Visuddhimagga (the pah of purification)

by Ñāṇamoli Bhikkhu | 1956 | 388,207 words | ISBN-10: 9552400236 | ISBN-13: 9789552400236

This page describes General (apprehending the sign) of the section Foulness as a Meditation Subject (Asubha-kammaṭṭhāna-niddesa) of Part 2 Concentration (Samādhi) of the English translation of the Visuddhimagga (‘the path of purification’) which represents a detailled Buddhist meditation manual, covering all the essential teachings of Buddha as taught in the Pali Tipitaka. It was compiled Buddhaghosa around the 5th Century.

82.

The Divine Ruler with ten hundred eyes
Did him with the Ten Powers eulogize,
Who, fair in fame, made known as cause of jhāna
This foulness of ten species in such wise.
Now, knowing their description and the way
To tackle each and how they are developed,
There are some further points that will repay
Study, each with its special part to play.

83. One who has reached jhāna in anyone of these goes free from cupidity; he resembles [an Arahant] without greed because his greed has been well suppressed. At the same time, however, this classification of foulness should be understood as stated in accordance with the particular individual essences successively reached by the [dead] body and also in accordance with the particular subdivisions of the greedy temperament.

84. When a corpse has entered upon the repulsive state, it may have reached the individual essence of the bloated or anyone of the individual essences beginning with that of the livid. So the sign should be apprehended as “Repulsiveness of the bloated,” “Repulsiveness of the livid,” according to whichever he has been able to find. This, it should be understood, is how the classification of foulness comes to be tenfold with the body’s arrival at each particular individual essence.

85. And individually the bloated suits one who is greedy about shape since it makes evident the disfigurement of the body’s shape. The livid suits one who is greedy about the body’s colour since it makes evident the disfigurement of the skin’s colour. The festering [194] suits one who is greedy about the smell of the body aroused by scents, perfumes, etc., since it makes evident the evil smells connected with this sore, the body. The cut up suits one who is greedy about compactness in the body since it makes evident the hollowness inside it. The gnawed suits one who is greedy about accumulation of flesh in such parts of the body as the breasts since it makes it evident how a fine accumulation of flesh comes to nothing. The scattered suits one who is greedy about the grace of the limbs since it makes it evident how limbs can be scattered. The hacked and scattered suits one who is greedy about a fine body as a whole since it makes evident the disintegration and alteration of the body as a whole. The bleeding suits one who is greedy about elegance produced by ornaments since it makes evident its repulsiveness when smeared with blood. The worm-infested suits one who is greedy about ownership of the body since it makes it evident how the body is shared with many families of worms. A skeleton suits one who is greedy about fine teeth since it makes evident the repulsiveness of the bones in the body. This, it should be understood, is how the classification of foulness comes to be tenfold according to the subdivisions of the greedy temperament.

86. But as regards the tenfold foulness, just as it is only by virtue of its rudder that a boat keeps steady in a river with turbulent[1] waters and a rapid current, and it cannot be steadied without a rudder, so too [here], owing to the weak hold on the object, consciousness when unified only keeps steady by virtue of applied thought, and it cannot be steadied without applied thought, which is why there is only the first jhāna here, not the second and the rest.

87. And repulsive as this object is, still it arouses joy and happiness in him by his seeing its advantages thus, “Surely in this way I shall be liberated from ageing and death,” and by his abandoning the hindrances’ oppression; just as a garbage heap does in a flower-scavenger by his seeing the advantages thus, “Now I shall get a high wage,” and as the workings of purges and emetics do in a man suffering the pains of sickness.

88. This foulness, while of ten kinds, has only one characteristic. For though it is of ten kinds, nevertheless its characteristic is only its impure, stinking, disgusting and repulsive state (essence). And foulness appears with this characteristic not only in a dead body but also in a living one, as it did to the Elder Mahā-Tissa who lived at Cetiyapabbata (I.55), and to the novice attendant on the Elder Saṅgharakkhita while he was watching the king riding an elephant. For a living body is just as foul as a dead one, [195] only the characteristic of foulness is not evident in a living body, being hidden by adventitious embellishments.

89. This is the body’s nature: it is a collection of over three hundred bones, jointed by one hundred and eighty joints, bound together by nine hundred sinews, plastered over with nine hundred pieces of flesh, enveloped in the moist inner skin, enclosed in the outer cuticle, with orifices here and there, constantly dribbling and trickling like a grease pot, inhabited by a community of worms, the home of disease, the basis of painful states, perpetually oozing from the nine orifices like a chronic open carbuncle, from both of whose eyes eye-filth trickles, from whose ears comes ear-filth, from whose nostrils snot, from whose mouth food and bile and phlegm and blood, from whose lower outlets excrement and urine, and from whose ninety-nine thousand pores the broth of stale sweat seeps, with bluebottles and their like buzzing round it, which when untended with tooth sticks and mouth-washing and head-anointing and bathing and underclothing and dressing would, judged by the universal repulsiveness of the body, make even a king, if he wandered from village to village with his hair in its natural wild disorder, no different from a flower-scavenger or an outcaste or what you will. So there is no distinction between a king’s body and an outcaste’s in so far as its impure stinking nauseating repulsiveness is concerned.

90. But by rubbing out the stains on its teeth with tooth sticks and mouthwashing and all that, by concealing its private parts under several cloths, by daubing it with various scents and salves, by pranking it with nosegays and such things, it is worked up into a state that permits of its being taken as “I” and “mine.” So men delight in women and women in men without perceiving the true nature of its characteristic foulness, now masked by this adventitious adornment. But in the ultimate sense there is no place here even the size of an atom fit to lust after.

91. And then, when any such bits of it as head hairs, body hairs, nails, teeth, spittle, snot, excrement or urine have dropped off the body, beings will not touch them; they are ashamed, humiliated and disgusted. But as long as anyone of these things remains in it, though it is just as repulsive, they take it as agreeable, desirable, permanent, [196] pleasant, self, because they are wrapped in the murk of ignorance and dyed with affection and greed for self. Taking it as they do, they resemble the old jackal who saw a flower not yet fallen from a kiṃsuka tree in a forest and yearned after it, thinking, “This is a piece of meat, it is a piece of meat.”

92.

There was a jackal chanced to see
A flowering kiṃsuka in a wood;
In haste he went to where it stood:
“I have found a meat-bearing tree!”

He chewed the blooms that fell, but could,
Of course, find nothing fit to eat;
He took it thus: “Unlike the meat
There on the tree, this is no good.”

A wise man will not think to treat
As foul only the part that fell,
But treats as foul the part as well
That in the body has its seat.

Fools cannot in their folly tell;
They take the body to be fair,
And soon get caught in Evil’s snare
Nor can escape its painful spell.

But since the wise have thus laid bare
This filthy body’s nature, so,
Be it alive or dead, they know
There is no beauty lurking there.

93. For this is said:

“This filthy body stinks outright
Like ordure, like a privy’s site;
This body men that have insight
Condemn, as object of a fool’s delight.

“A tumour where nine holes abide
Wrapped in a coat of clammy hide
And trickling filth on every side,
Polluting the air with stenches far and wide.

“If it perchance should come about
That what is inside it came out,
Surely a man would need a knout
With which to put the crows and dogs to rout.”

94. So a capable bhikkhu should apprehend the sign wherever the aspect of foulness is manifest, whether in a living body or in a dead one, and he should make the meditation subject reach absorption.

The sixth chapter called “The Description of Foulness as a Meditation Subject” in the Treatise on the Development of Concentration in the Path of Purification composed for the purpose of gladdening good people.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Aparisaṇṭhita—“turbulent.” Parisaṇṭhāti (to quiet) is not in PED. Aparisaṇṭhita is not in CPD.

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