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fluidity, heat, and oscillation. The solid element is seen most clearly in the body's solid
parts the organs, tissues, and bones; the fluid element, in the bodily fluids; the heat
element, in the body's temperature; the oscillation element, in the respiratory process.
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The break with the identification of the body as "I" or "my self" is effected by a widening
of perspective after the elements have come into view. Having analyzed the body into
the elements, one then considers that all four elements, the chief aspects of bodily
existence, are essentially identical with the chief aspects of external matter, with which
the body is in constant interchange. When one vividly realizes this through prolonged
meditation, one ceases to identify with the body, ceases to cling to it. One sees that the
body is nothing more than a particular configuration of changing material processes
which support a stream of changing mental processes. There is nothing here that can be
considered a truly existent self, nothing that can provide a substantial basis for the
sense of personal identity. [58]
The last exercise in mindfulness of the body is a series of "cemetery meditations,"
contemplations of the body's disintegration after death, which may be performed either
imaginatively, with the aid of pictures, or through direct confrontation with a corpse. By
any of these means one obtains a clear mental image of a decomposing body, then
applies the process to one's own body, considering: "This body, now so full of life, has
the same nature and is subject to the same fate. It cannot escape death, cannot escape
disintegration, but must eventually die and decompose." Again, the purpose of this
meditation should not be misunderstood. The aim is not to indulge in a morbid
fascination with death and corpses, but to sunder our egoistic clinging to existence with
a contemplation sufficiently powerful to break its hold. The clinging to existence subsists
through the implicit assumption of permanence. In the sight of a corpse we meet the
teacher who proclaims unambiguously: "Everything formed is impermanent."
The next foundation of mindfulness is feeling (vedana). The word "feeling" is used here,
not in the sense of emotion (a complex phenomenon best subsumed under the third and
fourth foundations of mindfulness), but in the narrower sense of the affective tone or
"hedonic quality" of experience. This may be of three kinds, yielding three principal
types of feeling: pleasant feeling, painful feeling, and neutral feeling. The Buddha
teaches that feeling is an inseparable concomitant of consciousness, since every act of
knowing is colored by some affective tone. Thus feeling is present at every moment of
experience; it may be strong or weak, clear or indistinct, but some feeling must
accompany the cognition.
Feeling arises in dependence on a mental event called "contact" (phassa). Contact marks
the "coming together" of consciousness with the object via a sense faculty; it is the
factor by virtue of which consciousness "touches" the object presenting itself to the mind
through the sense organ. Thus there are six kinds of contact distinguished by the six
sense faculties eye-contact, ear-contact, nose-contact, tongue-contact, body-contact,
and mind-contact and six kinds of feeling distinguished by the contact from which
they spring.
Feeling acquires special importance as an object of contemplation because it is feeling
that usually triggers the latent defilements into activity. The feelings may not be clearly
registered, but in subtle ways they nourish and sustain the dispositions to unwholesome
states. Thus when a pleasant feeling arises, we fall under the influence of the defilement
greed and cling to it. When a painful feeling occurs, we respond with displeasure, hate,
and fear, which are aspects of aversion. And when a neutral feeling occurs, we generally
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