The Origin of the Body

Vyasa said

Son of Brahma, please tell me now of the fate and birth of beings. Lord among sages, what is their stay in the womb like, and what is the reason for non-attachment?

Sanatkumara replied

Vyasa, listen briefly to the essence of all the texts. I will tell you of excellent non-attachment, followed by those who wish to free themselves from the world's bonds. In a cooking vessel rice and water are placed separately, the water on the fire and the rice above the water. The fire is below and the wind gradually urges it on. Goaded by the wind, the fire heats the water, and with boiling water all round it the rice is cooked. When it is cooked there are two separate parts: cooked rice and some leftover liquid. In the same way there are twelve kinds of remnant impurities in the body, divided and expelled from it. Juices circulate in the body and so it is nourished. The twelve expelled kinds come out through the ears, eyes, nose, tongue, teeth, penis, anus and nails, which are stores of impurity; phlegm, sweat, urine and excrement are said to make up the twelve. All the veins of the body gather in the lotus of the heart. Sage, one should know the nature of the conveyed juices. Foremost among them is prana, which places subtle juices in the channels, which then fill the veins with prana; thus filled, the vessels circulate the juices everywhere in the body. There are veins in the body and juices inside them; they cook and are cooked, and what is cooked divides into two parts. The skin is covered by this and blood arises; blood, body hair, flesh and hair result, and sinews arise from flesh. Bones come from sinews, and nails and marrow from bones. There is another cause behind marrow, semen, which leads to birth. These are the twelve kinds of results, like food being cooked. Semen results from food, and from semen a second body arises. At the time of the season pure semen is deposited in the womb. Urged by the vital wind, at union the semen mingles with the woman's blood. When the semen is released, the individual self, urged by its own karma, the cause, enters the womb. In a single day the semen and blood become a foetus. After five nights it takes the form of a bubble. After seven nights the bubble forms flesh and sinews. In two months, in order, neck, head, shoulders, backbone, stomach, hands, feet, flanks, hips and body are formed. In three months all the joints form. In four months the fingers form in order. The fifth month forms the mouth, nose and ears. In six months the rows of teeth, private parts, nails and ear openings form, and the anus, sex organ and navel. By the seventh month the body's joints are complete. Supreme sage, with all limbs and organs fully formed the child stays in the mother's womb covered by a membrane. As the mother takes food of the six tastes it, bound by the umbilical cord, takes it in and grows from day to day.

In that body the individual self regains memory. As if dreaming in sleep it feels joy and misery and recalls what it did earlier. It thinks: I have died and been born again, born and died again, and seen births in thousands of wombs. This time, when I am born and have undergone the sacrament, I will do what is best for me so I do not face a womb again. As long as it is in the womb the foetus thinks: as soon as I come out I will seek knowledge of Shiva so I do not return to samsara. So it suffers great misery in the womb. Under karma's sway the individual self thinks of means to liberation. This is like the hardship of a person confronted with great mountains on every side. The embodied being faces such hardship, enveloped by the membrane. A man submerged in the ocean is engulfed in grief. Drenched by the womb's secretions it always feels the same misery. As a person flung into an iron cauldron is cooked on fire, so it is flung into the pot of the womb and cooked by the digestive fire. A person feels pain if constantly pierced by red-hot needles, and the foetus's pain there is greater. Nowhere is there misery greater than dwelling in a womb. The embodied being faces much misery and terrible catastrophe. This is the great misery described for sinners. Those with dharma in their minds are born after seven months. Vyasa, misery in the womb is easier to bear than being crushed in the birth passage, which is faced by the evil-souled and not by those with dharma in their souls. A sinner seems to be beaten on the head with a club and crushed on all sides like sugarcane in a press. Sesame crushed in a press loses all substance in an instant, and so, crushed in the passage, the body loses all substance. The bones and feet hang like pillars, tied like a puppet to bonds of sinew. It is smeared in the mire of blood and flesh and lives on urine and excrement. It is covered with hair, body hair and nails and suffers, a home of disease. The mouth is the only door though there are eight windows. The two lips are like doors and the tongue a bolt that seals them. Suffering from thirst for pleasures, the fool gives way to attachment and hatred. Surrounded by the membrane, all its limbs are entangled with one another. Wishing to save itself from the hardship it comes out through the passage, limbs covered in blood, urine and excrement, as if from a sheath. The body is such that the different bones inside that cage can be seen. There are three hundred and sixty bones and five hundred sinews, and the body is covered with three and a half crores of body hairs, said to be gross and subtle, visible and invisible. So in every direction there are crores of veins and arteries. Without any sweat the juices circulate inside and exude outside. There are said to be thirty-two teeth and twenty nails. The bile is known to amount to one kudava and the phlegm one adhaka. The fat called vasa amounts to twenty palas and half of that is brown. The other fat is two and a half tulas and ten palas. Large flows of blood amount to three palas and marrow four times that. Semen is half a kudava, and embodied beings get their strength from this seed. The mass of flesh is said to be a thousand palas, blood a hundred palas, and urine and excrement four handfuls each. Supreme sage, such is the impermanent abode, the body, of the permanent self. The pure is tied by the bonds of karma and the impure is generated.