/lit/ - Literature

>>13605610
"Lust for a woman mostly comes
From thinking that her body is clean,
But there is nothing clean
In a woman's body in fact.
The mouth is a vessel of foul saliva
And scum between the teeth,
The nose a vessel of snot, slime, and mucus,
The eyes are vessels of tears and other excretions.
The abdomen and chest is a vessel
Of feces, urine, lungs, liver, and so forth.
Those who through obscuration do not see
A woman this way, lust for her body.
Just as some fools desire
An ornamented pot filled with what is unclean,
So ignorant, obscured
Worldly beings desire women.
If the world is greatly attached
Even to this ever-so-smelly body
Which should cause loss of attachment,
How can it be led to freedom from desire?
Just as pigs are greatly attached
To a site of excrement, urine, and vomit,
So some lustful ones desire
A site of excrement, urine, and vomit.
This city of a body with protruding holes
From which impurities emerge
Is called an object of pleasure
By beings who are stupid.
Once you yourself have seen the impurities
Of excrement, urine, and so forth,
How could you be attracted
To a body composed of those?
Why should you lust desirously for this
While recognizing it as an unclean form
Produced by a seed whose essence is impure,
A mixture of blood and semen?
One who lies on this impure mass
Covered by skin moistened
With those fluids, merely lies
On top of a woman's bladder.
If whether beautiful or ugly,
Whether old or young,
all female bodies are unclean,
From what attribute does your lust arise?
Just as it is not fit to desire
Filth although it has a good color,
Is very fresh, and has a nice shape,
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 garment.'
Like a hide over a mass of impurities
How could it be clean?
A pot though beautiful outside,
Is reviled when filled with impurities.
Why is the body, filled with impurities
And foul by nature, not reviled?
If you revile against impurities,
Why not against this body
Which befouls clean scents,
Garlands, food, and drink?
Just as one's own or others'
Impurities are reviled,
Why not revile against one's own
And others' unclean bodies?
Since your own body is
As unclean as a woman's,
Is it not suitable to part
From desire for self and other?
If you yourself wash this body
Dripping from the nine wounds
And still do not think it unclean,
What use is instruction for you?
Whoever composes poetry
With metaphors elevating this body—
O how shameless! O how stupid!
How embarrassing before wise beings!
Moreover, these sentient beings—
Obscured by the darkness of ignorance—
Quarrel more over what they desire,
Like dogs for the sake of some dirty thing."
- Ratnāvalī