Lessons In Practical Buddhism - Sirimangalo.Org

disgusting it is because, if you don’t shower or shampoo your
head, your hair becomes oily and smelly. What is the hair?
It’s like grass that’s stuck in the scalp, feeding off of blood
and oil. Where is the hair growing? It’s growing in the oil and
blood and the skin of your head. Then the hair on your body:
chest hair, armpit hair and so on, and when we focus on it
and think about it, we see it too is actually quite disgusting.
This sort of thing is hard for some people to hear. Those who
practice insight meditation will have no problem with it, but
for a larger audience, loathsomeness can be difficult to
appreciate in the right light. People will want to argue that it
can be dangerous to think like this, how people might
develop low self-esteem or even hate themselves as a result.
It is true that this sort of meditation only works for certain
individuals, specifically those who are infatuated with the
body. Even then, it can only repress the defilements, since
the lust is a part of the addiction process in the mind and the
brain, which is not really connected to infatuation with the
body. All this meditation can do is remove our attachment to
the body, it can’t remove our attachment to the pleasant
feelings associated with the body. Still, it is an important
part of our practice to come to see the body clearly so that
we don’t use it to create more attachment. Once we see the
body clearly as it is, we will cease to use it as a means to find
happiness.
The best way to understand loathsomeness, though, is
through vipassana meditation, because then it is a natural
realization. The point is not to become disgusted about the
body, the point is to realize that we don’t have to feel
self-conscious about ourselves. The body smells; that smell
is natural. We don’t think, “I’ve got to get rid of this,
because my body should be beautiful, sugar and spice and
all things nice, and smell like roses and clover.” We stop
thinking like that, and we realize that it is just as it is. It’s
not good or bad. We have none of the self-consciousness
about how we look or how we smell. You can become
ashamed sometimes as a monk when you remember that
you didn’t wash your robes for a week and haven’t showered
in a few days and someone invites you somewhere and you
get in the car and you realize that you’re not really as
fragrant as might be desired, but that’s just a reason not to
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