R.I.P. RYAN BRANDT YOUNG

my friend brandt was killed in iraq yesterday. he was an ex-navy seal doing security contracting in iraq. he was driving the lead car in a convoy when he was blown up by a roadside bomb, and two others in the car with him were also killed.

he was a really good guy and i'll miss him.

this is the 2nd person i know that's been killed in iraq. my mom's old best friend's son was a soldier killed early in the war.

ugh.

Most attachment to women comes from
the belief that women's bodies are pure.
But in acutality there is no purity
in a woman's body at all.

Her mouth is a vessel of impurity,
with putrid saliva and gunk between her teeth;
Her nose is a pot of snot, phlegm and mucous,
and her eyes contain eye-slime and tears.

Her torso is a container of excrement,
holding urine, the lungs, liver and such.
The confused do not see that a woman is such;
thus, they lust after her body.

Like unknowing persons, who have become attached
to an ornamented vessel filled with filth,
Unknowing and confused worldly beings
are attached to women.

If the world is greatly attached
to the noxious objects that are bodies,
which should cause non-attachment,
how then can it be led to non-attachment?

Just as filth-loving pigs are greatly attached
to heaps of feces and urine,
so too the filth-loving pigs that are desirous people
are greatly attached to heaps of feces and urine.

Foolish persons imagine
that this city of bugs that is the body,
with cavities that are sources of filth,
is something conducive to pleasure.

When you yourself see the impurities
of excrement, urine and such,
how can the body, being composed of them,
be something pleasant for you?

It is produced by a seed of impure essence,
an admixture of ovum and semen.
How can the lustful be attached to it
when they know it is impure?

One who lies with this filthy mass,
covered with skin moistened by those fluids,
is doing nothing more than lying
on top of a woman's bladder.

Whether it be beautiful or ugly,
whether it be young or old,
the body of any woman is filthy,
so to what special quality could you be attached?

It is not right to yearn for
a pile of excrement, even if it has a nice color
or is very fresh or nicely shaped;
likewise, one should not yearn for a woman's body.

While the nature of this rotting corpse,
with its putrid core covered with skin,
looks extremely terrible,
why do the lustful not see it?

"The skin is not impure;
it is just like a soft cloth."
Like a leather bag filled with a turd,
how could it be clean?

While a vase filled with excrement
might glitter, it is still objectionable.
The body, whose nature is filth,
is filled with filth; why is it not objectionable?

If you object to excrement,
why not object to this body which takes
pure purfume, garlands, food and drink
and turns them into filth?

A pile of excrement is objectionable,
whether it be from you or someone else;
why not then object to these filthy bodies,
whether your own or someone else's?

Your own body is just as filthy
as the body of a woman.
So it doesn't make sense
to be non-attached to both the external and internal?

Even though you daily rinse off
the excretions from your nine gaping holes,
if you still do not realize that the body is impure,
then what is the point of explaining this to you?

Some compose erotic poetry
about this filthy body--
O, what shamelessness! What idiocy!
How worthy of people's contempt!

In this world, sentient beings,
obscured by the darkness of unknowing,
mostly quarrel about what they lust for,
like dogs fighting over filth.

If you scratch an itch, it feels good,
but it feels even better to have no itch at all.
So too, one is happy in obtaining worldly desires,
but there is greater happiness in having no desires at all.

When you analyze things in this fashion,
even if you are not freed from desires,
you will cease lusting after women
through the gradual decrease of your desire.

--Nagarjuna, 2nd century CE. "The Precious Garland: An Epistle to a King."