The gross body
What is the gross body? It is made from the five great elements once they are fivefold-compounded, born of past action, the dwelling where pleasure and pain are met. It is, it is born, it grows, it ripens, it wanes, it perishes. Marked by these six changes, this is the gross body.
What is the gross body (sthūla-śarīra)? It is formed from the five great elements after they have been quintuplicated (pañcīkaraṇa), is produced by past karma, and is the place where pleasure and pain are experienced. It undergoes six changes: it exists, is born, grows, matures, declines, and dies. The body with these six changes is the gross body.
- sthūla-śarīra
The body exists, is born, grows, ripens, wanes, and perishes. Why does walking through these six changes matter for the inquiry into the Self?
- It records the medical stages of a human life, from the womb to death.
- It shows the body as something witnessed, a thing had and let go, and so not the changeless Self that watches it.
- It proves the body is built from the five elements rather than from the mind.
- It marks the body as the instrument through which the Self acts in the world.
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What the body is, and is not
The question turns the inquiry around. A moment ago the Self stood apart from the three bodies; now the first of them is set before you, the gross body, the one you can touch, named carefully so you can see it for exactly what it is.
What it is made of: the five great elements, but compounded, each one mixed with portions of the others, so that it stands solid and tangible, a thing among the things of the world. Where it comes from: past action, so that this body is a fruit you are now wearing, given rather than chosen. What it is for: it is the place where pleasure and pain are met, the dwelling in which experience arrives. The next body, the subtle one, will be the instrument of experience; this one is its home.
And then the six changes: it exists, is born, grows, ripens, wanes, perishes. To say this is not to give the stages of a life. It is to set the body before you as something with edges, something that came and will go, something you watch arrive and will watch depart. What is watched is had, and what is had can be let go.
So the careful naming does its quiet work. The body is real, and it is described exactly, and in being described this exactly it is gently put down: this much you are made to carry and to lose; this is not the one who carries it. You are handed the body so you can set it where it belongs, and look for the witness elsewhere.
The body is born, grows, and will perish; are you that, or the one before whom it comes and goes?
In the commentaries
Having set the Self apart from the three bodies, the inquiry now turns and takes up the first of them, so the seeker can see plainly what is being set aside. The gross body is named by four marks: what it is made of, the five great elements once they are compounded (pañcīkṛta), so that it stands solid and tangible among solid things; where it comes from, past action, so that this body is a fruit one is wearing, not a thing one chose; what it is for, a dwelling (bhogāyatana) where pleasure and pain are met; and that it carries six changes, it exists, is born, grows, ripens, wanes, perishes. To list these six is not to give the stages of a life but to show the body as something with edges, a thing that comes and will go. What comes and goes is witnessed, and the witness is not what it watches; so the gross body, precisely because it is described this carefully, is gently set down as the not-Self of the verse before.