The first of the five carita-viśodhana ālambana — meditation objects matched to specific temperaments — corresponding to the rāga-carita (lust-temperament) practitioner. The Śrāvakabhūmi enumerates six modes of the unattractive: pratyaśubhatā (the inherent mode), duḥkhāśubhatā (the suffering mode), avarāśubhatā (the inferior mode), āpekṣikī aśubhatā (the relative mode), kleśāśubhatā (the defilement mode), and prabhaṅgurāśubhatā (the perishability mode). The chapter then focuses especially on the inherent mode, split into inward impurity and outward cemetery repulsiveness, as the primary object for purifying lust.
What is the unattractive?
It is said: The unattractive has six modes. Namely: the inherent mode, the suffering mode, the inferior mode, the relative mode, the defilement mode, and the perishability mode.
What is the inherent mode?
It is said: The inherent mode has two aspects: taken inwardly, and taken outwardly.
Taken inwardly: hair of the head, body hair, nails, teeth, dust, dirt, skin, flesh, bone, sinew, vein, kidneys, heart, spleen, lungs, intestines, mesentery, stomach contents, bowel contents, urine, feces, tears, sweat, saliva, mucus, fat, lymph, marrow, grease, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, [Damaged/Conjectural: brain], cranial fluid, urine.
Taken outwardly, what is the repulsive aspect?
The discolored, the festering, the bursting, the swollen, the gnawed; the bloody-skeletal; the dispersed; the bone; the skeleton. Or: things made of excrement, urine, saliva, or mucus; things smeared with blood or pus; dung-heaps, gutters. And anything else of this kind — this is outward inherent repulsiveness. Inward impurity and outward repulsiveness together — this is called the inherent mode [pratyaśubhatā].
What is the suffering mode?
What arises in dependence on a contact to be felt as painful — bodily and mental, the disagreeable felt experience. This is called the suffering mode.
What is the inferior mode?
Whatever is the most inferior substance, the most inferior realm — namely, the desire-realm. There is no realm more inferior, lower, or more rejected than this. This is called the inferior mode.
What is the relative mode?
A certain object, although in itself fair, is reckoned unattractive in relation to something fairer. For example: in relation to the formless realm, the form-realm is reckoned unattractive. And: in relation to nirvāṇa, the cessation of satkāya, existence up to the peak of existence is reckoned unattractive existence. This is the relative mode of this kind.
All the fetters, bondages, latent tendencies, and secondary defilements operating in the three realms — this is called the defilement mode.
What is the perishability mode?
The impermanence, unsteadiness, unreliability, and nature of change of the five aggregates of clinging. This is the form of the unattractive used for purifying the lustful-temperament practitioner; it is the [meditative] object.
Concerning that lust, namely: inwardly toward sense-pleasures, sense-desire and sense-lust; outwardly toward sense-pleasures, sexual desire and sexual lust; sense-object desire and sense-object lust; form-desire and form-lust; satkāya-desire and satkāya-lust; this is fivefold lust. For the abandoning, dispelling, and non-occurrence of this fivefold lust, the six modes of the unattractive are the [appropriate] object.
Of these: taken inwardly — by the inward inherent-impurity object, he purifies the mind from sense-desire and sense-lust toward inward sense-pleasures. By the outward inherent-repulsiveness object, he purifies the mind from the four kinds of lust outwardly conjoined — color-lust, shape-lust, contact-lust, and approach-lust.
When he attends to the discolored, the festering, the bursting, or the swollen, then he purifies the mind from color-lust. When he attends to the bloody-skeletal, then he purifies the mind from shape-lust. When he attends to the bone or the skeleton, then he purifies the mind from contact-lust. When he attends to the dispersed, he purifies the mind from approach-lust.
Therefore: the outward inherent-repulsiveness was established by the Blessed One in the four charnel-ground reflections. Whatever charnel-ground he has seen — one day dead, or seven days dead, being eaten by crows, vultures, dogs, jackals — there, there, he draws the body-comparison to himself: "This body of mine is also of such a nature, of such a coming-to-be, has not gone beyond such a dharmatā." By this much, the cemetery progression from the discolored to the gnawed has been named. When he further says: "The charnel-ground he has seen — skin, flesh, and blood gone, well-bound" — by this, the bloody-skeletal has been named. When he further says: "Those very charnel-ground sites — the spine, the jawbone, the row of teeth, the skull — broken and rebroken, of one year, two years, up to seven years, white, conch-colored, dove-colored, mixed with dust-color, are seen" — by this, the dispersed has been named.
Thus, by the outward-conjoined inherent-repulsiveness object as an allied [antidote], he purifies the mind from lust. By the suffering-mode object and the inferior-mode object, he purifies the mind from sense-object-conjoined sense-lust. By the relative-mode object, he purifies the mind from form-lust. By the defilement-mode object and the perishability-mode object — covering the desire-realm up to the peak of existence — he purifies the mind from all body-lust. This much is said regarding the object-basis for conduct-purification in the lust-conduct practitioner. The whole sixfold object-domain of the unattractive is included here; what is properly intended in this context is the inherent mode. The other five modes are objects also useful for the purification of other temperaments.