RE: ārammaṇa
Thank you for the Sanskrit!
Forgoing “spot”, “foothold” seems to fit quite well.
I would humbly add that only a few years ago, I found it hard to imagine being able to be sensitive to my ‘philtrum’(?). While the purpose of dispassion for body is undeniably salient, I can only imagine just how viscerally you’d begin to know the locations of the internals of the human body observing corpses for days on end. Which…is the picture of the very original practice I get from the texts at any rate.
[details=In this vein…]In this vein, there’s a quote from the introduction of a book by a Kenneth G. Zysk (Asceticism and Healing in Ancient India, 1998) that I found very novel:
Medicine in the Buddhist monastery received special attention because, like the Christian monasteries and nunneries of the European Middle Ages, communities of Buddhist monks and nuns played a significant role in the institutionalization of medicine. Indeed, an understanding of the social history of Buddhism is incomplete without a full elucidation of Buddhism’s involvement in the healing arts. The codification of medical practices within the monastic rules accomplished perhaps the first systematization of Indian medical knowledge and probably provided the model for later handbooks of medical practice; the monk-healers’ extension of medical care to the populace and the appearance of specialized monastic structures serving as hospices and infirmaries increased the popularity of Buddhism and ensured ongoing support of the monasteries by the laity; and the integration of medicine into the curricula of major monastic universities made it a scholastic discipline. In India and elsewhere in Asia, Buddhism throughout its history maintained a close relationship with the healing arts, held healers in high esteem, and perhaps best exemplified the efficacious blending of medicine and religion. Even today, monks in the Buddhist countries of South and Southeast Asia treat patients for a variety of illnesses, and monasteries often include infirmaries in their compounds. This long-lasting union of religion and medicine in Buddhism contrasts sharply with their separation in Western civilization.
I wouldn’t be able to comment on the extent to which the texts corroborate the author’s theses however.[/details]