Respect, care and love for your own body

Our body, with hair and skin, is derived from our parents. One should not hurt one’s own body in any way. This is the starting point of filial piety.

 (Hsiao Ching, Chapter 1: The Starting Point and the Principles)

The character xiao, which represents Filial Piety, is made up of two elements or components. Above we have a contraction of the independent character 老 (“lao”) elder. Below we have the component 子 (zi) which as an independent character means child. The image could not be more expressive: the son carrying his elderly parents on his shoulders.

Filial Piety, the foundation of all virtues: the respect and affection that children should bear towards their parents.

Confucius explains that the first requirement of Filial Piety precisely consists in respect, care and love for our own body.

In ancient times, the Chinese, when near-death, used to show their feet and hands to family and friends so that they could see the state of preservation in which they were and thus they could see how they had cared for their body up until the end.

DO NOT UNDERTAKE URINE THERAPY BLINDLY. We should not undertake urine therapy, or any type of therapy blindly, without knowledge, without conviction, without enthusiasm or reluctantly, just to “see”; or as if it were a therapy for the poor (indeed it is, and for the rich too!); or as if it were a last resort therapy and not as a first option therapy, as it should be for us.

You would be disrespectful to your own body and you could even harm it if you submitted it to a treatment which you do not trust, since with such an attitude no treatment, therapy or medicine could have any beneficial effect.

KNOWING WHAT IS YOURS AND WHAT IS ALIEN. Your disease, your health, and especially your tumor, your cancer, is part of you, it is you yourself, because in reality there are no parts, every part of you is your whole you.

Your disease, your tumor, your cancer, is not something alien to you, it is part of you, it is yourself. Love your tumor! Know it, love it, take care of it! Why talk of eradicating, extirpating, burning, as if we were talking about something alien to you, about your most intimate foe. There is nothing within you which is alien to you, which is not you yourself.

What is your own and what is not your own. Nothing in you is alien to you. You treat, we treat our body as being alien to us! When sick, it scares us. We don’t trust it.

BODY AND SOUL. We can speak of two different entities: body and soul.

I say “soul” instead of “conscience”, or “me”. I say “soul”, without any spiritual or religious connotations, to refer to the the intangible that is in me, intangible that I perceive as “I”, which is myself.

I call “body” everything that is tangible in me, the physical part of the self, the support of the soul. I call the instrument of the soul “body”. I call body what is my other self.

Our body is permanently and obediently at our service. I say to my mouth, “eat this” and it eats this, I say to my mouth eat that and eats that , often not taking into account the damage we may be doing to our body.

We are not aware of nor are we grateful for the huge number of actions our body performs at every instant. All operations destined to sustain the soul, operations that are at the service of the soul, of the self, of me myself.

THE SACRED. And we come to the sacred. Your body, your whole body, like your soul, is sacred, it is the most sacred thing you have. You can feel it that way, you have to feel it that way. There is nothing religious in it, or rather, there is nothing more religious, if by religious we mean the sacred. Religion, religere, what “link” us and unites us to the sacred: our body.

We live in the midst of the sacred. At all times!

There is nothing more sacred than your own body. And you do not have to be a believer or “religious person” to be able to love with all your soul, your son, your wife, your family, and of course, your own body!

Your body will never ask you to hurt it, “to save it.” Your body is not going to ask you to eradicate, suppress, extirpate or burn a part of yourself.

Illness, every illness is good news! It is a saving reaction of your body.

Your body is your best friend. Your body maintains the flame of life, of your life. Your body is the support of the soul that is you yourself. Your body is saving you and giving you life at every instant.

Life is not far away. Nature is not far away. And what is in life, in nature, in the sacred: is in you!

You have to treat your body better than you treat anyone else! Nobody loves you more. Nobody loves you more without asking you for anything in return. You tell it to go this way, and it goes this way, you tell it to go there, and it goes there. You tell it do this and he does this, you tell it do the other and he does the other. You ask it to endure this and that, and it will endure this and that.

Everyone can forsake you but your body will never forsake you. Some will abandon you because they never really loved you, cared for you or because they have stopped loving you. But even those who love you can forsake you when abandoning life.

Your body will never ever forsake you not even on the day of your death your body will abandon you, you will eventually abandon this life together.

What’s more, even after you die, your body still lives. Lost consciousness, your body still lives a little longer … … with the hope that you will wake up, that you will resurrect, and sometimes the miracle occurs and you are resurrected, or rather, you were not dead!

In short, we have to re-enter the realm of the sacred. Realm from which we should never have left. Because we are, were and have always been in the realm of the sacred, without being aware of it, from the day of our birth. We abandon the sacred when we are not aware that we were inside it. We trample on all that which is sacred when we live as if life were not all sacred, a miracle. We are not aware that we live by miracle and within a miracle.