Agreed. This monk should have went to pay Ajahn Maha Boowa, a
true Arhat in Thailand a visit.
Here is the Thai monk's meditative journey towards his attainment
of Arhantship (attainment of Liberation and Nirvana), in which he
also discussed the issue of transcending sexual lust. (btw,
transcending sexual lust is only one stage of the journey, it is
not complete liberation)
Forest Dhamma Books
(From Part 1) The practice of wisdom begins with the human body,
the grossest and most visible component of our personal identity.
The object is to penetrate the reality of its true nature. Is our
body what weve always assumed it to bean integral and desirable
part of who we really are? To test this assumption we must
thoroughly investigate the body by mentally deconstructing it into
its constituent parts, section by section, piece by piece. We must
research the truth about the body with which we are so familiar by
viewing it from different angles. Begin with the hair on the head,
the hair on the body, the nails, the teeth and the skin, and move
on to the flesh, blood, sinews and bones. Then dissect the inner
organs, one by one, until the whole body is completely dismembered.
Analyze this conglomeration of disparate parts to clearly
understand its true nature.
If you find it difficult to investigate your own body in this way,
begin by mentally dissecting someone elses body. Choose a body
external to yourself; for instance, a body of the opposite sex.
Visualize each part, each organ of that body as best you can, and
ask yourself: Which piece is truly attractive? Which part is
actually seductive? Place the hair in one pile, the nails and teeth
in another; do the same with the skin, the flesh, the sinews and
the bones. Which pile deserves to be an object of your desire?
Examine them closely and answer with total honesty. Strip off the
skin and pile it in front of you. Where is the beauty in this mass
of tissue, this thin veneer that covers up the meat and entrails?
Do those various parts add up to a person? Once the skin is
removed, what can we find to admire in the human body? Men and
womenthey are all the same. Not a shred of beauty can be found in
the body of a human being. It is just a bag of flesh and blood and
bones that manages to deceive everyone in the world into lusting
after it.
It is wisdoms duty to expose that deception. Examine the skin
carefully. Skin is the great deceiver. Because it wraps up the
entire human body, its the part we always see. But what does it
wrap up? It wraps up the animal flesh, the muscles, the fluids and
the fat. It wraps up the skeleton with the tendons and the sinews.
It wraps up the liver, the kidneys, the stomach, the intestines,
and all the internal organs. No one has ever suggested that the
bodys innards are desirable things of beauty, worthy of being
admired with passion and yearning. Probing deeply, without fear or
hesitation, wisdom exposes the plain truth about the body. Dont be
fooled by a thin veil of scaly tissue. Peel it off and see what
lies underneath. This is the practice of wisdom.
In order to really see the truth of this matter for yourself, in a
clear and precise way that leaves no room for doubt, you must be
very persistent and very diligent. Merely doing this meditation
practice once or twice, or from time to time, will not be enough to
bring conclusive results. You must approach the practice as if its
your lifes workas though nothing else in the world matters except
the analysis you are working on at that moment. Time is not a
factor; place is not a factor; ease and comfort are not factors.
Regardless of how long it takes or how difficult the work proves to
be, you must relentlessly stick with body contemplation until all
doubt and uncertainty are eliminated.
Body contemplation should occupy every breath, every thought, every
movement until the mind becomes thoroughly saturated with it.
Nothing short of total commitment will bring genuine and direct
insight into the truth. When body contemplation is practiced with
single-minded intensity, each successive body part becomes a kind
of fuel feeding the fires of mindfulness and wisdom. Mindfulness
and wisdom then become a conflagration consuming the human body
section by section, part by part, as they examine and investigate
the truth with a burning intensity. This is what is meant by
tapadhamma.
Focus intently on those body parts that really capture your
attention, the ones whose truth feels most obvious to you. Use them
as whetstones to sharpen your wisdom. Expose them and tear them
apart until their inherently disgusting and repulsive nature
becomes apparent. Asubha meditation is insight into the
repulsiveness of the human body. This is the bodys natural
condition; by nature, it is filthy and disgusting. Essentially, the
whole body is a living, stinking corpsea breathing cesspool full
of fetid waste. Only a paper thin covering of skin makes the whole
mess look presentable. We are all being deceived by the outer
wrapping, which conceals the fundamental repulsiveness from view.
Merely removing the skin reveals the bodys true nature.
By comparison to the flesh and internal organs, the skin appears
attractive. But examine it more closely. Skin is scaly, creased,
and wrinkled; it exudes sweat and grease and offensive odors. We
must scrub it daily just to keep it clean. How attractive is that?
And the skin is firmly wedded to the underlying flesh, and thus
inextricably linked to the loathsome interior. The more deeply
wisdom probes, the more repulsive the body appears. From the skin
on through to the bones, nothing is the least bit pleasing.
PROPERLY DONE, BODY CONTEMPLATION is intense and the mental effort
is unrelenting; so, eventually, the mind begins to tire. It is then
appropriate to stop and take a rest. When meditators who are
engaged in full-scale body contemplation take a break, they return
to the samadhi practice they have developed and maintained so
assiduously. Reentering the still peace and concentration of
samadhi, they abide in total calm where no thoughts or
visualizations arise to disturb the citta. The burden of thinking
and probing with wisdom is temporarily set aside so that the mind
can completely relax, suspended in tranquility. Once the mind is
satiated with samadhi, it withdraws on its own, feeling
reinvigorated and refreshed and ready to tackle the rigors of body
contemplation again. In this way, samadhi supports the work of
wisdom, making it more adept and incisive.
Upon withdrawal from samadhi, the investigation of the body
immediately begins anew. Each time you investigate with mindfulness
and wisdom, the investigation should be carried out in the present
moment. To be fully effective, each new investigation must be fresh
and spontaneous. Dont allow them to become carbon copies of
previous ones. An immediacy, of being exclusively in the present
moment, must be maintained at all times. Forget whatever you may
have learned; forget what happened the last time you delved into
the bodys domainjust focus your attention squarely in the present
moment and investigate only from that vantage point. Ultimately,
this is what it means to be mindful. Mindfulness fixes the mind in
the present, allowing wisdom to focus sharply. Learned experience
is stored as memory, and as such should be put aside; otherwise
memory will masquerade as wisdom. This is the present imitating the
past. If memory is permitted to replace the immediacy of the
present moment, then genuine wisdom will not arise. So guard
against this tendency in your practice.
