Observing Sentient Beings Whitewashing Peace

Ru Chun: A body cavity full of pus, phlegm, excrement, and urine, wrapped in skin, is embellished into a physical body with "a face like jade," and then, with love and affection as further embellishment, the world's inherently greedy and lustful nature is disguised. How many poems and songs have praised this in glowing terms—this is fundamentally folly, yet under the embellishment of flowery writing it becomes "brilliant talent." What a complete inversion.

The physical body is, in truth, a factory of excrement, urine, pus, and phlegm. Yet when people lack wisdom, they cling to it with insatiable craving. Look at all the industries of the world—cosmetics, hairdressing, and fashion; health, wellness, and medicine; cuisine, entertainment, and tourism—which of these trades does not exist to serve this five-aggregate physical body? Their purpose is to keep sentient beings wallowing in pleasure within this world. This world is an elaborately designed scam 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 (the precepts), and then cultivating meditative concentration and wisdom, can one see through the demon king's scam; and when one directly perceives that the five aggregates are all empty, one can smash the demon king's prison.

A table full of animal corpses of every kind is embellished into "culinary culture." For thousands of years, the broth in our bowls has carried grudges deep as the sea, with hatred hard to appease. Yet people call this "prosperity," one of 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 this world, just listen to the sounds of the slaughterhouse at midnight." Sentient beings have created so much evil karma and paid so great a price simply because of the tongue faculty's craving for the sense object of taste. And besides that, there are the cravings of the other five faculties—the evil karma of sentient beings is 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 karmic power, 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 become full merely by smelling fragrances. How wonderful and convenient that is! Otherwise, today humans eat sheep, and in the future sheep will eat humans; the cycle of rebirth will never cease, wars will never end, and suffering will never stop.

The evil world of the five turbidities is embellished by ignorance and the view of self into an age of peace and prosperity. Sentient beings blindly chase after wealth and glory; with corrupted minds and filthy means, they build up noble status, position, and reputation—capital for showing off, capital for enjoying the pleasures of the five aggregates, which is to say, capital for being bound within the three realms. They spin their own cocoons and bind themselves. The more solidly and elaborately these shackles are forged, the prouder they become. Tell me, is this not a complete inversion? If one does not admire splendor or cling to riches, 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 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 feeling 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, sorrow, grief, suffering, and distress. The chain of the twelve links of dependent origination is thereby 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 the precepts; from the precepts arises meditative concentration, and from concentration arises wisdom—then one can depart from suffering. Only the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, out of compassion, unable to bear seeing sentient beings so deluded and inverted, repeatedly descend from the clouds: opening the wisdom-eye of sentient beings, replacing sentient beings' lowly bones, severing sentient beings' view of self, and leading sentient beings to battle Pāpīyas together without the slightest fear—ethereal and graceful, yet awe-inspiring and majestic.