For the vast majority of people, the heaviest thought is the thought of sexual desire

Only when you have a deep, abiding awareness of this body’s impurity—when you turn that awareness to yourself, and to all men and women, seeing that every one of us is exactly the same—can genuine revulsion and weariness well up from within! When that deep revulsion and weariness take hold, the fire of sexual desire transforms into the light of wisdom, and the mind finds cool peace. Only then will reciting the Buddha’s name create a true resonance between you and the Way. All of you must face this directly, and hold it in calm, steady awareness.

Most practitioners who come out of retreat will tell you that the heaviest thought they carry, by far the one that outweighs all others, is the thought of sexual desire. This isn’t something any of us can lie to ourselves—or others—about. We’re born into this world carrying the affliction of sexual desire, so all the temptations this world offers are built around it.

Look at ads today: nearly all of them are aimed right at this urge. TV shows, the internet, most online content—isn’t it all tilted toward sex, toward temptation? This is just a reflection of what goes on in the minds of sentient beings. When this affliction is the heaviest weight in our minds, the content we consume will always lean that way.

Living in this desire realm, especially in this entertainment-saturated age—an era where spiritual seeking has been pushed to the very edges of our lives—sexual desire is a more dominant affliction than ever before. What do most people work for, when they earn money? Almost all of it goes to satisfying their sexual cravings. We live in this environment, bombarded by its temptations, flooded with information through everything we see, hear, and take in. That’s why we need to use the dharma medicine of impurity contemplation, and take it in a higher dose.

Do not gaze at what is improper, do not listen to what is improper, do not speak of what is improper, do not act on what is improper. You must hold the precepts firmly, especially the precept against sexual misconduct: for lay followers, this is the lay precept against sexual misconduct; for those who have left home, it is the precept of full celibacy. These must be kept utterly pure. Make this vow: better to die upholding the precepts than to live having broken them. Many lay practitioners who take the five precepts end up breaking them, and most often it is the precept against sexual misconduct they break—precisely because this affliction is the heaviest of all. Even when they know it is wrong, they lack the strength to restrain themselves. That is why you must practice the contemplation of impurity without ceasing.

Make this vow each day: may I forever leave the three realms—the wheel of birth and death itself. In the desire realm especially, the affliction of sexual desire between men and women is the heaviest of all. The Buddha once said that if there were even one other affliction as heavy as sexual desire, not a single person in this world could succeed in walking the Path. It is a mercy that there is only this one, so we can still gather all our strength to work against it. That is why you must vow to turn away from the “mixed foods” of the three realms—grains, cereals, all the fare we eat. No matter what kind of food enters this body, it all turns to urine and feces, to pus and blood.

This blood is filthy, impure. These days there is a treatment called bloodletting: a gun-shaped lancet pierces the skin, then a fire cupping jar is placed over the spot to draw out the blood. Look at the blood that comes from a sick person: it is dark, murky, almost black. It is foul pus and blood—utterly impure! And then there is our fierce greed and attachment to wealth, sex, fame, food, and sleep! The male and female body: born as a man, you cling to women; born as a woman, you cling to men! It is simply the nature of this body. These are among the heaviest afflictions we carry.

It is this karmic-reward body that keeps us from being our own master, driven as we are by its cravings. That is why you must vow to forever leave behind this karmic-reward body of male and female in the desire realm, with all its manifold afflictions, all its endless cravings. Vow to attain the dharma-nature birth body of the Pure Land—this is the Tathagata body. The Tathagata body is the sum of all merits and virtues: precepts, concentration, wisdom, the six perfections, the thirty-seven factors of enlightenment, all condensed into one body from measureless merit. Born of ultimate reality, the Tathagata body is pure. It is the vajra Narayana body, no longer made of flesh and blood, but a body of empty clarity, a body without limit! Vow to bring forth this Tathagata body, and leave behind the afflicted, karmically driven karmic-reward body of the ordinary being.

This is how you accomplish the practice of revulsion and weariness. This revulsion must well up from the depths of your heart: a true revulsion toward your own body, toward your own mind-consciousness, the deluded mind; revulsion toward the impure Saha world, the external environment called into being by this mind-consciousness, by this body and mind. You must let go of everything in an instant, with not a trace of greed or attachment left in your mind—you must truly feel this revulsion. Revulsion is a visceral response: it is to detest something fully, to reject it with every fiber of your being.

Only with this mindset of revulsion will the conditions for leaving take shape. Once you have truly let go, the five desires and six sense objects of the Saha world, your family and loved ones, no longer have any hold over you. In your mind, you have already let go of them, you have already left. Even if you have not yet been reborn in the Western Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss, even if you still have to play your part in this world, you know you are just an actor in a play. The intense, fierce attachments you once held are gone. You go through the motions of the role you are playing; it is only a matter of fulfilling your responsibilities and duties. This is what it means to accomplish the practice of revulsion and weariness.

This mind of revulsion and weariness is absolutely essential. You will be like an arrow released from a bowstring, shot straight toward its target. If your heart still clings to the five desires and six sense objects, to the cravings of this karmic-reward body, it is like a boat trying to leave harbor, but a wooden stake is driven into the seabed, a rope tied fast around it—you cannot move. You must pull out the stake of greed and attachment, cut the rope. Only then can this boat set sail.

So I hope that all of us, looking back over immeasurable kalpas, having never once generated even a single thought of revulsion or weariness toward the five desires and six sense objects, toward this karmic-reward body and mind, will feel deep remorse. In this life, we have heard the Pure Land Dharma gate, we know the Buddhas wish for us to leave the three realms, and have been prescribed the dharma medicines of impurity contemplation and the ten contemplations. Let us practice them earnestly, accomplish our practice of revulsion and weariness, and give rise to deep joy, gratitude, and gladness.