Identity and Experience_Hamilton_1996

The attitude towards the body 189
literature. She concentrates her study on the Dhammapadat.thakuthti, but also
draws widely on other commentaries and on Buddhist Sanskrit texts. She
seeks to illustrate that the negativity is largely directed towards women's
bodies, representing the ultimate dis-enchantment for male bhikkhus. The
examples she gives are certainly negative about the female body. But I am
not convinced, as Wilson is, that such passages necessarily reflect mysogyny
on the part of the authors. Though institutionalised Buddhism, as part of
Indian culture, was undoubtedly patriarchal, and though such patriarchy is
not doctrinally defensible, the use of women's bodies to illustrate impermanence
might merely reflect the fact that the texts were mostly composed by
and for men and that the sexual instinct is the most difficult desire to
eradicate. In my opinion the most important point of Wilson's paper is that
the degree of negativity towards the body in later, non-canonical, literature
has considerably increased. In concentrating on possible mysogyny in the
texts, however, Wilson misses the point that such negativity is non-doctrinal.
It indicates a lack of understanding on the part of the authors of the later
material that meditating on the body is for the purpose of understanding its
impermanence. Through such understanding, a bhikkhu is able to be
detached either from identifying with it or desiring it.
Because the cultivation of indifference, or detachment, is so central to
understanding Buddhist teaching, in my opinion Buddhaghosa (and others
writing in a similar tone) does a grave disservice to Buddhism in writing as
he does about the body. He goes far beyond merely commenting on the
canon, and his elaborate reinterpretations result in a teaching which bears
little relation to that contained in the original material.
We have seen clearly that it is not from the body itself that the
karmically binding passions and desires arise. We have seen too that the
point of meditation exercises is to see the human being as it really is, and so
to understand that there is nothing towards which any volition is justifiable:
so one might say that there is nothing either desirable or repulsive about
the body but thinking makes it so. All volition is due to ignorance
concerning the fundamental impersonality of all phenomena, physical or
mental. It is for this reason that the pa.ciccasamuppiida formula, which the
Buddha taught in order that others might understand how the human
being continues to be reborn, while ultimately circular rather than linear, is
described in canonical texts as beginning with ignorance.*' Put differently,
volitions have mentality rather than corporeality as their constitutional
source, and ignorance as their psychological source. According to the Pali
canon there is little or no room in Buddhism for a negative attitude towards
the body, and the negative terminology used by Buddhaghosa widely
diverges from the original material. The earliest Buddhist attitude towards
the body is neither positive nor negative: it is analytical.