On Meditation by Ajahn Chah

Author:Ajahn Chah
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Buddhism
ISBN: 978-1-908444-04-2
Publisher: Aruno Publications
Published: 2011-08-08T16:00:00+00:00

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Contemplation Of The Body

In training the mind, it is crucial to overcome sceptical doubt. Doubt and uncertainty are powerful obstacles that must be dealt with. Investigation of the ‘first three fetters’ personality view, blind attachment to rules and practices and sceptical doubt1 is the way out of attachment practised by the Enlightened Ones. But at first you just understand these defilements from the books you still lack insight into how things truly are.

Investigating personality view is the way to go beyond the delusion that identifies the body as a self. This includes the attachment to viewing your own and other people’s bodies as having a solid self. Personality view refers to this thing you call yourself. It means attachment to the view that the body is a self. You must investigate this view until you gain a new understanding and can see the truth that attachment to the body is defilement, and that it obstructs the minds of all human beings from gaining insight into the Dhamma.

For this reason, before anything else the preceptor will instruct each new candidate for ordination to investigate five meditation objects: hair of the head, hair of the body, nails, teeth and skin. It is through contemplation and investigation that you develop insight into personality view. These objects form the most immediate basis for the attachment that creates the delusion of personality view. Contemplating them leads to the direct examination of personality view, and provides the means by which each generation of men and women who take up the instructions of the preceptor upon entering the monastic community can actually transcend personality view. But in the beginning you remain deluded, without insight, and hence are unable to penetrate personality view and see the truth of the way things are. You fail to see the truth because you still have a firm and unyielding attachment. It’s this attachment that sustains the delusion.

The Buddha taught us to transcend delusion. The way to transcend it is through clearly seeing the body for what it is. You must see with penetrating insight that the true nature of both your own body and other people’s bodies is essentially the same. There is no fundamental difference between peoples’ bodies. The body is just the body; it’s not a being, a self, yours or theirs. A body exists: you label it and give it a name. Then you attach and cling to it, with the view that it is your body or his or her body. You attach to the view that the body is permanent, and that it is something clean and pleasant. This attachment goes deep into the mind. This is the way that the mind clings to the body.

Personality view means that you are still caught in doubt and uncertainty about the body. Your insight hasn’t fully penetrated the delusion that sees the body as a self. As long as the delusion remains, you call the body a self or atta, and interpret your entire experience from the viewpoint that there is a solid, enduring entity which you call the self.

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