Cattāri Brahmavihārā

The Precious Garland v.148-165

Nagarjuna (150–250 CE)

Lust for a woman mostly comes

From thinking that her body is clean,

But there is nothing clean

In a woman’s body.

The mouth is a vessel filled with foul

Saliva and filth between the teeth,

The nose with fluids, snot and mucus,

The eyes with their own filth and tears.

The body is a vessel filled

With excrement, urine, lungs and liver;

He whose vision is obscured and does not see

A woman thus, and so lusts for her body.

Just as some fools desire

An ornimental pot of filth,

So the ignorant and obscured

And the worldly desire women.

If the world is greatly attached

To the nauseous stinking body

Which should cause loss of attachment,

How can it be lead free from desire?

Just as pigs yearn greatly for

A source of excrement, urine and vomit,

So some lustful ones desire

A source of excrement, urine and vomit.

This filthy city of a body,

With protruding holes for the elements

Is called by stupid beings

An object of pleasure.

Once you have seen for yourself the filth

Of excrement, urine and so forth,

How could you be attracted

To a body so composed?

Why should you lust desirously for this

While recognising it as a filthy form

Produced by a seed whose essence is filth,

A mixture of blood and semen?

He who lies on a filthy mass

Covered by skin moisened with

Those fluids, merely lies

On top of a woman’s bladder.

If whether beautiful or

Ugly, whether old or young,

All the bodies of women are filthy

From what attributes does your lust arise?

Just as it is not fit to desire filth

Although it have good color

and shape in it’s very freshness,

so is it with a woman’s body.

How could the nature of this putrid corpse,

A rotten mass covered outside by skin,

Not be seen when it looks

So very horrible?

‘The skin is not foul,

It is like a cloak.’

Over a mass of filth

How could it be clean?

A pot although beautiful outside

Is reviled when filled with filth.

Why is the body, when so filled

And foul by nature, not reviled?

If against filth you revile,

Why not against this body

Which befouls clean scents,

Garlands, food and drink?

Just as one’s own or others’

Filthiness is reviled,

Why not revile against one’s own

And others’ filthy bodies?

Since your own body is

As filthy as a woman’s,

Should not you abandon

Desire for self and other?