Wednesday, March 20, 2024

Sex Robot? Dead? The Body as a Bag of Bones

WARNING: Dead bodies reveal true nature of our living carcasses! May provoke lust before death!

Bag of Bones (Ven. Khantipalo)
Silicone can look so realistic. How should one contemplate and consider the average human body? What about a SEXY body? Australian Buddhist monk Ven. Khantipalo leads readers through sutras and sayings that say those who practice "mindfulness of the body" gain a treasure no one else does (AN 1:21). There is a practice for the few: "meditation on foulness" (asubha bhavana), focusing on the loathsomeness of the body to free ourselves of lust and painful craving. The body is a biological wonder, a bag of bones wrapped skin deep to hide the gore.

Indonesian tribe keeps dead bodies
LYRICS (Megadeth "Symphony of Destruction"): Introduction "Offertorium, Domine Jesu Christe"] You take a mortal man/ And put him in control/ Watch him become a god/ Watch people's heads a'roll/ A'roll, a'roll... [CHORUS:] Just like the Pied Piper/ Led rats through the streets/ We dance like marionettes/ Swaying to the symphony of destruction// Actin' like a robot/ Its metal brain corrodes/ You try to take its pulse/ Before the head explodes/ Explodes, explodes... [CHORUS] [Guitar solo] The Earth starts to rumble/ World powers fall/ A'warring for the heavens/ A peaceful man stands tall/ A'tall, a'tall... [CHORUS]

The Robotic Nacoco
Robotic Nacoco, March 2024; Seth Auberon, Pfc. Sandoval (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

(nacoco music) What won't Asian robots be able to do in the near future? Will humans really debase themselves masturbating with life-like plasticized machines? They already have sex with children, animals, and [blank] so we have to assume they will. And tech firms are banking on brothel business. If only they could teach a real human to play like this. (They can.) Oh, can they? No way. Robots are just better suited to the fingering, and the face on this one is completely fake, although very pleasantly porcelain like a Japanese geisha or Korean hostess or one of those old timey "stewardesses" planes used to have, who are nothing like our modern "flight attendants," aggravating everyone while plying them with alcohol in a pressurized cabin (flimsy tube shooting through the sky) and having them arrested by air marshals just for acting like entitled Americans. This just in. Nacoco may have morphed into a human female with amazing guitar skills and great outfit ideas.
Bag of Bones: A Miscellany on the Body
Bhikkhu Khantipālo (Laurence Mills), Bag of Bones: A Miscellany on the Body (Wheel 271), Buddhist Publication Society (BPS.lk); Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

“Meditators, they do not taste the deathless who do not taste mindfulness of the body; they taste the deathless who taste mindfulness of the body” (A I 45).

“A skeleton wrapped up in skin…” (MN 82).

Bag of Bones
“Meditators, when one dhamma [thing] is developed and cultivated it leads to a great sense of urgency, to great benefit, to great safety from bondage, to great mindfulness and full awareness, to obtainment of knowledge and insight, to a pleasant abiding here and now, to realization of the fruit of true knowledge and deliverance. What is that one dhammaIt is mindfulness occupied with the body.” — AN 1:21, translated Ven. Ñāṇamoli (edited by Wisdom Quarterly).

The Advantages of Mindfulness of the Body
  1. One conquers aversion and delight,
  2. And fear and dread as well.
  3. Besides, one can stand cold and heat, hunger and thirst, troublesome things in the world, harsh words and painful feelings.
  4. One obtains all four meditative absorptions (jhānas),
  5. One obtains the supernormal faculties,
  6. The heavenly ear element (clairaudience),
  7. Knowledge of others’ minds (mind reading),
  8. And of all one’s past lives (memory),
  9. And sees besides, how beings appear and pass away according to their karma.
  10. Finally, one enters upon the two deliverances (of the heart and by wisdom), and all taints (āsava) are abolished.
    — MN 119, "Mindfulness of the Body"
“When anyone has developed and repeatedly practiced mindfulness of the body, that person has included whatever wholesome dhammas (mental states) there are that partake of true knowledge (vijjā).

“Just as anyone who extends the mind over the great ocean has included whatever streams there are that flow into the ocean so, too, when anyone has developed and repeatedly practiced mindfulness of the body, that person has included whatever wholesome dhammas there are that partake of true knowledge.”
—MN 119, trans. Ven. Ñāṇamoli (revised)

Insight Knowledge
7 Surprising Facts About What Happens To Your Body When You Die (allthatsinteresting.com)
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“This body [of mine] consists of the Four Great Elements, procreated by a mother and father, is built up out of boiled rice and bread, is of the nature of impermanence, of being worn and rubbed away, of dissolution and disintegration, and this consciousness [of mine] has that for its support and is bound up with it.”
—MN 77, trans. Ven. Ñāṇamoli

“Now, this body that has material form consists of the Four Great Elements, it is procreated by a mother and father, and built up out of boiled rice and bread, it has the nature of impermanence, of being worn and rubbed away, of dissolution and disintegration. It must be regarded — as impermanent — as (liable to) suffering (disappointment), as a disease — as a cancer, as a dart — as a calamity, as an affliction — as alien, as a falling to pieces—as void, as without a self.

“When a person regards it thus, that person abandons the desire for the body, affection for the body, and the habit of treating the body as a basis for one's inferences” [1]. —MN 74, trans. Ven. Ñāṇamoli

You live by “following the body”? Eating when it’s hungry, resting when it’s tired, dressing when necessary, urinating, defecating, going to work to get money — all for what? For this body? Then what about the time when its end comes? What was it all for?

How much time do you spend on your body — to feed it — to clothe it, to cleanse it — to wash it, to beautify it — to relax it, to rest it? How much time do you spend on your mind?

Introduction
Dead body of frozen victim of the Dyatlov Incident (YouTube/allthatsinteresting.com)
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The body is thought to be most obviously “me,” what I regard as the most tangible part of myself. Around it therefore are constructed many views, all of them distorted to some extent, which prevent insight arising into the body as it really is.

This book, Bag of Bones: A Miscellany on the Body, is a small anthology relating to the body in various ways. It presents material which, if contemplated by the earnest and sincere student of Dhamma (Dharma), will eventually provide fruitful insight and, thereby, freedom from the many cravings and fears centered on the body.

Such desires for pleasures in which the body is the instrument (though it is in the heart-mind where they
dwell) awaken and intensify greed of all kinds, for food or sex for instance.

Greed — which is often accompanied by pleasurable sensations and therefore desired — needs a rather bitter medicine to combat it.

Hence the number of pieces here on the unattractiveness of the body, its decay and death — all unpleasant matters.

Some of the material, concerned with bodily unattractiveness, is like a medicine, which need only be taken while the disease of greed-lust is active, and afterwards may be discontinued. It is important to understand this, and not to form the mistaken impression that the Buddha advocated viewing all beauty as loathsome.

It is only that there is a hook in beauty that tangles [get entangled] with the greed in one’s own heart and leads to more and more complications and difficulties.

Fears center around aging-decay, disease, and death. They are not overcome by pretending they do not exist, as the ostrich is said to bury its head in the sand at the approach of enemies. Only resolutely facing these inevitable features of life can bring insight and relief from fear.

The Buddha’s instructions on the contemplation of the body are addressed to those who are able, through their lifestyle, to practice them.

This means in effect monks and nuns, together with dedicated lay people. Monastics have this contemplation given to them by their teachers at the time of going forth from home to the left home life. They need such a medicine to combat lust, which is destructive to the celibate (brahmacariya) life.

Lay Buddhists keeping the Five Precepts have contentment with their partners as an important part of their practice.

Sex is a natural part of their life but should still be restrained and kept within the bounds of the Third Precept (to avoid sexual misconduct).

If not, much trouble follows! But some of them may wish to live without sexual attachment, and this cannot be done in the way of Dhamma by ignoring the power of the sexual drive nor by suppressing it.

Only when it is treated with mindfulness can it be transcended. The aspect of mindfulness which is needed for this is the subject, or rather the interrelated subjects, of this book.

In the world today people are subjected to a bombardment of sensuality by way of the mass media.

Sex in particular is used as a bait to sell things and as a titillation of sensory experience. When this subjection is continued, the defilements of the mind — notably lust (sensual craving), greed (avarice of all kinds), and attachment (clinging)  are sure to be strengthened.

When this has happened, the result is not more happiness, only an increase of disappointment (dukkha), suffering, trouble, and difficulties.

The medicine for such over-indulgence and over-stimulation is given in this book.

It is said that this subject of meditation is unique to the Buddha’s Teachings and that elsewhere it is not clearly taught. This is not surprising as we find that desire is sometimes accepted as being “natural.” 

Wherever desires are viewed as “natural,” that is, inherent in one’s nature or "self," nothing much can be done about them.

But the Buddha analyzed desires into those which are wholesome — the desire to practice Dhamma, for instance — and the unwholesome ones, among which are greed and lust.

They may not be gross, as in the case of the meditator who is greedy for bliss, or visions, and attached to such things.

The Buddha has provided the medicine for all unwholesome desires, and according to our various ways of life we can use it to effect partial or complete cures.

When the emphasis is so much on sensuality, youth, and beauty as we find now, the darker sides of life get pushed away and attempts are made, always unsuccessful, to sweep them under the carpet.

Those who try to do so will not be pleased with the exercises contained in the Buddha’s contemplation of the body. Such things will appear to them as morbid and unnatural.

Yet, they are also a part of this life and should not be ignored.

And if the effort is made to ignore what is unpleasant about the body, sooner or later one will be jolted into the recognition of these things. Such jolts are unpleasant. Rather than leave it until one is forced to know the body’s unpleasant sides it is better to acquaint one’s emotions with this knowledge gradually.

In this spirit, Bag of Bones is being published. Unfortunately, being only a book, it cannot give person-to-person advice on special problems.

It can only offer some general guidelines to people who are interested in reducing their greed and lust.
A word of warning: meditation on the unattractiveness of the body can be very potent and should only be practiced with moderation and care, especially if one has no personal contact with a Teacher of Buddhist meditation.

Outlaws Bonnie and Clyde shown dead after being murdered by police (Huffington Post UK)
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If fear and anxiety or other extreme unwholesome emotional states arise after practice of it, then it will be better to lay it down and take up loving kindness (mettā) or Recollection of the Buddha (Buddhānussati) as one’s meditation instead.

This book, therefore, is not so much for beginners in Buddhism but rather for those who have already practiced for some time. May it inspire many people to practice the Dhamma more intently!

Translations which have no one’s name after them are by the compiler. And all other reflections, dialogues, and poems too are his work.

They have been jotted down as they occurred to him, mostly in the peaceful Forest Hermitage of Ven. Nyanaponika Mahāthera outside Kandy on the island of Sri Lanka.

May I also here acknowledge the venerable mahā-thera’s ["great elder's"] kind advice and help in bringing this collection to print.

Bhikkhu Khantipālo (formerly an Australian gentleman by the name of Mr. Laurence Mills)
Wat Buddha-Dhamma
Forest Meditation Centre
Ten Mile Hollow
Wiseman’s Ferry, N.SW. 2255
Australia

Abbreviations
  • MN Majjhima-nikāya
  • A Aṅguttara-nikāya
  • Aṅguttara-nikāya
  • M.R. Minor Readings (and Illustrator)—Khuddakapāṭha
Buddhist Publication Society (BPS.lk), Kandy, Sri Lanka, The Wheel Publication No. 271. BPS Online Edition © (2009). Digital Transcription Source: ATI and BPS. First Edition, 1980. For free distribution. This work may be republished, reformatted, reprinted, and redistributed in any medium. However, any such republication and redistribution is to be made available to the public on a free and unrestricted basis and translations and other derivative works are to be clearly marked as such and the Buddhist Publication Society is to be acknowledged as the original publisher.

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