Asubha and corpse meditations

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lumo
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Asubha and corpse meditations

Post by lumo »

Hello friends. After reading Ajahn Dtun’s biography I have started doing asubha and corpse contemplations with remarkable early success. However, growing up in sheltered western society I find that I have a limited ability to imagine stages of decomposition and internal organs. How do you all work with this practice? Do you trawl the internet for material? Have you travelled to distant countries to see cremation ceremonies, etc.? Do you practice on other people or just your own body?

Thanks in advance :anjali:
Ontheway
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Re: Asubha and corpse meditations

Post by Ontheway »

Hi, lumo. I speak Thai (but I'm not Thai). I hope this helps (Thai YouTube videos, but understandable and visual):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-EREJy9UyU&t=25s
(Cremation video)





Can always refer to Visuddhimagga.

For me, I seldom practice Asubhanussati because I can't memorise the 32 words forward and backward. It is said that one who desired to practice this meditation, should throughoutly memorise the 32 words and have a clear understanding on each words, positions, elements, form, colour etc. Then capable of internalise the words (that's where memorisation comes).
Hiriottappasampannā,
sukkadhammasamāhitā;
Santo sappurisā loke,
devadhammāti vuccare.

https://suttacentral.net/ja6/en/chalmer ... ight=false
Pasindu
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Re: Asubha and corpse meditations

Post by Pasindu »

There are 2 pdfs. The first one includes some real images of inside human body, and stages of decomposition. The images are a bit disturbing. So please be warned. The second one includes the 32 parts in asuba meditation.

Human body and corpse meditation
https://tipitaka.lk/library/808

32 parts of asuba
https://tipitaka.lk/library/259

:namaste:
lumo
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Re: Asubha and corpse meditations

Post by lumo »

Thank you both, this is exactly what I was looking for. Other readers, beware that the material posted above is incredibly graphic and unfiltered.
ChengHwang
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Re: Asubha and corpse meditations

Post by ChengHwang »

Ontheway wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 1:07 pm Hi, lumo. I speak Thai (but I'm not Thai). I hope this helps (Thai YouTube videos, but understandable and visual):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-EREJy9UyU&t=25s
(Cremation video)





Can always refer to Visuddhimagga.

For me, I seldom practice Asubhanussati because I can't memorise the 32 words forward and backward. It is said that one who desired to practice this meditation, should throughoutly memorise the 32 words and have a clear understanding on each words, positions, elements, form, colour etc. Then capable of internalise the words (that's where memorisation comes).
hello, sorry to butt in here but have you come across a thai song regarding asubha? The music video has a 3d lady decomposing. I saw it once but have forgotten the title. Many thanks
Ontheway
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Re: Asubha and corpse meditations

Post by Ontheway »

ChengHwang wrote: Wed Jun 07, 2023 11:40 pm
Ontheway wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 1:07 pm Hi, lumo. I speak Thai (but I'm not Thai). I hope this helps (Thai YouTube videos, but understandable and visual):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-EREJy9UyU&t=25s
(Cremation video)





Can always refer to Visuddhimagga.

For me, I seldom practice Asubhanussati because I can't memorise the 32 words forward and backward. It is said that one who desired to practice this meditation, should throughoutly memorise the 32 words and have a clear understanding on each words, positions, elements, form, colour etc. Then capable of internalise the words (that's where memorisation comes).
hello, sorry to butt in here but have you come across a thai song regarding asubha? The music video has a 3d lady decomposing. I saw it once but have forgotten the title. Many thanks
Thishttps://youtu.be/Oo4hXkdLlV4

This one?
Hiriottappasampannā,
sukkadhammasamāhitā;
Santo sappurisā loke,
devadhammāti vuccare.

https://suttacentral.net/ja6/en/chalmer ... ight=false
Bundokji
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Re: Asubha and corpse meditations

Post by Bundokji »

lumo wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 11:21 am Hello friends. After reading Ajahn Dtun’s biography I have started doing asubha and corpse contemplations with remarkable early success. However, growing up in sheltered western society I find that I have a limited ability to imagine stages of decomposition and internal organs. How do you all work with this practice? Do you trawl the internet for material? Have you travelled to distant countries to see cremation ceremonies, etc.? Do you practice on other people or just your own body?

Thanks in advance :anjali:
You can volunteer to perform burial services. I thought of doing that in the past.
And the Blessed One addressed the bhikkhus, saying: "Behold now, bhikkhus, I exhort you: All compounded things are subject to vanish. Strive with earnestness!"

This was the last word of the Tathagata.
ChengHwang
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Re: Asubha and corpse meditations

Post by ChengHwang »

Ontheway wrote: Thu Jun 08, 2023 12:49 am
ChengHwang wrote: Wed Jun 07, 2023 11:40 pm
Ontheway wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 1:07 pm Hi, lumo. I speak Thai (but I'm not Thai). I hope this helps (Thai YouTube videos, but understandable and visual):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-EREJy9UyU&t=25s
(Cremation video)





Can always refer to Visuddhimagga.

For me, I seldom practice Asubhanussati because I can't memorise the 32 words forward and backward. It is said that one who desired to practice this meditation, should throughoutly memorise the 32 words and have a clear understanding on each words, positions, elements, form, colour etc. Then capable of internalise the words (that's where memorisation comes).
hello, sorry to butt in here but have you come across a thai song regarding asubha? The music video has a 3d lady decomposing. I saw it once but have forgotten the title. Many thanks
Thishttps://youtu.be/Oo4hXkdLlV4

This one?
yes! omg thank you very much!
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frank k
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Re: Asubha and corpse meditations

Post by frank k »

Ontheway wrote: Thu Jun 08, 2023 12:49 am ...
thishttps://youtu.be/Oo4hXkdLlV4

This one?
Really worth your time to watch this everyone.
Nice! 4 min video (last 2 min. are credits) pretty lady singing in Thai, while her face/body is aging, decaying, becoming a corpse with worms crawling out.
Great juxtaposition between the music with the flavor of hopeful foolish optimism of typical human, with the truth of aging and decay to counter balance that.
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frank k
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Re: Asubha and corpse meditations

Post by frank k »

Ontheway wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 1:07 pm ....
For me, I seldom practice Asubhanussati because I can't memorise the 32 words forward and backward. It is said that one who desired to practice this meditation, should throughoutly memorise the 32 words and have a clear understanding on each words, positions, elements, form, colour etc. Then capable of internalise the words (that's where memorisation comes).
what helps with memorization is use your finger to point to each body part on yourself, in order of the 31, simultaneously as you recite.
When you combine spatial location, visualization, vocal, then it's just like memorizing the driving directions to the grocery store you go to all the time.
www.lucid24.org/sted : ☸Lucid24.org🐘 STED definitions
www.audtip.org/audtip: 🎙️🔊Audio Tales in Pāli: ☸Dharma and Vinaya in many languages
Ontheway
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Re: Asubha and corpse meditations

Post by Ontheway »

frank k wrote: Thu Jun 08, 2023 4:09 pm
Ontheway wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 1:07 pm ....
For me, I seldom practice Asubhanussati because I can't memorise the 32 words forward and backward. It is said that one who desired to practice this meditation, should throughoutly memorise the 32 words and have a clear understanding on each words, positions, elements, form, colour etc. Then capable of internalise the words (that's where memorisation comes).
what helps with memorization is use your finger to point to each body part on yourself, in order of the 31, simultaneously as you recite.
When you combine spatial location, visualization, vocal, then it's just like memorizing the driving directions to the grocery store you go to all the time.
Thanks for recommendation.
Hiriottappasampannā,
sukkadhammasamāhitā;
Santo sappurisā loke,
devadhammāti vuccare.

https://suttacentral.net/ja6/en/chalmer ... ight=false
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Sam Vara
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Re: Asubha and corpse meditations

Post by Sam Vara »

Last year I had an unexpected opportunity to practice with stages of decomposition. Because of its unexpected nature people won't be able to repeat it, but might find it interesting.

My wife is a priest responsible for a churchyard where burials take place. One morning, she got two phone calls from members of the public who had been walking in the churchyard and had found human remains. One was shocked, the other angry, which is interesting in itself. Being busy, my wife sent me to the churchyard to see what was going on.

Our gravedigger had recently retired, and he used to dig graves by hand with a special shovel. That's hard manual labour, which adds to the cost of a funeral, so we now employ a couple of landscape gardeners who use a small backhoe excavator to dig a slit trench when a burial is needed. People have been buried in the churchyard for over a thousand years, and the excavator had pulled up a couple of skeletal remains from earlier graves which they had dug straight through. It was probably getting dark when they finished, or they just didn't care, and they had left bones scattered all over the pile of earth by the open grave. It was as the sutta says:
bones detached from their tendons, scattered in all directions — here a hand bone, there a foot bone, here a shin bone, there a thigh bone, here a hip bone, there a back bone, here a rib, there a breast bone, here a shoulder bone, there a neck bone, here a jaw bone, there a tooth, here a skull... the bones whitened, somewhat like the color of shells... piled up, more than a year old...
In fact, it was impossible to say when these people had died. The remains could have been a few decades old, or a few centuries. There was a faint bad smell, and they had to be dealt with before the burial later that day.

As they remain in consecrated earth, the way they are dealt with is to lay them carefully back in the bottom of the new grave, and then cover them with a thin layer of soil before the next burial. But I wasn't looking forward to it...

In fact, it wasn't a bad experience at all. As I worked, I had a really strong sense of how these remains were simply elements returning to the earth from which they had come. The older bones were actually quite soft, crumbling into an innocuous powder or damp paste, almost indistinguishable from the chalky ground. There was a sense of respect and reverence - these had been people, and one of them had probably been a child - but a feeling that all this was perfectly natural and somehow "obvious". "This is what bones are like..." The "bad smell" was oddly familiar, and I realised that it was just a stronger version of what you can smell in the little quarry-pits in the woods near here. Sort of like rotting wood, or damp stone. Just natural decay. No big deal at all. There was just stuff, and it was sometimes formed into rocks and vegetation, and sometimes formed into human bodies. And it was always changing.

So the job got done, and I felt that I had been given some minor insight into things. There was nothing unpleasant about it (apart from getting mud on my clothes!) and I felt very calm, sobered, and "cooled down". The feeling stayed with me for a few hours, and I can recall it now.

Later I talked about it with my wife. Bodies that have just died - and she sees a lot of these - are often very peaceful, especially after a difficult death. Bodies that have been dead a long time are also peaceful. The decay stage might, I suspect, be harder to be around. There was someone here on DW who used to opine very intelligently on the necessity of reflection upon the natural cycles of growth and decay, saying that we were programmed by biology to be attracted to youth and maturity (sex, ripeness of food, etc.) but we need to understand the whole process. We need to see things as they really are. That makes sense to me.
Bundokji
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Re: Asubha and corpse meditations

Post by Bundokji »

Sam Vara wrote: Thu Jun 08, 2023 4:35 pm Later I talked about it with my wife. Bodies that have just died - and she sees a lot of these - are often very peaceful, especially after a difficult death. Bodies that have been dead a long time are also peaceful. The decay stage might, I suspect, be harder to be around. There was someone here on DW who used to opine very intelligently on the necessity of reflection upon the natural cycles of growth and decay, saying that we were programmed by biology to be attracted to youth and maturity (sex, ripeness of food, etc.) but we need to understand the whole process. We need to see things as they really are. That makes sense to me.
Nice reflections :anjali:

Your input reminds me of two incidents:

1- I once spoke to my previous manager about how the contemplation of death can help counter the fear of death. He told me that he buried his uncle in the 1970s, and when his cousin (the son of the deceased uncle) passed away recently, the family suggested to bury him in the same grave of his father, probably partly to save costs. He went to the same grave, and when they began digging, he was sacred until he saw the skeleton of his uncle, laid down in the same position as he left it 50 years ago. He told me that since then, he no longer feared death.

2- I used to visit the cemetery where my father was buried very often, which is an old one with some isolated corners where criminals and drug addicts dwell. While i was walking, two guys in their 20s followed me, and they were sniffing some chemical to get high. He had a knife in his pocket and he asked me for money. Due to my frequent visits, i remembered something poetic written in a nearby corner, so i asked them to follow me because there is something important i want to show them. There it was, three graves belonging to the same family with the following written on the wall, as if the dead are talking to us: "As you are, we were. As we are, you will become". Luckily, they left me alone without giving them any money, and i learner the lesson: It is the alive to be feared, not the dead.
And the Blessed One addressed the bhikkhus, saying: "Behold now, bhikkhus, I exhort you: All compounded things are subject to vanish. Strive with earnestness!"

This was the last word of the Tathagata.
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Sam Vara
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Re: Asubha and corpse meditations

Post by Sam Vara »

Bundokji wrote: Fri Jun 09, 2023 3:13 am
Sam Vara wrote: Thu Jun 08, 2023 4:35 pm Later I talked about it with my wife. Bodies that have just died - and she sees a lot of these - are often very peaceful, especially after a difficult death. Bodies that have been dead a long time are also peaceful. The decay stage might, I suspect, be harder to be around. There was someone here on DW who used to opine very intelligently on the necessity of reflection upon the natural cycles of growth and decay, saying that we were programmed by biology to be attracted to youth and maturity (sex, ripeness of food, etc.) but we need to understand the whole process. We need to see things as they really are. That makes sense to me.
Nice reflections :anjali:

Your input reminds me of two incidents:

1- I once spoke to my previous manager about how the contemplation of death can help counter the fear of death. He told me that he buried his uncle in the 1970s, and when his cousin (the son of the deceased uncle) passed away recently, the family suggested to bury him in the same grave of his father, probably partly to save costs. He went to the same grave, and when they began digging, he was sacred until he saw the skeleton of his uncle, laid down in the same position as he left it 50 years ago. He told me that since then, he no longer feared death.

2- I used to visit the cemetery where my father was buried very often, which is an old one with some isolated corners where criminals and drug addicts dwell. While i was walking, two guys in their 20s followed me, and they were sniffing some chemical to get high. He had a knife in his pocket and he asked me for money. Due to my frequent visits, i remembered something poetic written in a nearby corner, so i asked them to follow me because there is something important i want to show them. There it was, three graves belonging to the same family with the following written on the wall, as if the dead are talking to us: "As you are, we were. As we are, you will become". Luckily, they left me alone without giving them any money, and i learner the lesson: It is the alive to be feared, not the dead.
Thanks, Bundokji, that's interesting. The second story particularly interested me for two reasons. The first is that we have similar grave inscriptions in the UK. Aren't you from an Islamic background? If so, is that common in Islamic culture? The most famous example I know is a very early American grave inscription:
Stranger, stop and cast an eye,. As you are now, so once was I,. As I am now, so you shall be,. Prepare for death and follow me.
And a very terse one that I saw in Yorkshire had a sort of a cartoon of a skull saying
Regard you me; so shall you be.
It's nice to think there is a universal undercurrent to different cultures and traditions.

The second thing it reminded me of was the Dhammapada verse:
There are those who do not realize that one day we all must die. But those who do realize this settle their quarrels.
I like this because it points both to a possible post mortem judgement, and also to the pointlessness of hatred or self-enriching or status games.
Bundokji
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Re: Asubha and corpse meditations

Post by Bundokji »

Sam Vara wrote: Fri Jun 09, 2023 10:13 am The second story particularly interested me for two reasons. The first is that we have similar grave inscriptions in the UK. Aren't you from an Islamic background? If so, is that common in Islamic culture? The most famous example I know is a very early American grave inscription:
Stranger, stop and cast an eye,. As you are now, so once was I,. As I am now, so you shall be,. Prepare for death and follow me.
And a very terse one that I saw in Yorkshire had a sort of a cartoon of a skull saying
Regard you me; so shall you be.
It's nice to think there is a universal undercurrent to different cultures and traditions.

The second thing it reminded me of was the Dhammapada verse:
There are those who do not realize that one day we all must die. But those who do realize this settle their quarrels.
I like this because it points both to a possible post mortem judgement, and also to the pointlessness of hatred or self-enriching or status games.
I also found the following on wikipedia:
The crypt originated at a period of a rich and creative cult for their dead; great spiritual masters meditated and preached with a skull in hand. A plaque in one of the chapels reads, in three languages, "What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be." This is a memento mori.
I was also surprised when i read it for the first time. There is also a certain rhyme to the way its written, as if it was always in Arabic language:

كما أنتم كنا - و كما نحن ستكونون

I guess death and the three messengers in general are as close as it gets to a "real universal" if there is such a thing! Also it is amazing the amount of grammar that is included in such a short statement. It shows how much death is integrated in our everyday life including our speech, but of course, meditative techniques can be effective tools in bringing awareness to the happenings of everyday.
And the Blessed One addressed the bhikkhus, saying: "Behold now, bhikkhus, I exhort you: All compounded things are subject to vanish. Strive with earnestness!"

This was the last word of the Tathagata.
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