The Body

This  collection was another of the assigned books in my MahaSati course.  These Dharma Reflections on Ageing, Sickness and Death by the Nuns of the Theravada Community were originally talks given at various meditation retreats.  While the talks do repeatedly reflect on sickness, old age, and death, they're mostly just standard Theravada dharma talks -- sutta heavy and focused on the four noble truths.  Since it seems that every time I come back to 'standard' material like this I always find something new, I hardly mean this observation as a criticism, and I quite enjoyed most of the talks.  I simply mean to observe that the subjects are treated more or less how they are always treated within Buddhism -- as the three divine messengers that help us turn towards our suffering.  So if you're looking for some way of transcending these conditions here, you are definitely barking up the wrong tree.  In fact, it would be more accurate to say that the talks encourage us to descend into these conditions, to really inhabit the suffering they create, and to gradually become attentive to, present in, patient with, and ultimately accepting of, whatever is happening right now.