The unreality of the body

The body is just another object. As other objects, the body is made out of our experiencing of it. There is nothing else to the body other than the colors that make up our seeing of it, the body sensations that make up our feeling of it, and the hearing, smelling and tasting of it. The cells, blood vessels and muscles we think constitutes our body are themselves nothing but colors and sensations.

Look at your hand for example. This particular pattern of color (which is nothing but seeing) is thought of (conceptualized) as “a hand” – but there is a massive conceptual structure of delusion that is attached to our notion of “a hand”, and its foundation is the belief in the external world. We believe that the hand exists whether it is experienced or not, but what a hand is, is the seeing of it. Turn the attention away from it and your hand ceases to exist. Our entire body is like that: entirely created in thought. It comes into existence the moment we think of it as such. Prior to that, there is just a field of pure experiencing.

The conceptual structure that make up our notion of the body is very heavy. It contains so much false beliefs and presuppositions that to untangle this structure and see the falseness of it is a massive undertaking. But it can be done.

 
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