Reflections on repulsiveness

Beauty is often thought of as being central to the idea of what art seeks to aspire to. As Keats put it; "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." However, if we look at Buddhist traditions you can find alternative approaches to aesthetic reflection, especially when it comes to the body. Our Western tradition is often focused on trying to maintain a beautiful body, we are constantly reminded of the need to iron out wrinkles, remove blemishes and maintain fitness. However other philosophies remind us that contemplating death is an integral part of the awareness of life. Buddha pointed out that death is “the greatest of all teachers”, for it teaches us to be humble, destroys vanity and pride, and crumbles all the barriers of caste, creed and race that divide humans, as all living beings are destined to die and that is the real truth that we all have to face. One aspect of this in Buddhist thought is Patikulamanasikara, generally translated as "reflections on the repulsiveness of the body". I had not thought of the body as repulsive, but perhaps that is because I'm used to thinking of it as an active, young, athletic entity and as I get older and look at myself in the mirror, I think I can see the Buddhist point of view a little easier. In Buddhist scriptures, meditation practice when thinking about the body involves mentally identifying 31 parts of the body, contemplated upon in various ways. This aspect of an imaginary journey into the body, has helped me to think in a different way about our interoceptual understanding of the body, something that I think is very unlike a medical understanding, such as we have by looking through Grey's Anatomy. One particular meditation involves meditating on 31 different body parts: head hairs (Pali: kesā), body hairs (lomā), nails (nakhā), teeth (dantā), skin (taco), flesh (maṃsaṃ), tendons (nahāru), bones (aṭṭhi), bone marrow (aṭṭhimiñjaṃ), kidneys (vakkaṃ), heart (hadayaṃ), liver (yakanaṃ), pleura or chest membrane (kilomakaṃ), spleen (pihakaṃ), lungs (papphāsaṃ), entrails (antaṃ), mesentery or the fold that suspends the intestines from the abdominal wall (antaguṇaṃ), undigested food (udariyaṃ), faeces (karīsaṃ), bile (pittaṃ), phlegm (semhaṃ), pus (pubbo), blood (lohitaṃ), sweat (sedo), fat (medo), tears (assu), skin-oil (vasā), salive (kheḷo), mucus (siṅghānikā), fluid in the joints (lasikā), urine (muttaṃ).

In a some traditions these 31 body parts are contextualised within the framework of the elements, so that the earth element is exemplified by the body parts from head hair to faeces and the water element is exemplified by bile through urine. The Japanese tradition of Kusôzu takes this tradition a little further. The nine contemplations on the impurity of the human body, ask us to focus on the stages of decay after death.

1st stage

5th stage of decay

All has dissolved back into the earth

Kinugasa Morishige 1670-1680: Ink and pigment on paper

From a kusôzu series

The Japanese art form of kusôzu appeared first in the 13th century and continued until the late 19th century. I think it makes a useful balance to our current obsession with the beautiful body and youth.

Archeological dig: Ancient burial site

Ancient burial sites are often laid out very formally reflecting the various rituals that would have taken place when the bodies were interred. Objects are often left with the bodies and they were no doubt meant to have various uses in whatever afterlife the people would have thought they might have.

Skeleton with assorted votive objects

Design for carpet 

I've been reflecting on these things lately and decided to make my own nondenominational prayer mats. Some like the one above, designed to carry the decaying bones of a ceramic figure and others to be more cosmic in design. The lower image was made in Maya from measurements taken from my own body. I really liked the fact that my face looked like a monkey's, something that just happened as the face was folded out flat. I also liked how the feet turned out, again as a result of folding a top foot mapping to one side and a foot net bottom to the other, the ankle being the joining moment. The body net was placed over a sprinkling of stars and cosmic bodies, as if the human body was a sort of measure or attempt to place a container over the universe. In Ursula K Le Guin's Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, she retells the story of human origin by redefining technology as a cultural carrier bag rather than a weapon. This made me think of those string bags my mother used to use for the shopping. The thing about those bags was that they both revealed what you had bought and gave them a new collective form; a form that was a bit like a body with organs, except the organs were made of apples, pears, hair spray canisters and bottles of bleach. We are a bit like that when converted into nets for 3D manipulation but we are also similar to water holding bags, one's that leak if you poke a hole in them. We are like these things and unlike them at the same time. This oscillation between possible metaphoric connections giving for myself enough traction for others to see a way in to their own understanding of what I'm doing. 

See also:

Drawing the dead and the dying

Quantum entanglement

Drawing maps

Flesh