If Your Hand Causes You to Sin, Cut It Off

Join us for the Peaceful Families; Peaceful World workshop, August 26th to August 28th in Harpers Ferry WV and online.
August 26- Abstinence-Centered Curriculum Training
August 27- Exposition of the Divine Principle Study
August 28- Strengthening Families and Communities Forum

Cheon Seong Gyeong 476

When receiving the Blessing, Unification Church couples pledge to live as eternal families. I am the one who governs eternal families and the eternal nation. I am setting the standard of families in the eternal nation. Those of you who keep your promise can inherit that family, as well as that eternal nation. (205-359, 1990.10.2)

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1342

The 72 Couples correspond to Jesus’ seventy-two disciples. As they succeed in laying a foundation of indemnity on earth, God’s providence can expand. Through the unity of the 72 Couples representing Cain and Abel with the 36 Couples representing Adam and Eve, all providential requirements for the family have been met, and the restoration of the family has been completed. Such is the significance of the Blessing up to the 72 Couples. With the accomplishment of the 72 Couples Blessing, a God-centered foundation was achieved on earth for the first time, both horizontally and vertically, and thereby, a central standard was set up. Thus, the vertical foothold – a central point that should be determined through God’s providence – can be established only when the 36 and 72 Couples are united as the perfected victors of history. Once that central point is determined, the victorious realm of the central ancestors desired by God will finally have been fulfilled. This perfect foundation must be developed horizontally on earth. (55-167, 1972.5.7)

Subduing the Desires of the Flesh

2. Feeling Revulsion for the Body and the Corrupt Senses

If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell.
    Mark 9.43-47 In Jivaka’s pleasant wood walked the nun Subha. A gallant met her there and barred the way. Subha said to him, “What have I done to offend you, that you stand obstructing me? For it is not fitting, sir, that a man should touch a sister in orders…” “You are young, a maiden, and faultless— what do you seek in the holy life? Cast off that yellow robe and come! In the blossoming woodland let us seek our pleasure… If you will do my bidding, come where the joys of the sheltered life await you; dwell in a house of verandas and terraces…”
    “What so infatuates you about this carcass, filled with carrion, to fill a grave, so fragile, that it seems to warrant such words?”
    “Eyes you have like a gazelle’s, like an elf’s in the heart of the mountains—‘tis those eyes of yours, sight of which feeds the depth of my passion. Shrined in your dazzling, immaculate face as in the calyx of a lotus, ‘tis those eye of yours, sight of which feeds the strength of my passion…”
    “O you are blind! You chase a sham… What is this eye but a little ball lodged in the fork of a hollow tree, bubble of film, anointed with tearbrine, exuding slime-drops, compost wrought in the shape of an eye of manifold aspects?”
    Forthwith the maiden so lovely tore out her eye and gave it to him. “Here, then! Take your eye!” Her heart unattached, she sinned not.
    Straightaway the lust in him ceased and he begged her pardon. “O pure and holy maid, would that you might recover your sight! Never again will I do such a thing. You have sore smitten my sin; blazing flames have I clasped to my bosom; a poisonous snake I have handled— but O, be healed and forgive me!”
    Freed from molesting, the nun went on her way to the Buddha, chief of the Awakened. There in his presence, seeing those features born of utmost merit, her eye was restored.
    Therigatha 366-99 (Buddhism)

The body, brethren, is not the self. If body were the self, this body would not be subject to sickness, and one could say of body, “Let my body be thus; let my body not be thus.” But inasmuch as body is not the self, that is why body is subject to sickness, and one cannot say of body, “Let my body be thus; let my body not be thus.”…
    Now what do you think, brethren, is body permanent or impermanent? [Impermanent, Lord.] And is the impermanent painful or pleasant? [Painful, Lord.] Then what is impermanent, painful, and unstable by nature, is it fitting to consider as, “this is mine, this am I, this is my self”? [Surely not, Lord.]…
    Therefore, brethren, every body whatever, be it past, future, or present, be it inward or outward, gross or subtle, lowly or eminent, far or near—every body should be thus regarded, as it really is, by right insight—”this is not mine; this am not I; this is not my self.”
    Samyutta Nikaya 3.68 (Buddhism)

He who delights in subduing evil thoughts, who meditates on the loathsomeness of the body, who is ever mindful—it is he who will make an end of craving. He will sever Mara’s bond.
    Dhammapada 350 (Buddhism)

The mouth is a vessel filled with foul
Saliva and filth between the teeth,
The nose with fluids, snot, and mucus,
The eyes with their own filth and tears.
The body is a vessel filled
With excrement, urine, lungs, and liver;
He whose vision is obscured and does not see
A woman thus, lusts for her body.
This filthy city of a body,
With protruding holes for the elements
Is called by stupid beings
An object of pleasure.
Why should you lust desirously for this
While recognizing it as a filthy form
Produced by a seed whose essence is filth,
A mixture of blood and semen?
He who lies on the filthy mass
Covered by skin moistened with
Those fluids, merely lies
On top of a woman’s bladder.
    Nagarjuna, Precious Garland 149-57 (Buddhism)

Get back, I hate you!
Don’t hold my sari, you fool!
A she-buffalo is worried of its life,
And the butcher, of its killing!
The pious think of virtues,
And the wicked, of vices;
I am worried of my soul,
And you, of lust…

Fie on this body!
Why do you damn yourself
In love of it—this pot of excrement,
The vessel of urine, the frame of bones,
This stench of purulence!
Think of Lord Shiva,
You fool!16
    Akkamahadevi, Vacana 15 and 33 (Hinduism)

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