This is from one of the
Morbid Fact du Jour newsletters back when it was a newsletter:
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Buddhism is known for the practice of meditation, most popular is Zen meditation. But most people do not know that there is a meditation called “corpse meditation” or Asubha. This type of meditation is rarely practiced now because there are few charnel grounds, where corpses of varying degrees of decomposition can be meditated upon, nowadays because of the difficulty of finding appropriate corpse (unless you meditate in a morgue). Corpse meditation is used to make the meditator realize that our physical bodies are made up of impurities, and that everything is impermanent. This is also used to make the meditator not cling to the human body.
There have been many instances, mentioned in the Buddhist Canon (the Tipitaka/Tripitaka), when the Buddha recommended this kind of meditation to his disciples, especially to those who are overcome with lust and are obsessed with the body. And there have been many instances where people became enlightened or became Arhats by meditating upon a corpse.
There is an instance when the Buddha had the decomposing body of a courtesan auctioned to the woman’s former clients. It served as a lesson to his disciples that the human body is impermanent and disgusting and not worth clinging to.
In any case, it was the body of a dead person, carried by mourning relatives to the cremation grounds, which was one of the “Four Signs” that made the Buddha renounce his princely life and seek enlightenment.
Anyway, corpse meditation is divided into ten categories (depending on the state of the corpse). I will mention the original Pali (language used by the Buddha and Theravada monks) word and the corresponding English translation. The descriptions are taken from chapter VI of “Vissudhimagga” (The Path of Purification) by Bhadantâcariya Buddhaghosa, a 5th century monk.
1. Uddhumâtaka – the bloated: it is bloated because bloated by gradual
dilation and swelling after the close of life, as a bellows is with
wind.
2. Vinîlaka – the livid: this is a term for a corpse that is reddish-
colored in places where flesh is prominent, whitish-colored in places
where pus has collected, but mostly blue-black, as if draped with blue-
black cloth in the blue-black places.
3. Vipubbaka – the festering: what is trickling with pus in broken
places is festering.
4. Vicchiddaka – the cut up: what has been opened up by cutting it in
two is called cut up…. The cut up is found on a battle field or in a
robbers’ forest or on a charnel ground where kings have robbers cut up
or in the jungle in a place where men are torn up by lions and tigers.
5. Vikkhâyitaka – the gnawed what has been chewed here and there in
various ways by dogs, jackals, etc. is what is gnawed.
6. Vikkhittaka – the scattered: This is a term for a corpse that is
strewn here and there in this way: ‘Here a hand, there a foot, there
the head’.
7. Hatavikkhittaka – the hacked and scattered: this is a term for a
corpse scattered in the way just described after it has been hacked
with a knife in a crow’s-foot pattern on every limb.
8. Hitaka – the bleeding: it sprinkles, scatters blood, and it
trickles here and there…. The bleeding is found at the time when blood
is trickling from the opening of the wounds received on battle fields,
etc., or from the openings of burst boils and abscesses when the hand
and feet have been cut off.
9. Pulapaka – the worm-infested: this is a term for a corpse full of
maggots… when at the end of two or three days a mass of maggots oozes
out from the corpse’s nine orifices, and the mass lies there like a
heap of paddy or boiled rice as big as the body, whether the body is
that of a dog, a jackal, a human being, an ox, a buffalo, an elephant,
a horse, a python, or what you will.
10. Atthika – a skeleton: this is a term for both a single bone and a
framework of bones.
Detailed instructions are described in that same book. The author has also warned not to go to the corpse, especially the bloated corpse, immediately, because the meditator might be attracted to the body, and thus perform necrophilia instead of meditation. The meditator is also prohibited to touch and handle the corpse and body parts as it can remove the disgust for the human body.
There is a nice verse at the end:
This filthy body stinks outright
Like ordure, like a privy’s site;
This body men that have insight
Condemn, is object of a fool’s delight.
A tumor where nine holes abide
Wrapped in a coat of clammy hide
And trickling filth in every side,
Polluting the air with stenches far and wide.
If it perchance should come about
That what is inside it came out,
Surely a man would need a knout
With which to put the crows and dogs to rout.
I have heard of a Western monk who tried to do the corpse meditation.
He didn’t last long.
It is said that this is one of the most difficult meditation practice.
Aside from the danger from wild dogs, wolves other animals and men,
there is a risk of having hallucinations during the meditation. The
meditator would also have to deal with the stench from the corpses,
and the swarm of flies and insects. For these reasons, too, that
corpse meditation is rarely practiced.
