Buddhist-Meditation-Systematic-and-Practical

parts (see Ch. IX, E, 1, a), and of one's volition towards
the body. The first is purified by meditations on the
decay of the body and the cemetery contemplations (for
these, see Ch. VIII, G, 1), the second by contemplating
on all the impure parts which compose it, and the sharp
driver of "one's-own-body-view" is purified by seeing
the body's voidness.
All this process is in the Hinayana where renunciation
and purification are very much stressed. (It is important
to understand that none of these body-meditations aim
at "mortifying the flesh"; they are all skillful means
aiming at purification of the body so that one may
progress to higher stages of the Path.) The body, which
is not to be loved, must not be mortified either—a
species of self-hatred—but should be used as the vehicle
for Full Enlightenment.
To gain this, the Hinayana meditations are not sufficient.
They only remove the sorrow of lust, so that one finds
that the practices of the Mahayana are necessary. These
effect a sublimation of the body from being a physical
human body to becoming the Buddha-entity body.
While the nature of sunyata is the source of the
Dharmakaya (the ultimate truth considered as an
unmanifested body of the Buddhas); the conditions of
sunyata are the source of the Rupakaya (the manifested
bodies of the Buddhas). The aspirant to Buddhahood
has many long ages to labor while slowly acquiring all
596