Every now and again I find myself in a Pali Canon groove -- greatly appreciating the teachings coming out of the Theravada Buddhist tradition. At their best, these teachings seem eminently practical: a cornucopia of tools and explorations readily applicable to all variety of life-situations. At times they can feel a bit formulaic, and in this sense a tad rigid -- but the part of me that takes great joy and even finds a certain sort of comfort in the clean lines of a well-derived logical proof doesn't mind that at all.


Anyway .... I was listening to a talk a couple days ago, as I was enjoying some yoga asana and qigong explorations. As per usual, I was letting the talk be "in the background" -- mostly tuning into breath and movement, with just a general sense of the topics being touched upon, via words and sentences. Every now and again, something would catch my interest, and I'd "turn the volume up" so to speak, for a minute or two, then go back to focusing mostly on my asana practice.

Then the teacher came around to suggesting, as an antidote for sexual desire, that we imagine the body of the person to whom we're feeling attracted being laid out in front of us, not in toto, but rather in a crudely piecemeal fashion: as a pile of various organs, muscles, and bones, with the blood and other bodily fluids gathered nearby. As this rather gruesome imagery drifted in, immediately there was the energy of annoyance, thinking: "I hate that instruction!"

And then I reflected that this particular suggestion -- to generate revulsion for the physical body, as an antidote to lust -- was, far and away, my least favorite of all the Theravada teachings that I'd ever come across.

Every time I hear it something inside me cringes. This reaction emerges, as least in part, from a Taoist sensibility, according to which the human body is to be honored, respected, cultivated and joyfully embraced.

But it's more than this. When I hear that instruction, something about it feels askew from a true rendering of Buddha-Dharma, feels out of alignment with Truth. It's like a musician hitting an obviously wrong note, in the context of an otherwise sublime symphony; or Mikhail Baryshnikov, stubbing his toe and stumbling on the stage; or a beautiful oriental rug, with a large snag where the dragon's tongue is supposed to be. In short: utterly cattywampus.

Now in the past, my way of dealing with having my hackles raised, upon hearing someone suggest generating revulsion for the body by imagining it being a collection of its parts, has been simply to roll my eyes, turn the volume down, or fast-forward to the next section of the talk, with an under-my-breath "sheesh!" But this last time that it happened, I found myself becoming more curious about both the instruction and my reaction to it. So decided to explore a little more deeply .....

***

The first thing that came to mind was the medical-school cadaver-lab at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. When I was studying Chinese Medicine, our class once took a field-trip to this cadaver-lab. As I recall, it was part of one of our Western science courses: anatomy and physiology, or biology, or something like that.

Though I'm happy to have had this experience, it's relevance to the practice of acupuncture and herbal medicine was largely lost on me -- as it was on the majority of my classmates. About the only potentially-useful lesson was to see directly how close a lung is to the surface of the body -- underlying the caution an acupuncturist takes, when needling in the upper-chest region.

Perhaps inadvertently, what it did make clear was that what we were interfacing with in the context of our healing-art form -- viz. qi/chi -- had little or nothing to do with corpses. After the initial strangeness of being in a room with several dozen dead bodies wore off, mostly it was just reminiscent of being in the meat department of a supermarket.

***

A bit of context, in terms of Buddhist doctrine, may at this point be useful ....

As I understand it, pretty much every school of Buddhism considers the "three poisons" to be (1) ignorance/delusion, (2) attachment/greed and (3) aversion/hatred. Sometimes jealousy/envy and pride/arrogance are added into the mix, creating a list of five kleshas -- mental-emotional states that cloud the mind, and tend to set the stage for unwholesome actions.

Each of the kleshas has a remedy, or antidote which, generally speaking, is a more wholesome, more uplifted, more aligned-with-truth state of mind, that is to be cultivated, and offered as an alternative to the toxic poison. So for instance: the antidote for greed/grasping is generosity or non-attachment; the antidote for anger is loving-kindness or patience; the antidote for jealousy is sympathetic joy or generosity; the antidote for pride is equanimity or humility; and the antidote for ignorance is discernment, wisdom and insight.

Now, given that aversion is just as much a "poison" as is attachment, when we swap sexual desire (a form of attachment) for bodily repulsion (a form of aversion), are we not just swapping one poison for another? -- i.e. flipping from one side of the attachment/repulsion polarity (the sine qua non of dualistic ignorance) to the other?

Perhaps the response to this objection would be: well, we're choosing the lesser of two evils .... but really, why not go straightaway for the root?

***

In terms of the subjective experience of what I might name as "lust" or "sexual desire," the questions that arose were: when I'm feeling lust, what exactly am I lusting for? Or: what is the true source and object of this desire, and what is it comprised of?

In my experience, what I typically name as lust, or sexual desire, includes three components:

(1) sensations of flowing energy: the physiological component, if you will, of arousal, enthusiasm, excitement;
(2) a mental-emotional impulse to grasp or own or possess the perceived "object" of my desire -- which of course arises in dependence upon constituting "me" as a "separate-self" identified strongly with an individual human bodymind; and
(3) the conscious or subconscious projection of various imaginary scenarios, i.e. fantasizing.

To remedy lust by imagining a dismembered body in place of the living one, would seem to be an intervention at the level of #3 -- replacing erotic imagery with gruesome imagery -- in a way that is intended then to effect #1 -- i.e. to "turn off" the sensations of flowing energy associated with being sexually aroused.

Now while this kind of, shall we say, imago-interruptus may be an effective "quick fix" -- the bad news is that it leaves mostly intact the dualistic mechanism of #2 -- i.e. the ignorance which is the "problem's" root cause. Also, to habitually constrict the flow of qi/chi is -- from the point of view of Chinese medicine (acupuncture and qigong) -- to invite dis-ease, to invite mental, emotional and physical illness. A healthy bodymind is one in which qi is flowing freely. Even from the point of view of western medicine, it is feelings of joy and gratitude and loving-kindness and appreciation which tend to be associated with a healthy and balanced biochemical environment (see for instance Candace Pert's Molecules Of Emotion).

Replacing hatred with loving-kindness, or replacing envy with sympathetic joy, or replacing greed with generosity -- all amount to practices in alignment with, say, the Taoist Healing Sounds practices -- whose intention is to dissolve the stagnation so often associated with so-called "negative" emotional states, in order to reestablish a healthy, balanced flow of life-force energy.

To seek intentionally to shut down the flow of energy associated with sexual arousal by activating disgust seems, on the other hand, to to be moving in exactly the opposite direction. Again, it is perhaps valid as a "quick fix" .... say if I'm a monk who's literally on the verge of raping the young woman or man standing in front of me .... but beyond this, why would one choose to make this kind of constriction of ones life-force energy into a habit?

***

And then I began to wonder whether this instruction -- to imagine deconstructing a human body into its physical parts, as a remedy for feelings of lust toward the body as a whole -- could be generalized to other objects of desire.

So for instance, if what I'm lusting after is not the body of a human being, but rather a shiny new golden jaguar (the car not the kitty), could I defuse this desire by superimposing, upon my image of the car as a whole, an image of a pile of its parts: wheels, axles, engine, seats, navigational components etc.?

Or: if what I'm lusting after is not the body of a human being, but rather a delicious-looking lemon Bundt cake, could I defuse this desire by superimposing, upon my image of the cake as a whole, an image of its various ingredients: flour, sugar, milk, eggs, lemon zest etc.?

Does it really work to say: how could I possibly desire that car, when it's really just a collection of nuts and bolts and steel panels? Or to say: how could I possibly desire that cake, when it's really just a collection of flour and sugar and milk and raw eggs?

I don't know about you, but for me it doesn't really work, with the jaguar and lemon Bundt cake. To such arguments my mind responds with: "Well, yeah ... duh! ... so what? .... of course the car is made of parts, and the cake of ingredients, but this doesn't in any way detract from their desirability when those parts or ingredients have been drawn together." And: "Of course I wouldn't attempt to drive a pile of nuts and bolts and loose wheels, nor would a be tempted to eat a pile of flour and two raw eggs .... but why should this in any way lessen my desire to drive a fully-assembled jaguar, or eat a fully-baked lemon Bundt cake?"

Similarly, just because a human body can be dissected into its parts which, as such, I would feel no inclination to make love with, does this necessarily mean that -- when the parts are assembled and functioning as intended, qua human body -- that I wouldn't wish to include the physical body in my love-making?

***

Now of course each of the listed "parts" -- the wheels, the lemon zest, etc. -- can itself be further divided .... and those sub-parts further divided .... and, sticking with this line of reasoning, we're into a full-on Madhyamaka analysis, at the end of which the entire jaguar or Bundt cake or human body has been resolved into emptiness.

And here, I believe, is one of the keys to my annoyance with the way that revulsion for the human body is generated -- via a projection of its parts -- as a remedy for lust. It's like a Madhyamaka-style analysis, abandoned way prematurely, in a fashion that ends up replacing one deluded dualistic projection (of a human body cognized as an "other" to be grasped) with an even more materialist one, viz. of a pile of body parts -- organs, limbs, etc.

The analysis stops at a point which maximizes the potential for revulsion. It's pretty easy to feel a bit disgusted by the prospect of holding the bloody liver and kidneys of your friend, instead of cuddling with their intact body. It's much harder -- perhaps even impossible? -- to generate revulsion for the luminous emptiness that is revealed, by a Madhyamaka analysis taken to its completion, to be the true substance of what we conventionally perceive as a human body. Reverence and devotion, yes -- revulsion, not so much. So why, if we're going to go down the division-of-an-apparent-whole-into-its-parts path, would we not finish the job?

***

Now Tibetan Chöd practice seems to me to be one example of utilizing a body-parts visualization in service of making the leap into a direct experience of emptiness. But here, it's not someone else's body that is imagined as dismembered, but rather one's own -- after which it is fed to one's "enemies" as repayment for all karmic debts; and/or offered as nectar (amrita) to all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. This is beautiful! -- potent support, via imaginary dis-memberment, of re-membering that who we are, essentially, is not a limited physical form.

But this kind of thing, IMO, is a far cry from imagining the body of a man or woman I'm feeling attracted to being dismembered, for the purpose of generating feelings of revulsion.

At a physiological, biochemical level, the moment-by-moment creation of a human body is much more like baking a cake, than it is like assembling a car. Endlessly intricate is the alchemy of it! It really is a miracle .....

At the level of immediate experience, a human body is an ever-unfolding string of sensations, perceptions and internal images which thought then names as "my" or "someone else's" human body.

In moments when there seems to be a choice in relation to how we imagine the human body (ours or someone else's), why on earth would we choose an image which clearly generates constriction/stagnation in the flow of life-force energy?

Instead of applying the image of a heap of bones, organs, blood and pus -- why not apply the image of 100 trillion Pure-Lands (one for each cell) -- in which dance and play a host of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas? Would this more uplifting imagery not be just as (if not more) effective a support for "appropriate behavior" as the former -- and, to boot, more in alignment with Truth?

The heart-essence of lust, like that of all dualistic desire, is a longing for Reality,
for our True Self .... which is not a cadaver

-- but rather the limitless unconditioned satisfaction of the Tao, of Dharmakaya .... playfully expressing as the ten-thousand-things, as the 100 trillion cells of a human body, as a convocation of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, dancing .....

*

Of Related Interest

* Gender & The Tao
* Taoism & Sexual Energy
* Kan & Li (Water & Fire) Practice

Suggested Reading

* The Taoist Three Treasures: Jing, Qi & Shen
* Turtles All The Way Down: Tao As First Cause?
* Do I Choose My Thoughts?