Identity and Experience_Hamilton_1996

I 86
Identity and Experience
colour, is the colour of a ripe palrnyra fruit and, as to its shape, is the shape of
a [mandoline-shaped] drum left face down, and its fangs are like jasmine
buds, and so even if both these are not directly repulsive in colour and shape,
still their odour is directly repulsive, so too, even if head hairs are not directly
repulsive in colour and shape, still their odour is directly repulsive.74
Other similes used in this passage are village sewage (giimanissanda), a
dunghill (@thar&) and a charnel ground (s~sZna).~~
Buddhaghosa uses the body in the chapter of the Tmddhimaga where
the meditation subject is loathsomeness or impurity, asubha. He sums up his
lengthy description of the body's nature by quoting some verses:
Fools cannot in their folly tell;
They take the body to be fair,
And soon get caught in Evil's snare
Nor can escape its painful spell.
But since the wise have thus laid bare
This filthy body's nature, so,
be it alive or dead, they know
There is no beauty lurking there.
For this is said:
This filthy body stinks outright
Like ordure, like a privy's site;
This body men that have insight
Condemn, is object of a fool's delight.
A tumour where nine holes abide
Wrapped in a coat of clammy hide
And trickling filth on every side
Polluting the air with stenches far and wide.
If it perchance should come about
That what is inside it came out,
Surely a man would need a knout
With which to put the crows and dogs to
The passage concludes:
So a capable 6hikWlu should apprehend the sign wherever the aspect of foulness
is manifest, whether in a living body or in a dead one, and he should
make the meditation subject reach abs~rption.~~
Even allowing for poetic licence, this passage is in striking contrast to the
canonical analysis by which a bhikkhu also arrives at the conclusion that
there is nothing inherently desirable about the body.