Look at the decomposition of the body

Monk: Are you implying that appāna-samādhi is the samādhi which develops wisdom naturally, so you don’t have to contemplate anything specific such as the body or anicca, dukkha, anattā?

Than Ajahn: No. You have to do that (the contemplation). I have already mentioned. I was telling you about aniccaṁ when you desire for something. The object that you desire is a temporary object, it doesn’t last, like a cigarette, after you smoke it, it is all gone. The happiness that you acquire from smoking, it also disappears and then you will have a new desire to have another cigarette.

So this applies to everything, I am just using cigarette (as an example). You can apply it to a human body, like when you have sexual desire, it is the same thing like having a cigarette. You want to have sex, but the person you have sex with, they will get old, they will die one day, they will leave you one day, then what happens? You will have to get a new body, like taking a new cigarette. You can also look at the asubha aspect of the body, to conquer your desire because your desire arises from seeing the beautiful parts of the body.

If you look at the not-beautiful parts, the repulsive parts of the body, then this can stop your desire. So you still have to contemplate these things. If you contemplate the body, you have to contemplate three aspects of it. One is the impermanent aspect. The body is constantly changing, it is temporary, it is not lasting, it is not forever. The body will get old, get sick and die. You want to teach your mind not to cling to your body, because when you do, you become unhappy when the body changes from good to bad, from bad to worse, so you want to be forewarned of the real situation of the body that the body is not going to be like this all the time.

It is going to get old, it is going to get sick and eventually it is going to die. You want to look at the decomposition of the body after it dies, so you can have a true picture of the destination of the body, where this body goes in the future, not just your body but the bodies of everybody else that you come into contact with.

You can use this also to restrain your sexual desire. Every time when you see a beautiful person, think of the time when they die. During the time of the Buddha, there was a monk who was told by the Buddha to visit the corpse of a beautiful woman. She was a prostitute, famous for her beauty, but she had died.

The Buddha knew that this monk still has this problem with sexual desire, so he told the monk to go and look at the corpse of this beautiful woman. Once he saw it then he can eliminate his sexual desire.

This is body contemplation, anicca, repulsiveness, asubha and also anattā, you have to go through all the 32 parts so that you can clarify to your mind that not any single part of the body is you. If you can get every part and separate them into different places, put the hair out, put it at one place, put the skin, the nail, the teeth and all the organs (at another place) and ask them is this you? Is the hair you? Is the skin you? Are the teeth you? Where am I? So you can see clearly that in this whole body that there is no ‘you’, there is no ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘mine’, or ‘myself’ in this body.

You can also look at the decomposition of the body that eventually this body will return to its original state, which is the four elements. The body is composed of the four elements, the air you breathe in, the water that you drink, the food that you take is the earth element, and the fire is the reaction of the three other elements. When you eat, your body becomes hot. This is how you want to look at the body as four elements which are coming in and going out. When the process stops then the body will decompose and return to its four elements. So this is basically body contemplation. When anything happens to the body your mind will react negatively if you don’t contemplate. When you get sick, your mind will become unhappy because you want the sickness to disappear, but if you contemplate, then you know that being sick is part of the body. The sickness is part of you, there is nothing that you can do to prevent it, or to stop it from happening and when it happens you cannot tell the sickness to go away, because it is anattā.

If you are afraid of the pain that arises from your sickness then you have to sit and face the pain. When you sit and meditate, and when you get this painful feeling in your body, you should not get up, you should not move, you should instead use wisdom to teach your mind to know that this is something that will happen and to face it and accept it. If you accept it, then you only experience the physical pain but not the mental pain, because the mental pain arises from your resistance to the physical pain.

When you have desire for the physical pain to disappear, you are creating another pain, which is the mental pain, which is a lot stronger than the physical pain. The pain that you cannot withstand is not the physical pain, but the mental pain. Once you can get rid of your mental pain, you will find that the physical pain is bearable, that you can live with it.

So when you sit and you get this painful feeling, try to investigate to see there is another painful feeling which is not the physical pain but the mental pain, that which arises from your desire to get rid of your physical pain or to get away from this physical pain. So you have to stop this mental desire. You must tell yourself that you are going to stay with this pain, it is not as bad as you think. You have to learn to like it, instead of hate it.

By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto