Elements - Mindfulness of the body II

The Buddha reminded people of the truth in many different ways. Sometimes he spoke about the body as a corpse in different stages of dissolution. Or he spoke about the 'parts of the body' and he explained how the body is full of impurities, in order to remind people that what we take for our body are only elements which are devoid of beauty, which are dukkha, impermanent and not self.

 

We read in the 'Satipatthāna-sutta', in the section about mindfulness of the

body:

Monks, it is like a double-mouthed provision bag 

that is full of various kinds of grain such as hill-paddy, 

paddy, kidneybeans, peas, sesame, rice;

and a keen-eyed man, pouring them out, were to reflect:

'That's hill-paddy, that's paddy, that's kidneybeans, 

that's peas, that's sesame, that's rice.'

Even so monks, does a monk reflect on precisely this body itself,

encased  in skin and full of various impurities,

from the soles  of the feet up and from the crown of the head down...