Observing How Sentient Beings Whitewash the Peace

Ru Chun: A body cavity full of pus, phlegm, excrement, and urine, wrapped in skin, is embellished into a "form body fair as jade," and then further adorned with love and passion to mask the inherently lustful and sensual nature of worldly people. So many poems and songs sing its praises—this is nothing but folly, yet under the embellishment of flowery words it becomes "brilliant talent." What utter inversion.

The form body is, in truth, a factory producing excrement, urine, pus, and phlegm. Yet when worldly people lack wisdom, they cling to it with insatiable craving. Look at the world: every trade and profession—the cosmetics, hairdressing, and fashion industries; the health, wellness, and medical industries; the culinary, entertainment, and tourism industries, and so on—which of them does not exist to serve this five-aggregate form body? Their purpose is to keep sentient beings wallowing in pleasure within this world. This world is nothing but an elaborately designed swindle and prison, and its designer is Māra, the King of Demons. Only after cultivating the Path and no longer craving the enjoyments of the five aggregates (morality/śīla), and then cultivating meditative concentration (samādhi) and wisdom (prajñā), can one see through the Demon King's swindle; and when one directly perceives that the five aggregates are all empty, one can smash the Demon King's prison.

Tables piled with all kinds of animal corpses are embellished into "culinary culture." For thousands of years, the broth in the bowl has carried grudges deep as the sea, hatred hard to appease. Worldly people call this prosperity and rank it among life's great pursuits and enjoyments—treating an ocean of resentment as an ocean of blessings. Look at how many people, how many industries, serve this in the world. "To know of the kalpa of warfare in the world, just listen at midnight to the sounds of the slaughterhouse." How much evil karma have sentient beings created, and at what great cost, merely through the tongue faculty's craving for the sense object of taste? And besides, there are the cravings of the other five faculties as well—the sins of sentient beings are truly beyond all telling. Can we still take pride and delight in being born as humans? The human digestive system is a corpse-incineration system, and the gastrointestinal tract is the path of the hungry ghosts. Driven by their karma, sentient beings have no choice but to eat. Only by studying Buddhism and cultivating the Path can one turn around one's own karma and change one's dietary habits. The devas, for instance, do not eat or drink—they are sated merely by smelling fragrances. How wonderful, how convenient! Otherwise, today humans eat sheep, and in the future sheep will eat humans—saṃsāra without cease, war without end, suffering without respite.

The evil world of the five turbidities is embellished by ignorance and self-view into a "golden age of peace and prosperity." Sentient beings blindly chase after riches and honor; with corrupted minds and filthy means, they forge for themselves noble status, position, and fame—capital for boasting, capital for enjoying the pleasures of the five aggregates, that is, capital for being bound within the three realms—spinning their own cocoon and binding themselves within it. The more solidly and elaborately these shackles are forged, the prouder they become. Tell me, is this not utterly inverted? If one does not admire splendor, does not cling to wealth and honor, and does not crave the various feelings of the five aggregates that arise from them, one will not be bound by them and will attain ease and freedom. If one does not contact or crave form, sound, smell, taste, touch, or dharmas, then one will not experience or give rise to the feelings of the five aggregates; without experiencing them, there is no craving; without craving, there is no grasping; without grasping, there is no becoming; without becoming, there is no birth; without birth, there is no aging-and-death, no sorrow, grief, suffering, and distress (śoka-parideva-duḥkha-daurmanasyopāyāsa). The chain of the twelve links of dependent arising is thus severed, and one departs from suffering and attains liberation. It can also be understood more simply: when the six faculties do not crave the six sense objects, that is called morality (śīla); from morality arises meditative concentration (samādhi), and from concentration arises wisdom (prajñā)—and thus one can depart from suffering. Only the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, out of compassion, unable to bear seeing sentient beings so deluded and inverted, again and again descend from the clouds: opening the wisdom eyes of sentient beings, replacing their lowly bones, severing their self-view, and leading sentient beings to battle Pāpīyas together without the slightest fear—ethereal and graceful, yet awe-inspiring and majestic.