Śivasaṃhitā 1.90

The body as the field of karmic experience—not as an error but as an instrument. The description is anatomical and raw: flesh, bones, nerves, marrow, blood. There is no idealization. The Śivasaṃhitā looks at the body without illusions and, at the same time, without condemnation. The body is the ‘temple’ where accumulated karma is experienced. Like every temple, it can be a place of servitude or a place of liberation.

Kalpakāḥ (system builders, those who imagine and construct cosmologies) are the philosophers and theologians whose theories the chapter has summarized. Bhogamandira (temple of enjoyment and suffering) is the epithet for the body: a place where the jīva experiences the consequences of its karma. Māṃsāsthisnāyumajjādi (flesh, bones, nerves, marrow, and the rest) is the anatomical description that yoga must know in order to transcend it.

The stark vision of the body as a ‘temple of suffering’ also appears in Buddhist texts, especially in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, where meditation on the body includes contemplating its physical components—including corpses—to weaken attachment. The Śivasaṃhitā adopts a similar stance but integrates it into a different teleology: the body that suffers is also the body that can practice yoga and be liberated.