Hello, Bodom,
thanks for an interesting topic.
I've seen photographs of bodies too. Let me tell a bit more about this.
When I came across the cruel murder of Sharon Tate, who was over 8 months pregnant at the time and pleaded for the life of her child, I was gravely shocked.
I often contemplated how she must have felt. I do things like that as a meditation.
I try to refine my empathic skills this way, or develop more metta, or eliminate judgments and anger from my mind, and imagine that I am looking through their eyes, breathing through their lungs, feeling their complete life and so forth.
It can be an emotional ordeal, at first, but then you begin to develop a greater ability to withstand the pain and suffering, and you begin to understand their emotions, motivations, their suffering, also their defilements, and then compassion and forgiveness arises.
When I got internet, I googled many things and one of them was also Sharon. I found websites dedicated to her memory, one of them by Debra Tate, her younger sister.
Everything was set up in a beautiful, respectful way, her
life being the focus.
And then of course I also came upon websites which displayed the horrible side of her
death. I saw crime scene and coroner photos of her, and after studying them in depth, silently wept in front of the screen, because it happened to me that I felt a part of the absolute horror she felt, the pain and suffering of her husband and family, the confusion and fear of friends and the world.
It then occurred to me, that images like this must be horrifying to view for the loved ones of Sharon Tate.
I imagined for a brief moment how I or my brother or worse, how my father would have felt if my mother would have been murdered, and her body would have gotten displayed from each possible angle, for each stranger to view, and I felt anger arising, and the wish to protect her privacy, and my relatives from pain.
I am a little concerned that the intimacy of death is dragged into public view at the expense of those left behind.
The media provide a platform for things that go way beyond what a normal being would ever get to see in their whole life.
I am also concerned about young impressionable minds being overchallenged with gruesome details an older person can 'relativate'.
To come to your questions:
I personally don't feel guilty about the small desires I have in life.
I eat when hungry, and sleep when tired, and so forth, and am trying to get an enourmous schedule of work under control. I never seem to be done when it's time to go to bed.
I find this is keeping me on the right path...
Don't know if that answers your questions?
Metta,
Anna
