Body... Teachings of Ajahn Panyavaddho

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Buddhism is not a path of gaining so much as a path of relinquishing. The goal is not reached by striving to go higher. The goal is there already. We uncover it by getting rid of things; not by gaining something, but by relinquishing everything.
BODY
Of all the meditation subjects that the Buddha recommended, body contemplation is probably the most unpopular with Western practitioners. Although body contemplation is very worthwhile, for some strange reason it’s not encouraged much in the West. Very few teachers even mention it. Why is that? They must not realize how valuable it is.
Contemplation of the body is an essential component of the Buddha’s teaching. This may seem strange in an age when people know all about the world, but know very little about themselves. They’ve studied science, so when you ask them the reason for doing this or that, or how something works, they can go into great detail. Even if they themselves don’t know, they can easily find out by asking someone who does know, or by looking it up in books or online.
But when it comes to the human body, what do they know? Even if they know physiology, in the medical sense, all they’ve done is study someone else’s body or pictures of the human body in a textbook-not their own body. But surely our bodies are extremely important. If we didn’t have a human body, how would we experience the world? The human body allows us to access the world. It is our outlet into the world, so to speak. Surely, to know the body’s true nature is essential to our well-being.
In order to comprehend its nature, we should ask ourselves: What actually is the human body? What’s it composed of? Is it a pleasant thing or not? We can put aside our preconceived ideas about it, and just ask objectively: Is the body something attractive or not? Let’s have a look. Most people in the world seem to think that the body is very attractive, that it’s a most desirable thing.
But let’s look at it and see whether that’s true. What happens if we don’t wash it for a few days? We’ve got to keep washing the thing; otherwise, it stinks before long and becomes unbearable. Let a few strands of hair fall into a plate of food, and we quickly lose our appetite. Why? Head hair and body hair are inherently filthy, which is the reason that we have to continuously wash them. In fact, nothing that comes in contact with any part of the human body remains clean for long. Due to the dirt and the smell that accumulate on our bodies, our clothing and bed linen must be constantly laundered. Even the food we eat, once it’s ground between the teeth and mixed with saliva, becomes filthy as well. There are many such aspects of the body that we must look at to determine whether it’s a pleasant thing or not, whether it’s beautiful or not.
You should search for the truth of the matter. After all, most people think that they are their bodies. If that’s the case, surely you should want to know something about yourself. When you are so interested to know everything about the world, why do you leave out the one thing that is the most important of all-yourself? Why not try to get to know yourself?
The first step in trying to get to know yourself is to question the nature of the body, because the body is the grossest part of who you are, or who you think you are. However, as you probe more deeply into body contemplation, you begin to realize that the body, in fact, is not you. It comes from the world, and it returns to the world. It’s simply a part of this earth. It consists entirely of atomic structures-atoms, molecules, chemicals and so on. And it’s nothing apart from these things-it doesn’t go beyond the state of physical matter. When you look at it properly, you can see that it isn’t really you. It doesn’t belong to you; you can’t even control its destiny. The body at birth is derived from the world; at death, it returns to the world...