“…Having returned to the physical world with a new body, we are once again deluded and think that these new bodies are us, giving rise to the desire for the body to live a long time and to not age, be pained, get sick, or die. When these desires arise, stress and mental pain arise as well because these desires are like knives that stab our hearts. Every time desire arises, we will immediately feel dissatisfied, irritated, restless, worried, and feverish; we cannot sleep and lose our appetite trying to get what we want.
When desire arises, the mind is shaken to its core. The real problem of the mind is just this desire. And the cause of this desire is delusion. If we do not deludedly believe that the body is us, we will not be bothered by whatever happens to the body. It can age, get sick, be in pain, or die, and we will not suffer at all because we do not have any desire. We treat our body the same as we would treat the body of a stranger. When somebody we don’t know passes away, we are not distressed at all.
When they are ill, pained, or getting old, we don’t suffer, because we do not deludedly think that they are us or belong to us. But if we foolishly think that they are ours, such as our husband, wife, father, mother, son, siblings, or friends, then when something happens to them, we will suffer right along with them, because we do not want them to suffer.
Therefore, we should correct this delusion and continually remind the mind that the body is not a person, but is merely a representative, a puppet or doll that the mind of each of us uses as a tool, just like we use a cell phone. It’s possible for us to treat the body in the same way we treat a cell phone. When the body passes away, it’s like our cell phone breaks, which we can then replace with a new one…”
By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto
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