Vijaya Sutta

Category: Uraga Vagga

From Buddhist Encyclopedia

• Translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Whether walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, it flexes and stretches: this is the body's movement.

Joined together with tendons and bones, plastered over with muscle and skin, hidden by complexion, the body isn't seen for what it is:

filled with intestines, filled with stomach,

with the lump of the liver,

bladder, lungs, heart,

kidneys, spleen,

mucus, sweat, saliva, fat,

blood, synovial fluid, bile, and oil.

On top of that,

in nine streams,

filth is always flowing from it:

from the eyes : eye secretions,

from the ears : ear secretions,

from the nose : mucus,

from the mouth : now vomit,

now phlegm,

now bile.

from the body : beads of sweat.

And on top of that,

its hollow head is filled with brains.

The fool, beset by ignorance, thinks it beautiful. But when it lies dead, swollen, livid, cast away in a charnel ground, even relatives don't care for it.

Dogs feed on it, jackals, wolves, and worms. Crows and vultures feed on it, along with any other animals there.

Having heard the Awakened One's words, the discerning monk comprehends, for he sees it for what it is:

"As this is, so is that. As that, so this."

Within and without, he should let desire for the body fade away. With desire and passion faded away, the discerning monk arrives here:

at the deathless,

the calm,

the undying state

of Unbinding.

This two-footed, filthy, evil-smelling, filled-with-various-carcasses, oozing-out-here-&-there body: Whoever would think, on the basis of a body like this, to exalt himself or disparage another:

What is that if not blindness?