Check it out for yourself. Perhaps your body needs very little food, but your grasping attachment to over-eating makes you fat, heavy and uncomfortable. At the same time, you also worry about losing your beauty; these two things are in conflict. So which do you choose, the ego's wish for a beautiful body or the attachment to eating food? Look into your mind; find the one you cling to most. One mind is there, grasping at beauty; the other is there too, knowing consciously that if you eat too much you'll get fat and destroy whatever beauty you have. Still, you can't stop eating; these two minds agitate you, give you a psychological beating. But despite their constantly mashing you, you keep saying "Yes, yes, yes...." It's funny.
So funny. Completely. The human mind is so funny. So silly, if you really check up. The idea that thin is beautiful, fat is ugly comes from the mind. Of course, I agree, if you are too fat it can be physically unhealthy; that's OK. But the idea, the picture created by attachment and desire of what is beautiful, what is ugly, is so silly, isn't it? It's not the reality of the fat that bothers you but the idea that it's unattractive. Why? Because you are clinging to reputation, worried about what other people think of you. I tell you, the mother sentient beings on this earth are so silly. People in one country think something is pretty; people in another country think the same thing is ugly. Here, this is bad; there, it is good. To some, this is beautiful; to others something else is beautiful. It's all made up; they're just different ideas.
Otherwise, where is the external, permanent, absolute beauty? It is only the way our ego mind interprets objects that makes them beautiful or ugly. You check up; it's so simple. When you do the body sweeping meditation, for example, where your mind examines every part of your body, try to find the beauty. Check up: what's beautiful, which part are you clinging to as beautiful? Check up: your interpretation of what's beautiful and what's ugly is so superficial; it's just your ego's projection, but it makes you so confused. You're confused even now. You don't know any longer what is good or what is bad. Really!
Look at the confused young women of today. They run from one man to another, to another, to another, another man, another man, another man...they experience so much trouble, more trouble, so much trouble. But at the same time, they're expecting, "Maybe this one will be good for me, maybe that one will be good for me...." These are such superficial experiences, all mental projections, projections painted by their egos. "Maybe this, maybe this," with expectation, " Maybe this, maybe this, maybe this...." No satisfaction at all; always trouble.
Perhaps you're thinking, "Oh, Lama's putting women down too much." Men are the same thing! Such deluded men. They change their wives, change, change, change, superficially discriminating, "Good, good, good...." Then, after a while "good" turns to "bad," so they change again. Then good, then bad, then change; then good, then bad, then change. Their judgment, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, is so completely superficial; it has nothing whatsoever to do with reality, either inner or outer. There's no understanding, no communication, and such fear and insecurity, all because of ego and attachment.
Continued
