselves. The human body is not naturally disgusting or naturally attractive. It is the mind that creates these feelings and projects them onto what it sees. Once wisdom clearly penetrates this deception, the mind immediately abandons all external ideas of beauty and ugliness and turns inward to examine the true source of these illusions. The mind itself is both the deceiver and the one being deceived. Only the mind creates images of beauty and ugliness. Therefore, the unpleasant body images that were previously viewed as external objects are now absorbed back into the mind together with the feeling of revulsion that the mind itself created. Both are understood to be the same thing. When this realization occurs, the mind lets go of external images, lets go of attachment to physical forms, and in doing so releases sexual attraction completely.
Sexual attraction is rooted in perceptions about the human body. Once the real source of those perceptions is uncovered, their entire foundation collapses, and attachment naturally disappears by itself. The powerful influence of sexual craving—which has controlled the mind for countless ages, pushing it endlessly toward birth and death—is finally destroyed. This hidden craving no longer has power over the mind. The mind has now moved beyond its influence and become free.
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