How can you develop a focus on ugliness in order to be neutral towards beauty?

The Watercooler
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Good day people, I hope you’re doing great.

After reading the next suttas…

“Mendicants, I do not see a single thing that gives rise to sensual desire,
or, when it has arisen, makes it increase and grow like the feature of
beauty. When you apply the mind irrationally to the feature of beauty,
sensual desire arises, and once arisen it increases and grows.” (AN 1.11)

and…

“Mendicants, I do not see a single thing that prevents sensual desire
from arising, or, when it has arisen, abandons it like the feature of
ugliness. When you apply the mind rationally to the feature of ugliness,
sensual desire does not arise, or, if it has already arisen, it’s given up.” (AN 1.16)

I came to the conclusion that I want to develop a focus on ugliness in order to prevent sensual desire to arise. Why, you may ask? Well, the reason is simple: I’d like to create a healthy neutrality towards beauty in order to truly mature this practice, which has already offered me a better sense of well-being and happiness; something that a few seconds of sexual activity couldn’t offer me these last years (I’m chaste, but for most of my time I relied on self-pleasure, and that fueled craving even more).

How can you develop a focus on ugliness being a lay practitioner? Why is it I make a stress on “lay practitioner”? Well, pretty simple too: I’m not a monk, so I can’t rely on seclusion all the time, and there are moments when I have to interact with people of all kind (beautiful women, not so-beautiful women and so on). And, to be even more clear: I like somebody else, but that person doesn’t like me as much as I do; that’s why I’m intent on focusing on ugliness, to avoid developing a strong attachment to people who are like me: subject to aging, sickness and death. I’m aware of this truth, but when I interact with women (especially with this particular person) I feel how desire arises; then it’s gone and leads to sadness for not being with that person. I don’t want to search for another person that increases that desire even more; that’s why I’m intent on doing this…

But anyway, that’s it for now. I hope I was clear enough. Looking forward to hear your answers.

May all of you be well and happy.

Side note: I don’t want to pretend I’m a greedy person who focuses on beauty all the time; it’s just that I’d like to take the practice a little bit further to enjoy its fruits even more.

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the term “perception of ugliness” is usually used to refer to specific meditation object: the asubha

asubha (not - attractive) traditionally done by observing dead body.

body dead for a week. two weeks. three weeks. And culminating in skeleton.

you can google it. Asubha

There’s another method which is: dividing and separating human bodies. Also known as contemplation of 32 parts of human body.

google it. 32 parts of human body meditation.

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The Girimananda sutta describes this:

AN10.60:6.1

And what is the perception of ugliness? It’s when a mendicant examines their own body up from the soles of the feet and down from the tips of the hairs, wrapped in skin and full of many kinds of filth. ‘In this body there is head hair, body hair, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, intestines, mesentery, undigested food, feces, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, grease, saliva, snot, synovial fluid, urine.’ And so they meditate observing ugliness in this body. This is called the perception of ugliness.

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Good day Venerable, thank you for sharing this sutta!
I have one question: how can I observe my lungs, intestines, undigested food, and all those factors that compose my body? I ask because it’s difficult for me to see my own bile or pus, for example. If it’s external like my hair or nails, then it’s a bit easier.
Thank you.

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Use the instructions in the suttas, Visuddhimagga, from contemporary teachers, etc. Explore, experiment, find what works for you. Memorizing the 32 parts is a good starting point (it’s not an exhaustive list). You can focus on a single part and explore it deeply, e.g. mentally repeat “teeth” and have the mind delve into and investigate them. You can take the parts of the body and lay them out in front of you on the floor in your mind and examine them. Then put them back together. Lots of ways to do it.

If you want images of things you can’t see, you can find videos of surgical operations.

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You can look up in anatomy books and then feel where those places are in your body.

There was a great documentary series which I think was called ‘the human body’ by a Dutch anatomist who would do live dissections on donated corpses but also have an artist drawn the organs on a living naked human. This was helpful to me.

The practice is meant yo make yousee these things as part of nature, part of the elements and become ‘cool’ towards them. It should be done as a reflection and visualisation exercise within your own body.

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In the suttas, there are so many ways to approach and deal with beauty, particularly for those whose conditioning and kamma around attraction, lust and longing towards others is a persistent and strong fetter.

Here are some thoughts I have (in no particular order):

Like others here, I think it’s best to focus on one’s own body in asuba, at least until theres a significant level of wisdom and equanimity towards the human body. Going straight to ugliness in others doesn’t sound like a good idea.
Seeing yourself and others without focusing on features and details goes a long way.
Even labeling something as “beautiful” can be a slippery slope.
One can get to the point where the features and details that one desires are more easily felt and perceived as just mundane and fleeting.
Desire and longing for another can be an opportunity to ask oneself what ultimately is important to you; the dukkha of craving for worldly desires that will carry over in rebirth or opportunities to begin to work towards understanding dukkha on the level of the Four Noble Truths.
Desire and longing can also shine a light in real time on how the processes of the 5 grasping aggregates is operating. When captivated by desire, one can direct mindfulness to contact, feeling, perception, proliferation and choices and how one is operating out of conditioned consciousness at that moment.
One can also interrupt the fantasy with the reality that the person of one’s infatuation does not have the capacity to quench one’s thirst for desire.
One can also remember that what you think now is just a projection and once you get to know that person intimately, they will be seen as imperfect or perhaps even undesirable.
Desire and longing for another can also show how worldly happiness hinges on getting something from the other person.
Seeing with Right View one’s own body and the bodies of others will chip away at the notion of self and ultimately can help overcome the biggest of the first fetters.

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Somewhere in the early part of the Anguttara Nikaya there is a pair of suttas which talk about training in perception, seeing the ugly in beautiful and the beautiful in the ugly. This can be an extremely good practice to see that these things are conditioned and impermanent.

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It seems like there are many discharges of the body that are observable from the exterior. Every body poops. Just because one does it alone in the toilet behind the closed door of the bathroom doesn’t mean the ugliness doesn’t exist. But how soon we forget the odor and appearance of this discharge once we flush. Every body leaks out of the nose. But again, we forget once we’ve thrown away the tissue. Most of us use deodorant because we leak fluids from our pores which gets squished together between our arms and torso in our arm pits. The odor emanates because of bacterium living on our skin which multiplies and is fed by the fluid leaking under our arms.

Yes, the labeling is a slippery slope for all parties involved.

I often think of Victorian era art depicting the most covetous women of the day. Those women would be labeled today as fat, lazy, and pasty. In order for those lusty ladies to have any chance, they would need to go on a strict diet, get a personal trainer, go to the hair dresser for a ‘blow-out’ and hit the tanning bed (or spray tanning studio) stat!

My mom always said (while not a direct quote from the EBTs, one born of wisdom), “Beauty is only skin deep.” I realize now that she was speaking in terms what we see not just externally but internally. This thought may be of assistance in looking past the external nature and trying to explore what may lie within this other being.

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I agree with the Anatomy book, very helpful. Also if you go to youtube and type in ‘autopsy video’ and

google ‘Tibetan sky burial’.

This reminds of when I went on a 6 day bushwalk back in the 2018 and didn’t shower at all until the last day when I checked in to the motel I was staying in.

As I was showering, I noticed that the water that was going down the drain was black. And I immediately looked up at the shower head where the water was coming out and saw it was fine.

That’s when I realized, that the reason the water was black, was due to how dirty my body (skin) was :grin:

The only reason your body seems ‘clean’ most of the time is because we wash it and it seems ‘clean’, but don’t wash it for a a few days and see how filthy it gets.

Then of course, there’s the famous story that Ajahn Brahm tells of when he did a number 2 just after he came out of a deep meditation and he marvelled at the beauty and aroma of his poop :grin:

LOL, “lusty ladies” :joy:

Yeah it’s all about perception isn’t, what was perceived as ‘attractive’ back then would not stack up today.

I’ve found in my own practice that, if I’m scrupulous with the amount of food that I eat, i.e. I eat just enough and not overeat, this seems to have an effect on desire (it weakens it). I think I might’ve even read a sutta that talks about how food can affect your sexual desire, but I could be wrong. Anyway I think keeping tabs on how much food you eat will help towards curbing your desire as well, along with developing the asubbha perception. Try it and see for yourself.

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I have actually been contemplating this very thought lately. I was thinking about a talk by Ajahn Brahm. In that talk he mentioned all of the dead skin cells that are at all times flaking and falling from our bodies. Then I started thinking about hair and what is living in it. This little beauty has adapted to only living on humans.

Demodex folliculorum

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So, I suppose it is to say is that ‘clean’ is another of those very relative words. Even after you clean or shower you are still ‘showering’ the earth with your dead hair, follicles, skin and flakes of your nails.

And when you ‘clean’ yourself, that’s just the outside. Imagine what’s living and creeping around inside. When you poop, it’s not just your poop…we have many organisms (to whom we have gratitude for keeping us alive) going about their duties inside our bodies.

Maybe I’m getting a bit off track on this one…but again the delusion of beauty being in the eye of the beholder. It all depends on what you chose to perceive.

Oho yes, and who doesn’t love the number 2 story. :sweat_smile:

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I love the teaching on the Eight Worldly Conditions! This is found in AN 8.5 and AN 8.6

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