The Characteristic of Lobha - Peril in material shapes
'And what, monks, is the satisfaction in material shapes?
Monks, it is like a girl in a noble's family
or a brahman's family or a householder's family
who at the age of fifteen or sixteen is not too tall, not too short,
not too thin, not too fat, not too dark, not too fair - -
is she, monks, at the height of her beauty and loveliness at that time?'
'Yes, Lord.'
'Monks, whatever happiness and pleasure arise
because of beauty and loveliness,
this is satisfaction in material shapes.
And what, monks is peril in material shapes?
As to this, monks, one might see that same lady after a time,
eighty or ninety or a hundred years old, aged, crooked as a rafter,
bent, leaning on a stick, going along palsied, miserable,
youth gone, teeth broken, hair thinned, skin wrinkled,
stumbling along, the limbs discoloured...
....And again, monks, one might see that same lady,
her body thrown aside in a cemetery - dead for one, two or three days,
swollen, discoloured, decomposing.
What would you think, monks?
That that which was former beauty and loveliness has vanished,
a peril has appeared?'
'Yes, Lord.'
'This too, monks, is a peril in material shapes....'
What the Buddha told the monks may sound crude to us, but it is reality. We
find it difficult to accept life as it really is: birth, old age, sickness and death.
We cannot bear to think of our own body or the body of someone who is dear
to us as being a corpse. We accept being born, but we find it difficult to
accept the consequences of birth, which are old age, sickness and death. We
wish to ignore the impermanence of all conditioned things. When we look into
the mirror and when we take care of our body we are inclined to take it for
something which stays and which belongs to us. However, the body is only
rūpa, elements which fall away as soon as they have arisen. There is no
particle of the body which lasts.