Part 9: Sermon on impurity of the body

After this hymn of praise, Sunāśīra became silent and the Teacher of the World began a sermon in a voice deep as thunder.

“The ocean of existence filled with waves of endless troubles continually destroys creatures of the middle, lower, and upper worlds. Delight in this body by men, like that of worms in impurity, is one cause of this. The body is the abode of impure chyle, blood, flesh, fat, bone, marrow, semen, intestines and waste matter. Where is there any purity in it? The idea of purity in a body smeared with discharges from nine channels{GL_NOTE::} is a manifestation of great delusion. How can the body be pure when it is created from seed and blood, made to grow by an impure stream, covered by the placenta in the womb? Who can consider purity of the body when it is made to grow by continually sucking a succession of veins of liquid, arising from food and drink consumed by the mother? Who would say the body is pure when it is filled with humors, elements, and impurity, the abode of worms and earth-worms, consumed by multitudes of serpents in the form of diseases? How can the body, in which sweet-flavored food and drink—even something made of milk and sugar-cane—are eaten to become waste-matter, be pure? When fragrant yakṣakardama-ointment has been used to anoint it and becomes impure quickly, where is the purity in that body? How is the body, in which the scent of the mouth is disgusting when one rises at dawn, after eating fragrant betel-leaves and sleeping at night, pure? The body, from contact with which naturally fragrant perfume, incense, and garlands of flowers become evil-smelling, becomes pure! Even though rubbed with oil, even though anointed with unguent, even though washed with crores of jars (of water), the body does not attain purity, like an impure wine-jar. The ones who say, ‘Purity is from clay, water, fire, wind, sun, baths,’ make useless effort, following custom. Therefore, the body must perform penance which has emancipation as its fruit. The wise man should extract what is valuable from the worthless, like a jewel from the salt ocean.”

Many persons were enlightened by this sermon of the Lord and became mendicants by the thousand. The Lord had ninety-three gaṇabhṛts, Datta, etc. They made the twelve aṅgas from the ‘three steps,’ origination, etc. At the end of the Lord’s sermon, Datta, chief of the gaṇabhṛts, to whom enlightenment had been given, seated on his footstool, delivered a sermon to the people. At the end of his sermon, the gods, etc., went to their own abodes, like young people of the city when a concert is finished.