Body or Bodhi?

Do you wish for a body or a bodhi? One is physical, the other, err… mental. Not really mental though, but since it is from the mind doorway bodhi arises, lets assume it is mental first. So which do you wish to have? You can’t have both except one. More accurately, you can’t really “have” both, except inclining towards either one of it.

But what is bodhi? Bodhi is just another word for awakening. Not the kind of awakening from your sleep or slumber. More than that. It is awakening from the dream state of who you think you are now; yes, while you are awake just as you are reading the text now. Uh? Yes. You think you are awake now. Well, as in any dream, you may think you are awake until you woke up from that dream. Until then the dream is not known as a dream but “real”.

Well, if you get what I mean, then back to the early question – body or bodhi? First, a body is what you already have – growing, and later aging, is its intrinsic nature, no matter how you may want it to be otherwise. Illness, disease, deterioration, weakening, hormonal imbalance is what you have to get used to in time to come. Heat and cold are what it has to adjust and address. It has its own nature of hunger too and also you have to relieve it when nature calls. You have to clean it, no doubt, otherwise, the smell coming thru can be pretty unbearable. Consider not brushing your teeth or bathing for a while! It is also. host to uncountable bacterias, worms, viruses and funguses.

Time and again you have mistaken the body for you. Hence, your body shape is extremely sensitive and important to you. As you look into the mirror, what you see you think is you. Sometimes you like the body, sometimes you don’t. Obviously, it is to show you that the body is a different entity since you can choose to like or dislike it unless you think the body is you and that you like or don’t like about yourself. So the question you need to get it clear is – the body is yours or you? The body is yours or the body is you are both two different sets of view. What about considering another new view – it is neither you or yours?

This new view can only occur when both the two earlier views are being challenged, investigated and observed over a period of time thru awareness, without bias conclusion.

Once both views are being debunked and demystified, you begin to notice clearly the body is just a body, neither you or yours. Yet, you may say that is just another view, no different from views promoting the other two experiences. So what makes one think the latest view is right and the other two wrong?

This question can only arise if we didn’t realize the difference between believing and understanding. Belief can be questioned, investigated and challenged. Belief can be overturned if it comes face to face with honest inquiry. Whereas understanding is not a belief. Understanding arises due to a long investigation without biases. It is opened to inquiry and test. Understanding or realization is a result of noticing realities, hence it is an indisputable fact.

These realizations or right understanding of the body or mind, unraveling its reality instead of the delusional concept of me, I, or mine leads to bodhi, overcoming the false idea that the body is you or yours.

So body or bodhi? Both have different consequences. Different realities except one is false, the other true.

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