Stirring Up Mud - Part 2
A cursory investigation reveals that this body of ours contains animal-like things! Teeth, skin, fingernails and toenails, body hair and head hair. But we don"t consider ourselves to be an animal! We regard these things as beautiful-our beautiful hair and nails-but when they drop off, what"s more disgusting than nail clippings on the floor, or a hair in our soup, or perhaps a week-old, dead and decaying body lying along the roadside? We must now be responsible and courageous, however, investigating to see the actual truth of this body we hold so dear. Hmm, let"s see. . . our body is nothing but soft tissue and a skeleton, nothing substantial here, nothing to fall in love with. We don"t seem to go any further than this bone in our arm, and everything is made up of the elements of the earth! We eat the things of the earth and we will return to the earth, and in many ways we are the earth, just as a tree is the earth.
Underneath this bag of skin covering our bellies are many strange things; a tube from our mouth leading down to a pouch of undigested food, and further down are more tubes with waste products. Everything is coming and going-in and out. A bellows pushes air back and forth while a pump circulates blood. Looking directly at these things shouldn"t alarm us, nor should we be disgusted by them, because this is what we are, this is where our awareness, the great Reality decided to establish itself this time around.
We can"t count on our body; it doesn"t obey us. It merrily goes about its business without our direction, and in the end, it will dissolve into the elements and disappear without our approval as well. It doesn"t follow our schedule; it follows its own schedule. Our body is reminiscent of a comfortable house built near a raging river where we must live, knowing well enough that a flood could wash it away at any moment. It would be foolish not to consider escape routes when living in a house threatened with disaster, because when the time comes to leave, how would we be ready to get out in time? Therefore, since we can"t rely on our impermanent body, shouldn"t we invest in something we can trust, something that will be there for us when our body fails, which is not long from now, as it"s beginning to rain and the water is rising.
It seems to be in our best interest to develop our concentration to the highest degree possible, but without becoming attached to it. If we become attached, which is easy to do because of the peace it instills; we will undoubtedly be hesitant to move forward with our work of mindfulness. We can see, reluctantly, that mindfulness is crucial if we are ever to acquire that unique, refined wisdom that will free us forever from physical, organic bodies.
Copyright E. Raymond Rock 2007. All rights reserved
E. Raymond Rock of Fort Myers, Florida is cofounder and principal teacher at the Southwest Florida Insight Center (http://www.SouthwestFloridaInsightCenter.com). His twenty-eight years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents, including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk. His book, A Year to Enlightenment (Career Press/New Page Books) is now available at major bookstores and online retailers (http://www.AYearToEnlightenment.com).
Added: March 8, 2007Source: http://ezinearticles.com/
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