Body: A locus of beauty and a source of wisdom.

I have often heard from the mouth of some young men who pass comments on the girls passing by – “Kya maal hai yaar!” why are they so obsessed with the body of a woman? Why do young people surf the porn sites so madly to see the naked bodies of women? Why cyber sex is so rampant? Why some movies are so suggestive and filled with so many subliminal messages? Why a body has so much charm? The body is so much glorified and deified today and the degrading of the bodies is also common, no doubt about it.

We need to understand the way we perceive. What about the bodies or how was the body perceived in the early periods of the human history?

Early Greek philosophers glorified the mind and spirit over the body because of the indisputable fact that the body is clearly corruptible, obviously fragile, and ultimately worthless; all of which conditions constituted clear proof to them that life as we know it here is inferior at base. St. Augustine tried to answer the question of human imperfectability with the doctrine of original sin. Since bodies sin, he reasoned, it is the soul that is superior. Even before Augustine, Plato had spoken of the body driven by the black horse and making the liberation impossible. He said that it is through knowledge that we attain liberation. St. Thomas Aquinas said that eggs are eggs to mean that we have to realize being as it is in itself as it manifests itself in itself. He held that the senses are the windows of our souls.

Even in some of the bible passages we see our body as a prison and our soul is imprisoned in our body. Now our understanding of the body needs to be changed. Our body is a source of knowledge for us. We have heard the piece of wisdom in the gospel – “the stone which is rejected by the builders has become the corner stone,” similarly the body which lost its significance in the early days and even now to a large extent, we need to realize that it has to become a stepping stone to the higher truth – realization. Just imagine you doing vipasana meditation, you become aware of the innumerable thoughts that pass through your mind, the sensations that you feel in your body. In doing vipasana meditation you realize that life is transitory, the sensations come and they disappear.

One may even ask me – what about those people who are leading a vegetable life/ who are paralyzed and unable to feel anything in their body. I would say that even this paralysis itself is a realization that body can feel no more (is it not another sensational wisdom leaving for the soul to take care?)

Just examine your own body – I see that everything is in proportion that adds beauty. I do not see that one of my ears is larger than the other, in case it is, it would suggest ugliness. Beauty also can not be limited to the proportionate parts of the body but it consists in the charm it gives out. A thing of beauty is always desirable and when it is desirable it is good. Goodness consists in perfection and desirability. And we read in the beginning of Genesis that God created everything and they were good.