Bodies and desire (Buddhist informed)
Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2026 3:00 pm
This is a reminder for myself that I am making available so that it might benefit others. In Buddhist thought the idea of illusion comes up a lot. There is the wu wu notion that illusion is some veil or distortion that one can penetrate with enough practice but I prefer the more practical orientation. That perceptual awareness is only part of the story, so to speak.
Take bodies and desire: if we take the surface appearance as the whole of it: form, aesthetics, texture, it is easy to fall into the cognitive trap of thinking that that is the complete view. On the other hand, if one applies wisdom, we also know bodies have insides: guts, blood, pus, partially digested food - literal feces at various stages of digestion - the overall conception of body changes.
One of the ways monks help themselves temper lust, is to apply this practice when observing desirable bodily form - they do not let the illusory surface be the whole story without also acknowledging that that desirable body is also a literal sack of fluids, meat and shit, sloshing around, slowly dying.
To continue - take any normal household trash can and imagine how gross it is. Compare that to what our body is, in total and we must accept that, taken as a whole - we carry more disgusting waste within our actual bodies than most garbage cans.
So next time one is moved by an aesthetic appreciation of a body that also generates frustration for whatever reason, consider the whole package and check that against the presumption of desire and see if it still holds.
Not to dismiss aesthetic surfaces - they can be beautiful - but coupled with the whole picture, so to speak and it might help to recontextualize the desire feedback loop and make available more space to treat it lightly offering some peace
Take bodies and desire: if we take the surface appearance as the whole of it: form, aesthetics, texture, it is easy to fall into the cognitive trap of thinking that that is the complete view. On the other hand, if one applies wisdom, we also know bodies have insides: guts, blood, pus, partially digested food - literal feces at various stages of digestion - the overall conception of body changes.
One of the ways monks help themselves temper lust, is to apply this practice when observing desirable bodily form - they do not let the illusory surface be the whole story without also acknowledging that that desirable body is also a literal sack of fluids, meat and shit, sloshing around, slowly dying.
To continue - take any normal household trash can and imagine how gross it is. Compare that to what our body is, in total and we must accept that, taken as a whole - we carry more disgusting waste within our actual bodies than most garbage cans.
So next time one is moved by an aesthetic appreciation of a body that also generates frustration for whatever reason, consider the whole package and check that against the presumption of desire and see if it still holds.
Not to dismiss aesthetic surfaces - they can be beautiful - but coupled with the whole picture, so to speak and it might help to recontextualize the desire feedback loop and make available more space to treat it lightly offering some peace
