Meditating on the Body --Plus and Minus

    A lot of Buddhist practices I have read about suggest that meditating on the body and even the womb can lesson one’s attachment to existence and procreation. Kritzer (2004) suggests that some of the Buddhist texts go so far as to create derogatory images of birth and the fetus, as ways to generate feelings of disgust as well as counterbalance lustful feelings. I have a certain ambivalence about this practice. In learning from a tradition which doesn’t put a lot of emphasis on visualizing the body as a contemplative practice, I wonder whether generating aversion to something is really a good way to counteract desires. Isn’t aversion also a form of desire, in the sense of wanting to flee or cast dispersions upon certain phenomena or appearances?

     The danger with contemplating something that might arouse ‘disgust’ is that it also might conceal certain kinds of discriminatory beliefs or thoughts. Can a person really look on someone fairly if they see the body as something that is impure? It’s hard to say, but I suspect that expressions of impurity might also be concealing derogatory attitudes, as Kritzer also argues in his writing. Again, I think that contemplative practices need to be looked at with caution and a critical perspective. If I am only using contemplation to bolster prejudices or conflicts I might have with others, I am not able to arouse compassion or equanimity.

   I wonder if learning about the human body might be a more moderate way of cultivating respect for its processes without being enthralled by its appearances. I am thinking of the example of doctors, or those who are in the medical profession. Some writers such as J.G. Ballard have written about experiences where they have learned to become dispassionate—perhaps even clinical---about the body when they were working in the medical field. Rather than seeing a bleeding or disfigured body with revulsion, these writers describe how they developed equanimity regarding death and life.  Perhaps the difference is that in studying the human body and treating its illnesses, I am applying myself to improving the well-being of others, rather than trying only to work on my own feelings and attitudes. My attachment lessens not because I have overcome desire as a kind of goal in itself, but because I am applying myself to learning something and helping others in the process.

Kritzer, Robert (2004). "Childbirth and the Mother's Body in the Abhidharmakośa and

Related Texts." In Mikogami Eshō Kyōju kinen ronshū kankōkai (Kyoto: Nagata bunshodō, 2004),

pp. 1085-1109