釋禪波羅蜜次第法門 8.18

8.18

Next is contemplating physical form as suchness. Since the practitioner knows that the breath depends on the body and that apart from the body there is no breath, one should attentively contemplate the suchness of the body’s form. This physical form originally does not exist; it is entirely due to the conditions of past delusive thoughts attracting the four great elements and derived matter of this life to enclose empty space, conventionally termed “the body.” With single-minded attention, one carefully contemplates the six parts such as the head, the thirty-six bodily components, and the four great elements and four subtle atoms, finding that not one of them is the body. The four subtle atoms and four great elements are also each not real; since they do not exist by themselves, how could they produce a body of six parts and thirty-six components? When no bodily form can be apprehended, at that time the mind is non-differentiating, which is penetrating the suchness of physical form.