Luang Por Liem: The Ways of the Peaceful - Wat Pah Nanachat

of the body as attractive and beautiful. Reflect on these images,
but don’t expect sexual desire to vanish completely. It might
change to the point where you can breathe again! This is just like
when you come up and take a deep breath after having been under
water for quite some time. When you can breathe, your strength
comes back to you again.
So reflections on death can reduce sexual desire and the
delight in romantic objects, but it won’t make desire disappear
completely since the seeds for it are still in us. This practice is
strengthening, so don’t give up. Don’t forget to build up a solid
foundation and try to sustain awareness and focus of mind as a
steady basis. We focus our awareness continually. Sometimes we
may feel ashamed, but there are also times when we feel pleased.
So we just take the experience of feeling ashamed as an object of
our awareness.
Eventually we will be able to sustain our minds in being aware
steadily. Equipped with sati and sampajañña, we focus on the
body and its conditioned nature. We can bring up the image of our
own corpse in our mind and focus on it. Staying in the experience
of the present moment, what is called the paccuppanna-dhamma
will grow in our mind. The mind won’t go astray into the past and
future. It won’t pay attention to things that are already gone or yet
to come. It won’t worry whether a situation is going to be like this
or like that. All that remains is the present moment. When we are
fully present, our mind is like a flame when the wind is stilled.
The flame is unmoved and upright in itself and light blazes into
all directions.
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