Just A Bag Of Skin

N: Here is a hypothetical that can be very practical. Say if humans were to have a transparent skin. So when we look at each other, we see what’s inside. When you look at someone’s face, you see the skull, the brain, everything. You see the layers. Would people then, still, be attracted to each other physically, sensually?

A: Yes.

N: Why?

A: Because you would still look for safety, for pleasure. You would still attend to the beautiful rather than the ugly.

N: But what is beautiful if you look at somebody and you see feces inside of them while you’re talking to them? Would that be beautiful? What would determine beautiful as beautiful?

M: Maybe somebody has a bit of a beautiful skull.

[Laughter.]

N: Well, what would make it beautiful? See, the answer’s correct, yes, people would still be attracted. But the reasons you gave, not because of that.

A: Distracting from…

N: No, that’s not quite the reason. People don’t seek sensuality because they want to be distracted. There’s another reason, more fundamental, a more primordial reason for people seeking sensual gratification. What is that?

T: Avoidance of the disgusting.

N: How is that felt? How is the disgusting felt?

T: It’s unpleasant.

N: Yeah. So for as long as the mind doesn’t know any other escape from pain, it’ll find sensuality in the most disgusting things. Or, on a practical level, you can have all the disgust around you, if your mind is not developed in regard to your own body, lust, attraction, everything else, will find its way. So, exactly, then you will like the shape of the skull of this corpse, and so on. So what does that mean? As the Suttas say, for as long as a monk is not developed in regard to his own body, he will be attracted to the sensual objects. So it’s that lack of development in regard to your own body that makes beautiful beautiful, makes beautiful sensual, so to speak. Makes it inviting and valuable for seeking gratification.

D: It’s not the sensual objects.

N: It’s not the sensual objects, exactly. So you can have a skull that can be taken sensually, and you see it’s beautiful features, but there are also the ugly features that you are ignoring. So the point of what I’m saying is, the reason you would be ignoring the obvious and just picking up the beautiful aspects, secondary aspects, and making them primary, is because you’re not developed in regard to your own body. And what does that mean? Being developed or not developed, what does that mean? So, say we all have translucent skin. You see the disgust of the natural body for what is, you see through, you see what it carries. It is just a bag of skin with all these things inside, and now you can see through it as well, so you can’t ignore it. Yet, you still find your mind seeking gratification in those disgusting things. And now you’ve heard it’s because you haven’t developed yourself in regard to your own body. So what does that entail? How do you develop yourself in regard to your own body?

A: Learn to endure the pressure of sights and so on.

N: So, sense restraint and virtue, first, so you don’t act out, you don’t allow actions that would allow the body to seek the pleasure. So you restrain the body, you restrain the speech and so on. OK, so that’s the first step. That’s how the mind begins its own development in regard to this body. What else then do you do? Being touched by a pleasant feeling, by a possibility of gratification that is already felt as uplifting, delightful, escaping the confinement of this body, that’s enough for you not to be developed in regard to it. Obviously, that possibility of gratification… Literally, you can use this body to experience pleasure. So first, you have to stop doing that, in order to see where that whole experience and that prospect and the possibility is rooted. And it’s rooted simply in, the body on it’s own, it’s quite neutral as something you’re paired to, it’s kind of burdening in a way. So as long as you value the possibility of gratification as a means of escape from that natural burden of this body, your mind will not be developed in regard to the body.

M: Why do you need to escape?

N: Because you don’t start from a neutral position. You start as already dependent on the pleasures. So that’s your norm, that’s your reference. From that point of view, neutral body is unbearable. Unpleasant. So, sense restraint needs to be done first so you actually step outside of that water, to recognise what the dry ground is. And then eventually, you can dry up yourself. So you can have, as I said, zombies walking around you, but basically if you still value the possibility of gratification through this body and these senses, lust will find a way. You will find something attractive sooner or later when the itch presents itself, one way or the other.

So when the itch does present itself, if you have been sense restrained, and now recognise it as a state of the body that must be endured, not fed further, you are actually developing your mind in regard to your own body. That’s what it says in the Suttas, I mean like, the development of the mind does not come through meditation techniques, sensation or nostril watching. It comes on account of purification of virtue. Having purified the virtue, he then purifies his mind through that. So all those subtler intentions of what you value, what you want, what you act towards become apparent. And by not acting out of unwholesome intentions on the level of the mind, he purifies his mind. So purification of virtue leads to purification of mind, that then leads to purification of views, that then leads to purification of knowledge and vision, and liberation, and everything else.

D: It’s the same I guess with ill-will, the same principle applies in terms of, you’ll always want to get rid of this burden of the body by resisting whatever you find disagreeable.

N: Basically, disagreeable is confining. Unpleasant feeling is a form of confinement. So for as long as you value escape by the means of replacing it with another feeling, you will not be free from sensuality, and your mind will not be developed in regard to your body. And that’s why it was said of the Buddha, that he found the escape within confinement. His teaching is the escape not replacing the confinement with something else, but escape within it. So if there is an unpleasant feeling, well, you’ve escaped it while it’s there. Not because you replaced it with pleasure. If you’re touched by pleasant feeling, you’ve escaped it while it’s there, not because you acted out of it towards more pleasure. If there is a neutral feeling, you’ve escaped it by understanding it.

M: That was pretty much exactly what I was going to bring up. That the burden of confinement is actually, what you have to see is that the reason it’s felt as confining is because of this trying to escape, really. Because of the craving of trying to escape, which is actually totally futile.

N: The more you resist, the more apparent, the more heavy, the more confining your experience becomes.

M: And that’s in regard to both equally the pleasure, or, the ‘relief’ of experiencing a sensual pleasure is determined by the degree of the itch.

N: Which is a confinement.

M: Which is a confinement. In the same way as, even in a mundane sense let’s say, being released from a debt, or being released from prison is being determined by the degree to which the debt was causing you worry, and burden. So it’s like that kind of mundane ‘relief’, that can’t be a relief because it’s within the…

N: And that’s why people, the nature of sensuality, people enjoy sensual pleasures more if they were harder to obtain, they will be sweeter, so to speak. Because the confinement has been built up. But fundamentally, you need to recognise that your way out of confinement, i.e. seeking pleasure on account of avoiding the discomfort, is just increasing the confinement. It’s still within the confinement, it’s literally paying off a debt by borrowing more money from somebody else. So you’re just moving the debt around while it is increasing and accumulating. So first you have to stop doing that, i.e. you have to stop making it worse. And that is the beginning of samādhi and mind development. Virtue and sense restraint, which will then reveal your own intentions. Are you still trying to get rid of the pain, prolong the pleasure, are you still ignoring the neutral feeling, are you still going to act towards this and that? Oh, now that becomes apparent. So now you can actually not act out of that. And that’s the purification of the mind, it’s the purification of the intentions.

But, exactly, the confinement, the pain, the discomfort, all of that, it’s not because of these things being truly confining. It’s because your mind puts the sensuality and the pleasure and the former ways of escaping first. Still values it, still assumes it, still uses it as a criteria and a reference point. So, you could ask ‘why is that?’ But it doesn’t matter. What matters is, that there was no first point before which you were not sensual or ignorant, it matters that that is your starting point. So, if you undo it, you won’t be going back to it. Because, actually, as we said in previous talks, nobody wants sensuality to begin with. It’s by not understanding that, that’s why you are still putting it first, and very much bound by it. Because if you’re not confined to begin with, with your feelings, with the body, with your perceptions, what is there to seek the pleasure instead of? When it’s already not unpleasant. Engaging with pleasure, engaging with scratching when there is no itch, why would I do that? It makes no sense. It’s disturbing, it’s annoying, it’s a hassle, it’s harassment.