The Origin of the Body

Sanatkumara said

Vyasa, wise sage, I will briefly describe how impure the body is and how much a good nature matters. The body is born of semen and blood and is forever full of urine and excrement, which is why it is called impure. A pot of filth is not made clean by scrubbing its outside, and a body washed on the outside is no purer. Even panchagavya and oblations leave it impure within a moment, and food, drink and perfumes soon turn foul in it. People, do you not see what comes out of your own bodies every day? A store of impurities cannot be pure, and sprinkling it with drops of panchagavya from a kusha blade does no more than rubbing charcoal would. Phlegm, urine and excrement pour out of it like streams from a mountain, so how could it be purified? There is nothing in it but filth. After touching what the body discharges one scours the hand with mud, yet the hand has touched a vessel of impurity. However it is washed and scented, like a dog's tail that will not straighten, it keeps its own nature, and what is naturally black cannot be made white. A man smells his own stench and sees his own excrement, covers his nose, and still does not turn away from it. This is the wonder of the great delusion over the universe: he does not see the faults of his own body and does not detach himself. If a body's own stink does not make a man detach, what else could one teach him as a reason? Of all things in the world the body is most impure, and touching it makes even the pure impure. For the body's purification perfumes and unguents are mentioned, but if the washer and the washed were both clean, the touch of the clean would purify it. All the Ganga's water and mountains of mud could be used on it until death, and a wicked nature would still not be cleansed. The evil-souled are not purified by tirthas or austerities. Does a dog become pure by bathing in a tirtha? A man who is wicked within gains neither heaven nor liberation by entering fire; he only burns his body. Someone wicked by nature could bathe from birth in all the Ganga and scrub himself with mud mountains and never be purified. He could feed the fire with ghee and oil, circle it and walk into its flames, and burn, but if his feelings are wicked he gains no dharma and no other fruit. Fish live in the Ganga and other tirthas and birds live constantly in temples, yet a deceiver's nature gains nothing from tirthas or gifts. Purity of feeling is the highest measure of purity in all karma. One embraces a beloved with one feeling and a daughter with another; the objects need not differ, only the mind's way of seeing them. A woman is thought of one way by her son and another by her husband. See how many kinds of fortune come from feelings. If a woman embraces a man but feeling is absent, he does not desire her. If desire and the other two fill the mind with anxious thoughts, one has no appetite for the many fragrant dishes served. A man is seized by feelings, but he can also free himself from them. One pure in feeling is pure in self and gains heaven and liberation. One who is single-minded and pure of self, who offers oblations, performs sacrifices and chants hymns, quickly gains knowledge. For men that stainless knowledge is like water and true non-attachment like mud, and together they wash away ignorance and attachment, the urine, excrement and bad smell. So the body is naturally impure, and like a plantain trunk it is hollow inside, with only an outer layer of substance. A wise man should know the body is loose and full of faults, and, content in mind, should not fix his mind and feelings on objects that please the body. One who gets past this in samsara becomes jivanmukta, while others stay in samsara clutching the plantain's empty core, which is called the great misery of birth. Through flaws in learning men fall under the sway of many kinds of karma.

Half a shloka, he said, holds what crores of books say: there is supreme grief in a sense of ownership and supreme joy in being free of it. Hundreds and thousands of kings were bound by ownership, but many who threw off such feelings reached the highest worlds. Memory lasts in the womb, but crushed in the birth passage a being loses his senses and suffers. As soon as the outer air touches him he is filled with delusion, a touch that brings a terrible fever, and from that fever delusion and then quick loss of memory follow. With memory gone he no longer recalls his past karma, and attachment to the present birth rises quickly. Attached and foolish, people do not do the right things. A person knows neither his supreme self nor any god. His ears do not listen to what would truly benefit him and his eyes cannot see it. Even on a level road he moves slowly, stumbling at every step. True intelligence does not come to him even when the learned instruct him. Yielding to greed he clings to the womb and suffers in samsara. His mind deceives him, and he forgets the sins he remembered in the womb. This divine text, greater than the greatest, was spoken by Shiva himself. It names austerity as the means to heaven and liberation and true knowledge of Shiva as the means to every desire, yet people do not do what benefits the self, which is a great wonder. In infancy the senses are not yet clearly at work, yet misery is great: he cannot speak or act to resist anything, even if he wishes. Teething and small ailments bring great misery, and so do the infant diseases and the troubles planets cause in infancy. At times the limbs suffer hunger and thirst, and he lies somewhere weeping. Deluded as an infant he may even eat his own filth. In childhood his ears are pierced and he suffers from learning the alphabet. Confused in mind, he knows extreme pains in childhood, yet still does not do what benefits his self. In youth the senses begin to work, but he suffers from the disease of desire, and happiness exists nowhere. Jealousy is a great misery, with delusion and attachment, and eyes full of rage, and giving that up seems full of misery. Burned by desire he cannot sleep at night, and worrying how to earn he has no happiness by day. A man's mind clings to a woman or wife, but even when he sheds a drop of seed he does not count it happiness; it is like a drop of sweat. A leprous monkey scratches itself because of the worms in it, and women scratch themselves so because of their afflictions. When pus runs from a boil one thinks oneself happy, and the happiness thought to come from women is just that and no more, as when one feels happy at discharging urine and excrement, though fools imagine otherwise. Panchachuda said there is not the least happiness in women, no substance and stores of faults. When respect turns to disrespect, union to separation and youth is eaten by age, where is happiness free of hardship? The body tires and withers, the hair greys or falls, the body slackens. Suffering age and decay a person can do nothing. A man or woman remembers the old youth as desirable. An old man is dishonoured by daughter, son, relative and even servant, who are no longer attached to him and make him suffer. Suffering age, he cannot strive for dharma, artha, kama or moksha, which is why one should follow dharma in youth.