Reply To: Collection of Videos of medical operations, surgeries, rotting body etc.

#41371
Lal
Keymaster

Yes. Lang is right. Buddha’s Asubha Bhavana is NOT about seeing rotting corpses and distasteful videos like the last one on the list.
– I had not looked at the documents/videos. Just now, I took a brief look at the video listed last. That is NOT asubha Bhavana, but is the version commonly taught by even Theravada teachers!

Even though LayDhammaFollower (LDM) has requested to remove them if needed, I will leave them at least for a while so that people can see what not to follow.

The Buddha wanted us to contemplate the unfruitfulness of valuing not only our physical bodies but anything in this world.
– Asubha DOES NOT mean “disgusting” or “yucky.” That may generate patigha, as LDM pointed out.
– It means not beneficial, not fruitful, etc., and quite the opposite.

Please read the following sutta carefully.
Sivathika Sutta (AN 5.249)

– In the days of the Buddha, there was no burial or cremation for average people. Dead bodies were discarded in designated “charnel grounds.”
– But the Buddha wanted us to see not the drawbacks of disgusting scenes in a charnel ground but the drawbacks of disgusting conduct by way of body, speech, and mind.

– The Buddha also taught us to contemplate the 32 parts of the body to see that they are also made of the same four great elements as plants and rocks.
– I have mentioned that briefly in #5 of “Anussati and Anupassanā – Being Mindful and Removing Defilements“. I may have addressed it in another post, but I don’t remember.