Bodhicharyavatara Chapter 8, Stanzas 40-42

Ringu Tulku Rinpoche
Teachings on Bodhicharyavatara
Chapter 8: Meditation
Session 17
Stanzas 40-42

The next verses continue to address one of the strongest attachments in the human world: that of sexual desire. If it is allowed to take hold in the wrong time or place, say if we are part of a monastic community, or when someone doesn’t return our attention, it can cause us to lose control and do terrible things often against our better judgement.

When wrongly directed, this type of desire can lead to loss of reputation, family, wealth, happiness, the opposite of what we are looking for.

This is why it is so important to be in charge of our own desirous emotions, and in the case of another person being the object of our attachment, one way of working with that is to imagine that body as a skeleton, as flesh, blood and organs that are going to age, become ugly and disintegrate.

It is important to understand that the apparent disdain in these verses for the female body actually relates to the harm that uncontrolled desires can bring when the mind is not trained to see the lustful thoughts for what they are and manage them.

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