Lessons In Practical Buddhism - Sirimangalo.Org
Lessons In Practical Buddhism - Sirimangalo.Org
Lessons In Practical Buddhism - Sirimangalo.Org
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
get in cars; it’s not a reason to be ashamed.<br />
Sometimes you do have to fit in, and so you shower and you<br />
wash your clothes. But you stop looking at the body as, “Oh,<br />
I’m getting old or thin or flabby.” People look at things in<br />
quite a different way when they haven’t practiced. People<br />
are always telling me: “You look thinner than before,” but<br />
the funny thing is that I get this every month or so. Every<br />
time I see some people, they say, “you look thinner than<br />
before.” I think if I was actually getting thinner, I would have<br />
died by now. So I always say, “oh yes, I feel very light.<br />
That’s good. I’m lighter than before.” So, asubha means<br />
removing the perception of beauty in the body. When you<br />
practice vipassanā, just watching the feet, you’ll start to see<br />
the truth of the body.<br />
The human body should be seen as a bit of a mistake, I think.<br />
This is hard to stomach because we’re thoroughly<br />
entrenched in this mistake, but the human body is not such a<br />
wonderful thing. It’s more wonderful than, say, a worm’s<br />
body or even a dog’s body, but it’s still kind of like someone<br />
built a house and didn’t do a very good job at it. We could<br />
have been built a lot better, no? We could imagine maybe<br />
what an angel looks like. We could add wings or an aura, or<br />
at least straight teeth and perfect eyesight. We could<br />
actually smell like roses and clover; that would be nice.<br />
So when we meditate, we start to realize that the human<br />
body is not so beautiful, and that’s useful for us to let go of<br />
it, because there is nothing intrinsically good about being<br />
human. There is no benefit to this body we have taken up as<br />
“ours”. The only benefit to being born a human is that you<br />
can interact with and learn from other humans like the<br />
Buddha. If we weren’t born human, if we were born as a<br />
worm or an ant or a dog, we couldn’t have the chance to<br />
learn the Buddha’s teachings. This is why the Buddha said<br />
it’s very good to be born a human, but intrinsically there’s<br />
nothing good about it, so as humans we have to come to<br />
realize this and rise above even the human realm.<br />
It’s much better to be born as an angel than as a human.<br />
You can practice meditation much easier. So many angels<br />
became enlightened in the time of the Buddha because they<br />
could sit still in meditation for months on end. But being an<br />
86