LTF 23: Avoiding Distraction by Sense Objects

We studied all the far-reaching attitudes in great detail in previous years when we were studying Shantideva’s Bodhicaryavatara (Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior). We saw there that what’s usually translated as the perfection of “concentration,” is actually talking about mental stability. This refers to having a mind that’s stable not only in terms of having concentration – in other words, being free of mental dullness, mental agitation, and wandering – but also in terms of being emotionally stable because what causes mental wandering are the various disturbing emotions. So, we need to have both mental and emotional stability. So, this far-reaching attitude is speaking about that whole sphere of quieting the mind, having the mind be stable. 

This section, according to Mipam’s outline, is divided into lots of different subsections. All the various outlines like to devote one section of the outline to almost each verse of the entire text. Anyway, here, in this outline, everything leads up to one verse a little bit later on, which talks about attaining the four dhyanas. The four dhyanas are levels of mental stability that you gain after you have gained shamatha, or shinay (zhi-gnas). Shinay, or shamatha (“shamatha” is the Sanskrit word; “shinay” is the Tibetan word) means, literally, a “stilled and settled mind.” This is a mind that is stilled of mental wandering, mental agitation, and mental dullness, is settled on an object and also has a sense of fitness to it. It is not just perfect concentration; it also has this sense of being super fit, both mentally and physically, so that you can stay focused on anything. Then, beyond that, you have these four levels of stability of mind, which are deeper and deeper absorptions into more and more refined states of concentration. 

So, this section is leading up to one verse that talks about that. Everything before that is preparation for gaining these four dhyanas. Then, the verses after that are on what to do after meditating, after attaining the dhyanas. Therefore, in general, what Nagarjuna is discussing here, is the way in which one gains single-minded concentration and stability of mind. 

We have seen that Shantideva, who wrote about five hundred and fifty years after Nagarjuna, bases a lot of his text, Bodhicaryavatara, on works like this one by Nagarjuna. Shantideva spent almost half of his chapter on mental stability talking about how to overcome distraction by desire, because longing desire and attachment are the biggest causes of being distracted and not being able to sit down to meditate properly and gain concentration or focus. In Shantideva’s text, the object of concentration is the exchange of self and others. That’s where he gives the teachings on that. Here, that is not the topic, but the preparation is very similar in terms of putting the main emphasis on overcoming attachment and other disturbing emotions.

Participant: How do the four dhyanas fit together with the eight bhumis?

Dr Berzin: How do the four dhyanas fit together with the ten bhumis, you mean? They don’t. The ten bhumis… OK, this gets very complicated. You love to ask these complicated questions, Karsten, when I haven’t prepared the material and don’t have it at my fingertips. This is incredibly complicated. 

The ten bhumis have to do with when you attain the Mahayana seeing pathway of mind, which means a path of seeing. You’ve had non-conceptual cognition of voidness, and these the bhumis, are the stages that you go through in ten steps to get rid of the two types of obscurations, the emotional and cognitive ones. Within the emotional obscurations, there are the doctrinally based and the automatically arising ones. Each of the Chittamatra, Svatantrika, and Prasangika schools present a different scheme for getting rid of these in the ten bhumis. That’s one side.

The other side is the dhyanas. There are four dhyanas, which are associated with the form realm, the “plane of ethereal forms,” I like to call it. If you get stuck being attached to one of these four states of deep meditation, it acts as a cause for being reborn in one of the four levels of the form realm. Then, there are another four formless balanced states of absorption that are above this, deeper than this or, let’s say, more subtle than the four. If you get attached to those, you get reborn in the plane of formless beings in the formless realm. Then, before these four dhyanas, there is also a preparatory stage, which you get after you’ve gained shamatha, or shinay. So, there are nine levels of meditative absorption. 

Then, if I remember correctly, there is some horribly complicated thing about which state of mind from among these nine it is possible to achieve a path of seeing, a seeing pathway of mind. I believe that’s what it was about – from which of these nine you can achieve a seeing pathway mind. I think you can achieve it from any of these. You certainly need shamatha and vipashyana. That’s the defining characteristics of the second of the paths, the path of applying, or the applying pathway mind; it’s to have combined shamatha and vipashyana on the four noble truths – not “on,” as in on the table or something like that but on the four noble truths. That’s the defining characteristic, the boundary, of getting that second level of mind, the applying pathway mind. Beyond that, though, you can go to any of these other levels. 

As far as getting to any of these other levels goes, Tsongkhapa says, “Forget about it; it is useless.” He says that it is a dead end; you don’t need it. All it does is get you more and more attached to these deep meditations, so it’s better to just work on voidness. In theory, however, you could achieve a seeing pathway mind from any of these nine levels, which are before you would start the bhumis. You could achieve the first bhumi from any of these nine levels. And the four dhyanas are four of these nine. They progressively become free of certain states of mind. For instance, I think it’s the first dhyana where one still looks down on the lower states as being less desirable and looks up at the higher states as being more desirable. After that level, you don’t have that anymore. Next, I think, you get rid of the feeling of happiness; you are just left with a feeling of equanimity. Then, I think, you get rid of that as well. I forget. I don’t have all of those details fresh at my fingertips. Basically, you deactivate more and more aggregates, like the aggregate of distinguishing, and the mind becomes more and more subtle as you go into these states of absorption.

I must say, I am very surprised when I hear of people doing Theravada practice that say, “Ah, we are doing the four dhyanas practice,” and things like that. I have no idea what in the world they’re talking about because, from the Mahayana point of view, these are so unbelievably advanced and difficult to achieve. You have to have perfect shinay, shamatha, perfect concentration, before you can even start to talk about these things, so I really wonder what they’re talking about. Do you have any idea? 

Participant: There are monks who attain these states.

Dr Berzin: Right. There are monks who do these meditations. That, I can believe. But I am talking about people from… 

Participant: In Burma.

Dr Berzin: In Burma, right. That, I can believe – that there are monks that achieve this. But I hear of people in California, in vipashyana Dharma centers, talking about doing dhyana practice and all of that, and I really wonder what they’re talking about. 

Participant: But I am sure there are people who frequently go to god realms who haven’t attained single-pointed concentration.

Dr Berzin: That would be the desire realm gods. That’s not a problem. It’s not a problem to get to there. All you need is to do a lot of positive things and have attachment to sensory objects and offer prayers to be reborn there. Then you can get to a god realm, be a desire realm god. But you need to attain these dhyanas and formless absorptions and have great attachment to them in order to be reborn in the form and formless realms. That’s something different.

Participant: She is asking if you can go through the bhumis without ever seeing emptiness directly.

Dr Berzin: No! Not the bhumis, the dhyanas. For the bhumis, you have to have had non-conceptual cognition of voidness. The bhumis are only in the Mahayana path. But for the dhyanas, you don’t need to have any understanding of voidness to achieve them. That’s why you can become attached to them. 

Participant: But they train in these dhyanas; they have special objects. This has to be taught by an authentic teacher. Otherwise, we never would get it. So, this lama told us we need really good teachers.

Dr Berzin: Right. Well, I’m sure it’s quite a different presentation. Remember, we had once a weekend on the placement of the four close placements of mindfulness (Pali: satipatthana). We saw that the Theravada presentation and the Mahayana presentation are totally, totally different. They are talking about totally different types of meditation. So, maybe the dhyana presentations are also completely different. They probably are.

Participant: [Inaudible]

Dr Berzin: Right. That’s where it would be. Similarly, the discussion of this from the Indian side is in various abhidharma texts. Also, what’s discussed quite a lot in Abhisamayalankara is the thing about the five paths and from which level of mind you can attain them. It’s terribly complicated. 

OK. What were we up to? We were up to overcoming distraction, not being distracted from what we are trying to focus on.

Participant: Desire.

Dr Berzin: Desire, yes. Desire could be desire for information. It could be desire for somebody else’s body, which is what the topic is here. Mind you, Nagarjuna is speaking to the king. That is his audience. He’s speaking specifically to the king. 

Nagarjuna says:

[21] Do not look at others’ wives; but if you happen to see (them), generate recognition (of them), in accord with (their) age. As your mother, your daughter, or your sister. Should lust arise, think thoroughly about (their bodies having) the nature of filth.

The king has a harem of many, many wives. So, what is going to be the biggest distraction for the king is obviously going to be wanting to go off into the harem with all of his wives. And particularly, what Nagarjuna is saying is not to look at others’ wives with lust. This is because a king can take any woman from his kingdom, whether she is married or not, and bring her into his harem. So, he gives this advice to the king. 

This is in the outline under mental stability. There was the preparation for gaining these four dhyanas. That speaks about avoiding distraction, which counters concentration. Avoiding distraction is, first of all, avoiding being distracted by the object. Here, the object is other people’s wives. 

This is interesting. Inappropriate sexual behavior, the way that that is specified in the early texts, is only having sex with somebody else’s partner – somebody else’s wife – or somebody who is protected by her parents, and this type of thing. There’s a list of twenty of inappropriate sexual partners. It’s interesting that not looking at others’ wives with lust is what Nagarjuna focuses on in this discussion rather than any of the other elaborations of inappropriate sexual behavior that come later in the literature. They only start to appear with the very early abhidharma literature. 

Abhidharma was not part of the early councils in which they recited the words of the Buddha. It was kept separately, which is very interesting because all of the eighteen Hinayana schools object to Mahayana because it wasn’t authentic and wasn’t recited at these councils. Nevertheless, they accept abhidharma, which also wasn’t recited at these councils. But, anyway, in the early abhidharmas that are written down, you can trace the history of the elaboration of inappropriate sexual behavior, which I did once as a research project. Probably, Nagarjuna comes a little before that development. 

That development always raises the question about whether or not the original intention was to include all of these other elaborations of inappropriate sexual behavior – meaning that they were implicit – or whether they were added later. You can have arguments pro and con of that. The argument that they were implicit is a very convincing argument, actually, if you look at the way in which Buddha made the vows: In the beginning, he didn’t make any vows for the monastic community. He made them just, as we say, “ad hoc.” In other words, when a situation came up in which there was a problem in the monastic community, then, in order to avoid that problem again in the future, Buddha made a vow against that type of behavior. For example, if a monk was alone with a woman, everybody in town would said, “Oooh!” and started gossiping and accusing the monk of all sorts of inappropriate behavior. So, Buddha said, “OK, a monk can’t be in a room alone with woman; there has to be somebody else there,” for instance.

So, there are many accounts of how each of the vows came about. The situations that caused Buddha to make each particular vow are recorded in the vinaya literature. So, one could say that all of these other things that came up regarding inappropriate sexual behavior in the later texts, such as inappropriate time, place and so on, probably came up because of situations in which there were difficulties. 

Here, in any case, Nagarjuna only talks about not looking at other people’s wives. This teaching that came from this verse became quite widespread in the later Buddhist texts. I don’t know if it has a sutra source. It applies to men as well as to women. So, if the person that you are attracted to is somebody who is older, you try to see them as your mother or father. If it is somebody who is younger than yourself, you try to see them as your daughter or son. If it’s  somebody who is approximately the same age as yourself, you try to see them as your brother or sister (this is assuming, of course, that you are not into incest). Anyway, if you can view them in these ways, they don’t become objects of sexual attraction. At least this is a start, a first measure that one would take.

Participant: Buddha started already a nunnery?

Dr Berzin: Yes, Buddha started a nuns’ lineage as well. There was a request.

Participant: Why is it that, in the vinaya, the monks have two hundred and twenty-seven vows, and the women have four hundred?

Dr Berzin: The numbers differ in the different versions of the vinaya. Each of the eighteen schools of Hinayana and some of their sub-schools as well had their own vinaya, their own version, which is really quite weird, I must say. They say one lineage came down from the Buddha’s son and that other lineages came down from this arhat and that arhat, etc. In any case, the numbers differ slightly. But the monks have somewhere in the vicinity of the low two hundreds up to two hundred and thirty-six or something like that, and the nuns have three hundred something. 

Why do the nuns have more vows? First of all, there are some vows having to do with when women are menstruating, which men wouldn’t have. Also, I think that nuns have to be much more careful, particularly in Buddha’s time, about guarding themselves against misdoings by men. For instance, if I remember correctly, nuns are not supposed to walk by themselves; there are always supposed to be at least two nuns together. Monks wouldn’t have that. So, that’s for the sake of protection. Most of the extra vows that nuns have, have to do with protection, things to safeguard them against men. Obviously, that was an issue at that time. So, these vows were made because nuns had problems being harassed by men. I think that’s the  reason whey Buddha gave them.

Vows are for your own good; they’re to help you. They are known as vows for individual liberation to help you to avoid things that would be damaging to your path to liberation, like being being harassed by men if you are a nun. That, obviously, could be a big worry, a big distraction, especially if you were assaulted. That would be even worse. So, these types of things came up. 

So, we try not to look at others’ wives. And what’s interesting is that it doesn’t say not to look at women; this is saying not to look at others’ wives. So, Nagarjuna is talking about inappropriate sexual behavior. The Tibetan commentaries say that one needs to think of the disadvantages of being distracted. That’s talking about distraction when you're trying to meditate but you’re looking at other people. It says that the disadvantages are that your mind is uneasy, that you can’t sleep, and that you act shamelessly, like going up to somebody, trying to seduce them and acting in very shameless types of ways. So, one thinks of the disadvantages of having desire for other people’s partners, other people’s wives, other people’s husbands, other people’s… whoever.  Then, obviously, our minds are very uneasy, and we can’t sleep; we’re always thinking about this person. We can’t quiet our minds, and we do very foolish types of things.

Now, the question, of course, is whether this applies only to other people’s partners or whether this is in general. Shantideva makes it general. He says that if you are off in retreat trying to gain single-minded concentration, your biggest enemy will be being distracted by sex, basically, and thinking of other people’s bodies – whomever it is that you might be attracted to – or even thinking about your own body. Then he goes into the dirtiness of the body, which he describes very graphically. Nagarjuna states this here – Shantideva just elaborates on it – saying, “Should lust arise, think thoroughly about their bodies having the nature of filth.” 

This was described very, very elaborately, if you remember, in Shantideva’s text, Bodhicharyavatara, Engaging in Bodhisattva Conduct, where he talks about the body being a bag full of excrement and our own bodies being so full of excrement already and about why we would want yet another bag of excrement and to make love to that bag of excrement and so on. He goes quite graphically into the idea of the body being in the nature of filth. That’s another step that we can take if it’s not effective to see the other person that we are attracted to as our parent, our sibling, or our child, depending on their age. Then, if that’s not effective, just think of the body being a bag of filth..

Then, the next thing we would try to do is to think of what’s inside the body, what’s underneath the skin, and try to overcome our attachment to some person’s body and the distraction they cause. Keep in mind that Nagarjuna is talking about distraction when trying to gain concentration. There are many meditations that can be done in terms of that, like peeling off their skin layer by layer and trying to imagine what the person looks like with no skin, and things like that. 

There was a wonderful exhibition here in Berlin some years ago in which they showed bodies with all the different layers peeled off. So, we could see exactly what was inside the body. It’s very helpful to see that – to have that as an image. One gets a little more of a realistic idea of what the human body is all about. Likewise, to think what’s inside their stomach, what’s inside their intestines and their bowels, all the blood and these sorts of things is very helpful. Even just to think of this person that you like so much and are so attracted to having a runny nose and snot all over their face, vomiting on themselves, or having diarrhea all over themselves – that also helps to lessen our infatuation with “the body beautiful.” Also, what is helpful is visualizing what the person would look like when they are extremely old and decrepit or what they looked like when they were a baby. In both cases, we probably wouldn’t find them so sexy. We can also imagine what their skeleton looks like. There are many different meditations that we can do. 

Obviously, the ultimate meditation is what Shantideva describes in the ninth chapter of Bodhicharyavatara, which is seeing whether there is any essence at all to the body. The body is divided into parts. So, does the whole exist separate from the parts, or is it the same as the parts? He goes on and on in this big analysis of the voidness of the body. And he is not gender specific. Nowhere in the Sanskrit text of Bodhicharyavatara does it say “women” when referring to the body. He just talks about the bodies of others and one’s own body. So, one shouldn’t be offended by the fact that Nagarjuna is speaking about these sorts of things to the king. The king was obviously attracted to women and to other people’s wives. 

Any questions about that? It’s always a difficult topic, a very sensitive topic, but one that I think is actually very relevant to our own lives. Most people are quite distracted by sexual fantasies and sexual desires, whether they’re trying to gain concentration or not. That could be a big obstacle, especially if we let that just lead us on and on without having any control over it. That is definitely a big thing to work on. 

Nagarjuna then goes on, in Verse 22, to discuss safeguarding our senses from other desires.

[22] Hold your mind tightly when it (starts to) rove, as though it were like your learning, similar to your child, resembling a treasure, or comparable to your life. Recoil from the pleasures of sensory objects, as though they were like venom, poison, a weapon, an enemy, or fire.

This is talking about any type of desire that we might have, anything that we might be distracted by. In other words, the way the commentary explains it, if we are still distracted after putting into practice the previous advice, then we need to regard our minds in a similar way. Previously, we were trying to regard the object as mother, father, sister, brother, daughter, or son, and to imagine what’s inside their bodies and so on. Now we have to regard our minds, to regard the mind as if it were our learning. If we have a great deal of learning, if we are educated, and particularly, if we use our education – many people don’t use their education terribly much – it would be very terrible to lose it, to forget it. Let’s say that you are a doctor. You wouldn’t want, all of a sudden, to forget all your medical training. That would be quite terrible. Or forgetting how to read or something like that, or having Alzheimer's disease or any of these dementias – that would really be quite horrible. Quite horrible if we started to forget and to lose everything that we had learned. 

So, the text says to hold one’s mind tightly. This, now, is speaking about how to regard one’s mind.  We should regard it “like our learning” in order to hold it tightly and not lose it. We don’t want to lose our minds to distraction, being distracted by a sexual object or food or whatever we might be attached to. “Or similar to our child” – a child we also cherish very much, and we would want to protect our child from not getting hurt. Or “resembling a treasure” – if we have a great deal of treasure, money, or whatever it might be, we would likewise want to protect it. And then, “comparable to our life” – that’s the strongest. “I don’t want to lose my life. I am going to guard my life from any danger.” We try to develop that type of attitude toward our minds in terms of not letting the mind be robbed. 

Shantideva always uses the image of being robbed by the disturbing emotions. They rob us of everything, like the worst thieves. So, here, we regard our minds as being a great treasure. “It’s my learning, my child; it’s like my life. I want to hold it tightly and safeguard it,” which means (our old friends) mindfulness and alertness, which Shantideva spoke about so much. 

Mindfulness is the mental glue with which we hold on to an object or discipline or whatever it is that we want to hold on to. That’s what mindfulness is, despite how it is imprecisely used in Western teachings. The actual definition is that it is like a mental glue. It’s what prevents us from letting go of the object. Then, alertness is a corner of the mind watching the quality of the hold of mindfulness – to see if it is too tight or too loose. So, if that mindfulness isn’t proper, alertness, like an alarm system, goes, “Ding, ding, ding!” Then, attention, which is another mental factor, brings the mindfulness back. It reestablishes the mindfulness by paying attention to what’s going on. Then we set the mindfulness again. 

So, this is what we want to do: we want to hold our minds tightly, which means to hold mindfulness on the object tightly like we would hold onto our lives and hold onto our precious child. 

Then, the second part of this, “Recoil from the pleasures of sensory objects, as though they were like venom, poison, a weapon, an enemy, or fire,” is again, speaking about our attitudes toward the object of desire, whether it’s somebody’s body, money, chocolate, whatever it is that we are attached to. We should regard it like poison, like venom (that’s what a snake has when it bites you) or like a weapon, an enemy, or fire. “That cake in the window of the bakery – that’s poison.” Don’t look at it as being so absolutely wonderful. “What is it going to look like after I’ve chewed it a few times? What is it going to look like after it’s been through my system for a few days? What will it turn into? What is it that I am actually attached to?” Or money – “Oh, if I have all this money, I’ll have big problems with taxes, big problems with people wanting it from me and these sorts of things.” This is really not at all desirable. It’s like poison, a weapon, an enemy, or fire. 

Changing Our Attitudes about What Is Pleasurable, What Is Unpleasurable

All of these things that Nagarjuna is suggesting are ways of changing our attitudes toward things. This is very much a theme that appears over and over again in teachings such as the lojong teachings, the mind training or cleansing of attitudes, where we are shown how to change our attitudes about things, to look at things in a different way. So, rather than looking at these objects as being so pleasurable, he is telling us to look at them as poison and also to look at our minds in a different way – as something that we really want to protect.  

Participant: This we should apply in general?

Dr Berzin: Yes.

Participant: To any pleasurable object?

Dr Berzin: To any pleasurable thing that you have attachment to. Pleasurable things… There are things in the world that are pleasurable. That’s conventionally so. However, not everybody would find them pleasurable. The type of music that you like is not particularly the kind of music that I like. There is nothing inherent on the side of the music that makes it likeable or pleasurable. Remember that lovely line from Aryadeva that I quote so often, “If a pig finds its partner so beautiful, what makes yours so special?” Everybody is attached to whatever they like. It’s not universal. 

Is Disgust a Useful State of Mind?

Participant: I can understand that it’s important to find a trick to stop being distracted by these things, but I’ve always had problems accepting these examples where we develop a feeling of disgust. From my point of view, it’s very un-Buddhist. For example, in recent studies, they’ve found that disgust is actually a feeling that you have toward very strong, bad smells or tastes but that everything else is actually trained by society. If you’re visualizing a person’s filth, no matter what the reason might be, you grow a negative attitude to human beings, to all kinds of beings. This seems to me not very Buddhist. I mean, I can understand that it’s useful as a trick to bring back the attention to other things, but it doesn’t feel good to me because it can also leave negative marks on your mind.

Dr Berzin: So, you’re saying that disgust is not a very useful state of mind and, also, that it is something that is taught by society. The body naturally reacts with disgust towards certain smells or tastes – probably toward certain physical sensations as well, I would imagine, but not necessarily toward sights and sounds, I would guess. So, isn’t disgust a negative state of mind to develop?

Well, there are many things that can be said about that. First of all, the main word… I’m a translator, so I always think of what word is that we talking about here. There’s a word for disgust in Tibetan that is used when they talk about disgust with samsara. It has the connotation of being so fed up and bored with the whole thing that you say, “Enough, already.” So, it isn’t really a state of fear, and it is not a state of… I think there is a difference between repulsion and being fed up or disgusted. Maybe “disgust” isn’t the proper word. The definition of repulsion, or aversion, is the same as for the word “anger.” It is a state of mind with which you focus on the negative qualities of something, exaggerate them, and identify them with that object –  so, making a big, solid thing out of it. 

Here, what is being discussed comes under the topic of accurate and inaccurate consideration of something. There are four points that are always discussed here, which are:  

• Seeing what is suffering as happiness, 
• Seeing what is ugly as beautiful, 
• Seeing what is impermanent as permanent, and 
• Seeing what doesn’t have a solid identity, or soul, as having a solid identity. 

These are the four ways in which we see things incorrectly. These are the incorrect considerations. Now, these four aren’t exaggerations: they’re talking about seeing reality. The body may look very beautiful to you (it might not look very beautiful to somebody else, but it may look very beautiful to you), but it is accurate to say that it is filled with excrement, vomit, blood, and all these other things that are inside. That’s accurate. That’s not an exaggeration. So, what we want to develop is a realistic idea of the object.

Participant: Well, who said that these things are disgusting?

Dr Berzin: Well, that’s exactly it. The point is that they’re not disgusting. That’s just the reality. 

Participant: I agree with what you said, but I think it can only be helpful in an initial stage.  

Dr Berzin: Absolutely.

Participant: If you are totally attached to one thought or one being, and you just think about that all the time, then this technique might be helpful. However, disgust with samsara itself, I think, is not disgust with the nature of it but with the fact that things start to look beautiful in the beginning, but then they always turn bad. They always turn into something that doesn’t last.

Dr Berzin: Like the body.

Participant: Yes. It never really is what it looks like. That’s the point: you’re disgusted with the fact that what things look like is not what they really are.

Dr Berzin: Right, exactly. One gets disgusted with the situation of being always fooled by appearances. Now, initially, you might develop aversion toward the body and things like that, but that’s certainly not the aim because that could be just as bad a disturbing emotion as the attachment. If you look at more advanced teachings in tantra and so on, you should be able to hold shit in your hand. What’s the difference between that and a handful of honeycomb? It’s just an object; it’s no big deal. Here, what one is aiming for, I think, is to have a realistic attitude and to realize that this may seem like happiness, but, in fact, it’s not going to last, not going to satisfy, and you don’t know what’s coming next. So, it’s having a realistic attitude toward what we see as happiness. The body may look very beautiful now, but there are all these other things inside, and it’s going to change. So, let’s have a realistic attitude of this aspect of it as well.

It’s the same thing with permanent/impermanent, having a solid self/not having a solid self. Nagarjuna doesn’t use the word “disgust.” He just says, “Should lust arise, think thoroughly about their bodies having the nature of filth.” That’s just the way it is, what’s inside the body. 

Instead of Disgust, Loss of Interest

Participant: I’m going to suggest, maybe, to change this. Instead of saying “disgusted,” to say “lose interest,” or “lose this intense interest.” You can find an object so attractive, but then, when you think about having to find a place for it, having to dust it, having to care about it, you realize after some time that you will just want to get rid of it. So, the interest becomes less. When you think on the realistic side of it, you see that it’s just another thing you have to care about. 

Dr Berzin: Exactly.

Participant: You don’t need to be disgusted with it; the interest just becomes less.

Dr Berzin: Right, exactly. So, we are not talking about disgust because being disgusted could be an equally terrible distraction – thinking, “Ugh, how disgusting!” You want to develop equanimity so that you don’t even think about it and can focus on whatever you want to focus on in meditation. So, you’re right. You want to lose interest. Those are exactly the words that are used in the discussion of renunciation – that you want to turn your interest away from this life to future lives and that, then, you want to turn your interest away from future lives to liberation. Those are the exact words that Tsongkhapa uses. You don’t find it interesting anymore. That’s why I said that this word that often is translated as “disgust” – which isn’t used here – is a state of being so totally bored that you don’t have interest in it anymore, and you say, “Enough, already.” You’re fed up. It’s more trouble than it is worth.

Participant: After a while, it turns into compassion – the understanding of it. 

Dr Berzin: In a sense, it can turn into compassion because then you have what Chandrakirti talks about, which is gaining compassion for others who suffer from that obsession and who don’t understand the nature of things being impermanent and so on. 

Participant: In tantra, they so often say to see your body as light. You go totally beyond that condition of disgust and see it in the opposite way because of its qualities, which is that it’s made up of the elements. So, you could also see the elements – the four elements – in a scientific way. You’re made up of this, so what’s the big deal?

Dr Berzin: Yes, there is that meditation in Shamba Kagyu. They have a meditation on the four elements in which they dissolve everything into the elements. Then, you see, “Well, it’s just elements. What’s the big deal?” There are many, as you say, tricks that you can use to try to break that habit of being so obsessed and infatuated with whatever it is that you are obsessed with. It doesn’t matter what the object is. We all have our own obsessions. 

OK, why don’t we try this. Well, let me just say the next verses because Nagarjuna says these are the faults of not guarding the senses. Well, first of all, there are two quotations from Shantideva that sounds very much like this verse – “Recoil from pleasures of sensory objects as though they were like venom, poison, a weapon, an enemy or fire.” Shantideva, in chapter 8 of Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior, wrote many centuries later:

[84] Neither weapons, poison, fire, precipices, nor foes compare with desires, when I think of the tortures of joyless realms and the like.

So, he uses the same list that Nagarjuna used, saying that desires are worse than these. 

Then, Nagarjuna says the fault of not safeguarding the senses, of not holding on: 

[23] Sensory objects bring ruination! The Lord of the Triumphant has said that they’re like the kimpaka fruit – (sweet on the outside, bitter within). Abandon them! By their iron chains, worldly people are bound in the prison of recurring samsara.

Pleasurable sensory objects seem sweet at first, but they bring suffering in the end, just like this kimpaka fruit, which is sweet on the outside and very bitter on the inside (according to the Sanskrit dictionary, which seems to give a better explanation than the Tibetan commentaries). It’s a kind of fruit that appears very nice, but when you eat it – Ugh! It’s horrible on the inside. So, see that sense objects are like that and abandon them. Get rid of them; they are like the iron chains that chain us to samsara. 

Shantideva also says:

[39] Lustful desires give rise to disasters in this world and the next ones as well. In this one, they bring about murder, imprisonment, and knifings, and in the next, joyless realms and the like

So, these are the disadvantages of acting out our sense attachments. 

The next verse is in praise of those who safeguard their senses:

[24] Of those who triumph over the objects of the ever-inconstant, roving six senses, and those over a host of foes in battle, the wise favor the first to be the best heroes.

There are some who are victorious over the senses and their desires, and there are some who are victorious over people in a battle. The Buddha has said that the real heroes are the ones who have conquered their obsessions and are no longer under the control of their senses and sense desires. There are many quotations that support that. That’s what the discussion is about here. Then, Nagarjuna goes into more detail. 

Perhaps, we can use this as a topic for meditation – unless you have further questions and comments. We could try to apply some of these methods to the things that we have great attachment to, whatever those might be. As I said, it’s quite irrelevant what it is that we’re attached to. If it’s somebody’s body, then try, as Nagarjuna suggests, to see that person like our mother or father, if they are older; if they’re the same age, to see them like our brother or sister; if they’re younger, to see them like our son or our daughter. If that doesn’t work, think in terms of what’s inside their bodies, or think in terms of the mind being like a treasure, a child, or our learning – something that we want to hold onto and not let get hurt. See the pleasures of sensory objects as being like poison – that “If I follow them out, they’re just going to give me troubles and difficulty. They are like this kimpaka fruit – sweet on the outside but bitter on the inside,” and so on. Let’s try this with whatever we might be attached to and that distracts us from our work, distracts us from our study, from our meditation, from whatever we might do. There might be several objects that are like this for us, and we can do this with each of them in turn. 

By the way, when we are talking about attachment and seeing others like they’re our mother, father, son, or daughter, I think what’s important is to see the person as being of the same generation – so, seeing, “I could have a child that looks like this or that is this age,” or “I could have a parent that looks like this. How would I feel having the same type of sexual desire for them, or for my brother or my sister?” Try to fit them into one of those generations. We could have this person as our child, this person as our parent, or this person as our brother or sister. I think that’s the way to do it. 

Any questions? Good. Then we can go on. 

We were talking about avoiding distraction, which counters concentration. Specifically, we were talking about distraction by objects of the senses. What we have covered so far is controlling the senses by transforming our thoughts. The next section is about getting rid of attachment by recognizing the characteristics of the object. 

First, it talks about getting rid of attachment by recognizing the source of desire and of rebirth in the plane of desire (the desire realm). For the king, it’s the female body. It could be the body of a man as well; it doesn’t make any difference.

Verse 25 says:

[25] Look at the body of a young woman, separate on its own: with a foul smell, it resembles a vessel for all filthy matter, leaking out from nine holes, difficult to be filled, and covered with skin, and then (look) at its ornaments also, separate on their own.

This very reminiscent of the many, many verses that Shantideva wrote concerning the nature of the body. As I said, it doesn’t make any difference whether it’s the body of a man or a woman. What he’s suggesting is to put the body on one side and all the ornaments, perfume, and such on the other side, and to look at the nature of the body by itself. 

If we leave it alone, if we never wash it, it is just going to have foul smell. It’s a “vessel for all filthy matter” – filled with excrement and so on; “leaking out from the nine holes” – so, that would be pus from the eyes, ear wax from the ears, snot from the nose, vomit from the mouth, and excrement, urine, and so on from the various other holes in the body. “Difficult to be filled” – you can’t really fill this bag of excrement because it’s constantly leaking out from all the holes in it; and it’s just covered with skin. So, this is just a realistic view of what the body is. “And then (look) at its ornaments also, separate on their own.”

This verse from Nagarjuna is very similar to the following verses from chapter 8 in Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior by Shantideva, where he says:

[52] If you have no attachment for what is foul, why do you sexually embrace another (body): a cage work of bones, bound together with sinews and plastered over with a mud of flesh? 

[53] You yourself contain plenty of excrement, so manage by yourself, steadfastly with that. Glutton for excrement, you long for yet another bag of excrement? 

Also: 

[64] And that smell sloshed on the body is from sandalwood and such things, 

not from the other (person). So why are you attracted to someone else by the smell of something other?

[68] If the natural state of the body is totally horrific – naked, coated with the tarnish of grime, its hair and nails long, its teeth yellow and stained –

[69] Why spruce it up with (so much) hard work, like a weapon for inflicting self–harm? 

I find it always quite interesting how much Shantideva follows this text of Nagarjuna.

Participant: I am just wondering, if we’re really honest with ourselves, who really practices like this? Maybe it’s true. I’m sure it’s true, of course. But who really sets up their meditation session to think about all these things? Do you know what I mean?

Dr Berzin: Do you want to take a survey around the room to see who actually has applied this meditation?

Participant: Yeah. For me it would be interesting because, actually, I never practice like this. I don’t know how many people here in this room would really say, “OK, this is my favorite meditation.” Maybe it’s true; maybe it would be useful. But who’s really doing it?

Participant: It depends on what you mean by “disturbing emotion,” no? Or it should become, in a way, your favorite practice.

Dr Berzin: Well, I wouldn’t call it my favorite practice, but I certainly use it, and I find it very helpful. A game that sometimes I play while I’m on the U-Bahn is to imagine the skeletons of different people, particularly their skulls. I find that quite interesting to do because some people have very small heads, some people have very thin heads, and some people have fat heads. To just sort of imagine their bone structure – that’s something I do. 

Participant: Sometimes, too. when there is a large number of people, a large gathering, I like to imagine it as a graveyard – a future graveyard – because all these people will be dead at some point.

Dr Berzin:  I also find it helpful in graveyards to think how all these people were alive at some point – just regular people. And probably quite attractive looking.  

Participant: An old friend of mine studied medicine and at some point became a surgeon. He told me once that he found it very, very repulsive to have that job – you know, having to cut up people. He was thinking at some point of leaving the job because of that. But now he’s changed and is starting to help people. He got used to it. I think what you said is nothing compared to what he sees.

Dr Berzin: Yes. That’s very true. 

Participant: We have to face the reality. It’s something we should know.

Participant: I think it’s more interesting to think about what the body can be used for than to think about what nature it is made of.

Dr Berzin: Well, but we are looking at somebody that we are obsessed with and attached to. And that distracts us.

Participant: When you think about other people this way, you must think about yourself the same anyway, I think. 

Dr Berzin: Well, we are talking about objects of desire and attachment.

Participant: Why do you desire somebody else anyway? It’s only because you also have a body and you can do something with this other body.

Dr Berzin: Well, what are you going to do with somebody else’s body? 

Participant: What are you going to do with it? 

Participant: Have sex?

Dr Berzin: Well, one could have sex. I tell you, as you become an older person as I am, then often you look, or at least I do, at young bodies and think, “Wow, it would be really nice to have forty or fifty years ahead of me with such a young body but to have it with the understanding and experience that I have now to be able to continue my work.” From that point of view, yes, you can look at the bodies of others, but that’s only when you don’t have attachment or desire. I think that’s the next step. One has to do things in the proper order. First, get rid of the attachment or the repulsion, then have equanimity, and then see that on the basis of a human body, you can achieve enlightenment. Then comes the whole tantra trip. So, there are levels; there are steps. 

Participant: My question was whether you are doing this meditation. I am not doing this meditation. The reason I’m not doing it is because I’m not attracted to it. I think it’s more useful to meditate on what it’s like to be dead or soon to be dead or on how that will happen or what will happen after that. When it comes to the body, I like meditations like that. Other than that, I think it’s more interesting to meditate on the nature of the mind than on the nature of the body.

Dr Berzin: I think that everything depends on the purpose of the meditation. 

Participant: Yeah. But it has never occurred to me to do this.  I would never be attracted to it.

Dr Berzin: Well, there are many meditations that we are not attracted to. We’re talking about what to use as an antidote when one has desire for somebody else’s body. I think that’s the question : what does one use for that?

Participant: I found this meditation to be really helpful. I have to say it works. What I find more difficult, actually, is my attachment to books or newspapers – these kinds of things. I don’t have it at the top of my mind to actually apply the same kind of antidotes and imagine old, crumpled newspaper or something when I see a newspaper. It seems to be simpler when the attachment is to other peoples’ bodies, but it’s actually more difficult for me because the attachment to books is very strong, and I just have resistance to doing anything about it.

Dr Berzin: Well, that, I think, is a very valid point – that you can apply this meditation to people on the U-Bahn that you don’t have so much attachment to but that there’s a strong resistance to applying it to what you are in love with. So, if it’s an object that has less of a hold on you, it’s easier to apply. 

What I find helpful is not only this meditation but also to look at the person’s body – if it’s a person I know – and to realize that this person gets sick, that they might have allergies, that they might have back pains. So, I think, “Hey, it’s not such a great body after all; it has all these disadvantages.” I might not think in terms of what’s inside their stomach, but I think in terms of that. I must say, though, that what I use much more often is meditation on the voidness of the person. Who is this person that I am so attached to? Is it the body? Is it the mind? Is it the personality? I use the whole Shantideva voidness analysis. I find that far more effective with someone that I am really attached to. Of course, this is what is stated (we’ll find it in a few verses from now) – that the deepest antidote for all of this is the meditation on voidness. These are just suggested steps to try first, before you have any understanding of voidness because that’s much more difficult.

The idea is to have a realistic attitude on a conventional level – if we’re talking about the conventional reality of an object. What are its good points? What are its negative points? Don’t just see its good points – “This cake is sooo delicious.” Also see the negative points: it has a lot of calories, and it is poison; it’s going to make me even fatter or give me an upset stomach. 

Participant: Problems with the stomach.

Dr Berzin: Yes, it will give you problems with the stomach. It is too rich, and blah, blah, blah. 

Participant: I think it is important to look at the disadvantages so that the desire gets at least a little bit less.

Participant: I know it theoretically, but the emotional response is still not quite there – even though I’m aware of these things.

Participant: It goes against the whole grain of the society, which says that we’re supposed to make more delicious meals, and find more delicious restaurants for tasting nice things. There are advertisements for all kind of things. So it’s kind of difficult to push against that.

Dr Berzin: Well, who said this… Wasn’t it Nagarjuna? I can’t remember – that the amount of milk that we have drunk and the amount of food that we have eaten, is greater than the amount of water in all the oceans. Also, the amount of excrement that we have shit out is bigger than Mount Meru. So, why do we want more? What’s so fascinating about having some more?

Participant: So, why do you like fancy restaurants?

Dr Berzin: I’m not saying that I’ve perfected this. I’m saying that this is a line of reasoning. But, also, when this strong aversion comes up to applying such a meditation – that is the false “me” to be refuted. Tsongkhapa says that quite clearly. When you are very frightened, or when somebody calls you thief, and you say, “What! Me?” – that’s the false “me.” It’s the same thing when you have this feeling of, “Ah, I don’t want to give up my newspapers and my books,” or whatever it is that you are attached to. Who doesn’t want to give it up? There’s this strong “me” that’s very clearly putting up the resistance. Where is that “me”? Is it sitting in your head? Is it sitting in your belly? Where is it? It’s just a habit. It is just a habit playing itself out, a loop going over and over again. And it is boring.

Participant: And also, it will never finish.

Dr Berzin: And it will never finish.

Participant: One then looks into the future and sees that it’s more of the same. Just think of the number of newspapers – every day a new one. You will never finish reading them. And you haven’t finished the work from your job from yesterday, so you keep the newspaper. Then new one comes, and then after that another one…  

Dr Berzin: And in the end, when you die, you’ll be able to burn your body on all these newspapers. 

Participant: So, they will have a function. 

Dr Berzin: So, this is the discussion of distraction. 

There’s a little bit more, just one last verse. Let me just say this last verse that finishes this discussion on distraction by objects of the senses. Nagarjuna says: 

[26] Realize, as well, that lust in those with desire (for sensory objects) is like (what happens with) a leper, tormented by maggots, who relies on a fire for the sake of some comfort, and yet gets no relief.

That’s a very famous verse. It’s about somebody with leprosy whose skin is being eaten away by maggots and who doesn’t have any sensation and so on, and they go close to a fire to try to somehow alleviate it. but it either just makes it worse, or even if it gives them some temporary relief, it doesn’t help at all. This is an image that is quoted many, many times. 

Nagarjuna gave another image in his text, Precious Garland, which is the other letter to King Udayibhadra, in which he says:

[169] Scratching an itch may bring pleasure, but more pleasurable than that is not having an itch. 

(It’s a wonderful line that is quoted so often.) 

Likewise, having roving desires may be pleasurable, but more pleasurable than that is not having desire. 

This is describing  the way in which desire functions. You try to get something, like the leper trying to get relief by a fire, but it doesn’t work; it just makes things worse. It’s like when you have a rash and take a hot bath: it just itches more. This type of thing. So, that concludes Nagarjuna’s discussion of distraction by objects of desire.  

Next time, Nagarjuna goes into avoiding distraction by what are usually called “the eight worldly dharmas,” the eight transitory things in life. Here, again, we find a very, very early source of the discussion of this topic.