身觀經

Thus have I heard. At one time the Buddha was dwelling in the country of Śrāvastī, in the Jeta Grove, the Garden of Anāthapiṇḍika. At that time the Buddha addressed the bhikṣus: This body is composed of flesh, skin, blood, and pus, and is filled with excrement and saliva.

Contemplate for yourself: what body is ever clean? It constantly has nine orifices of foul disease from which impurity flows out, more than enough to give rise to shame. It is forever bound up in collusion with enemies until old age and death, and is beset with manifold diseases and afflictions—how could it not be vile?

When the body comes to its end, at that time it can no longer be used; there is nothing left but to bury the corpse beneath the earth, for fear that foxes and wolves should discover it. How, then, can one fail to feel shame and yet still delight in lustful craving? The Buddha spoke thus: its pleasures are few and its faults are many.

Contemplating the body with one's own mind, one sees it as so many posts and beams set in motion, a place where bones are gathered together, like a blazing fire, like the torment of suffering inflicted by poison. The deluded and foolish take this for joy and do not realize it themselves—why are they not afraid of these bonds? Craving for desire makes a person stupefied and deluded: money and wealth, gold and silver, oxen and horses, servants and slaves—people seek after these for the sake of their own lives.

Yet life rests upon the breath, and one's lifespan is at most no more than a hundred years, and even this is made up of suffering. Contemplating thus, how could one still cling to craving for desire? As in times past, lifespans were brief, and all that lived came to extinction.

Like the water of a river drying up, like the sun and moon vanishing away—when death and calamity have already arrived, a person's life departs and cannot live again. This is what is called "that which cannot be attained." When a person dies and life departs, though one may possess however much wealth, the treasures of all the world, when death arrives there is nothing left to enjoy. So is it not fit to be wearied of and not fit to be infatuated with?

A person should not indulge in pleasure without measure; only thus can one accomplish what is wholesome by oneself, and the wholesome that one accomplishes oneself accords with what is natural. If one uses wisdom to contemplate death, (one asks): what sorts of pleasures must there be for a person to fall into infatuation—such as living long, or not yet having reached the time of death? What is there to grasp at in the pleasures of desire?

And why is this so? Because the heart is not still of itself, and the mind is overly fond of pleasure. When one's own child dies, one weeps in bitter grief, but not beyond ten days; once the ten days have passed, one forgets it entirely.

Those who love their children and cherish them dearly are all like this, and toward family, kinfolk, and acquaintances it is no different. Loving one's own body and life as a good refuge, toiling in bitter hardship to nourish the body and to produce material things—yet when death comes, all that is possessed is abandoned, the body stiffens and is buried beneath the earth, simply because the consciousness-aggregate has departed; and life, following upon this, undergoes its transformation, just as a tree that has borne its fruit—the matter has already been seen, and yet many people, deranged in mind, grasp at it as real.

Of all the myriad things in the world, each person grasps at what does not satisfy. If one were to obtain a single portion, one ought rightly to let go of oneself even with regard to what one has obtained. There are not merely thirty-five kinds of pleasure; the pleasures of desire are by their very nature overflowing, and one must know that they have nothing real about them.

As when a person who has clearly understood suffering exhorts one who undergoes the suffering of misfortune, saying that the mind is the very basis of what is good—meaning that as for things which are beneficial, when one does not wish to receive them, this itself is harm; and so it is, in greater or lesser measure, with one's own person. It is like a person stricken with disease: whether grave or slight, in every case it is suffering.

It is like a bone without flesh: a dog that snatches it up is unwilling to let it go—the heart's greedy craving is like a dog clinging to a bone, giving rise to anxieties and fears that are hard to remove. Craving for desire is by nature not lasting, and yet people fall once more into the evil paths. Like a person who sees a dream: upon waking, it is seen no more; craving for desire is just like this—in the manner of a dream, while one is deluded there is pleasure, like darkness, like the bait on a fishhook, like a tree that bears fruit: a few fruits ripen, then fall and sprout into many more.

To do evil and create karma is something the followers of the Way constantly refrain from. People in the heavenly realms enjoy pleasure, as in the heaven of the Realm of Form, or in gardens of trees adorned and resplendent, obtaining heavenly jade maidens; while they are inhabitants of the heavenly realms, they do not weary of and abandon the five kinds of celestial sensual pleasure. Today one understands the weariness of and abandonment of the pleasures of desire here in this human realm—for the human body is formed with its full complement of bones over two hundred days; the bones have one hundred and twenty segments with sinews intertwined; there are nine orifices that constantly discharge; there are sixty-three kinds of ailments and one hundred grave diseases;

blood and flesh combine to form the skin.

Within there is heat and cold, excrement and saliva, and a thousand kinds of microbes, all arising from the body. Within the body there are again a thousand orifices, and there are all manner of performances enacted, and then there are the scenes that unfold once the body has decayed: all manner of impure things gush forth, water flows from the nose, fluid spews from the mouth, foul odor rises from the armpits, excrement flows from the lower orifices—all of these issue forth from the body.

The place where a person dies is a high grave mound; the body's vile drama may well come to its end in an evil place. The body inherently possesses such impurity. From ancient times until now, the various impure things, like vessels of gold, because of craving and fondness, are anointed with powders and perfumes and adorned in elaborate garments, causing the foolish, upon seeing them, to give rise to deranged thoughts.

The body is like a bottle, like a deep pit covered over with grass; one who embraces lust and craving will later come to regret it.

The bhikṣus, having heard the sutra, knelt with palms joined together and received and upheld the teaching of the Way in this manner.