Identity and Experience_Hamilton_1996

The attitude towards the body
cited above, however, we also see that in some cases a deeper consideration
of their context shows them to be less negative about the body than at first
appears.
The statement that "only an ignorant fool would regard it [the body] as
beautiful" can perhaps be explained as follows: anyone ignorant as to the
real nature of the body, who has not cultivated the foundations of mindfulness
in order to see it as it really is, has not analysed it into its constituents.
Such a person has not perceived the body merely and precisely qua body,
but has a view of the body which is meta-physical, or what some modern
writers might call 'holistic'. In Buddhist doctrinal terms, what this means is
that such a person still erroneously identifies in some way with his or her
body. Because there is no room for such a view in the process of cultivating
the penetrating analysis of the bodily complex necessary for liberating
insight, and because anyone who has cultivated such insight is considered
wise, anyone holding such a viewsrnight be deemed a fool, certainly from a
relative point of view; and the more so because it is only from the holistic
point of view that the body could possibly be considered beautiful: its
constituent parts, activities and functions are merely parts, activities and
functions.
In the reference to the body being a "heap of corruption", the Pali term
translated here is piitisanda. Piiti is also sometimes used with kiiya and
sometimes with ~andeha.~~ All such expressions refer to the body. Other
meanings of the word piiti, apart from corruption, include 'putrid', 'rotten'
or 'decayed'. While the description 'heap of corruption, rottenness or
decay' appears prima facie to be unequivocally negative about the body, in
fact what such a term is doing is serving to emphasise the body's impermanence,
rather than that one should feel negative about it. This interpretation
is confirmed by the fact that piitisanda is found in contexts which
include other terms such as bhindana, which means 'breaking up, brittle,
falling into ruin', and pabharigu, which means 'brittle, easily destroyed,
peri~hable'.~~ And in one passage which uses the term piitihya, the context
is explicitly intended to illustrate impermanence: after describing the body
as Piiti, the Buddha asks Vakkali: "As to this, what do you think, Vakkali: is
the body permanent or im~ermanent?"~~
I also referred above to the presence in the Pali canon of statements that
the body is 'impure'. There are many Pali words for impure, but the ones
most frequently found in connection with bodily functions are asuci and
asubha. Asuci is used in a passage in the Ariguttara Nikga to which I referred
above which describes the body as a boil from whose nine openings
impurity (usual, stench and loathsomeness ooze TO refer to purity in
such a context clearly overlooks the meaning of purity in Buddhist
doctrinal terms. The Buddha teaches that salvation is obtained by
progressing from ignorance to insight. His prescription for how to achieve
insight is given in terms of following a path which can also be described as
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