Revulsion of food, and how much revulsion should be in asubha, especially when done with jhana?

 Very interesting response to my article on 

• "Jhanitator, Arahant Maker"

   recently.

From 

https://www.reddit.com/r/theravada/comments/kr2m2c/tired_of_being_an_underachiever_i_have_the/

My comments and follow up questions after.

level 1

island-hermitage

17 hours ago

It's an interesting idea. Some years ago, before I started practicing Dhamma, I developed anorexia (eating very very little and overexercising a lot) to a rather extreme extent, and had to be hospitalised for several months. It's been a long time now since I gave this up, and I have thought more times than I can count how ridiculous it is that I cannot put the same amount of absolute determination into practicing Dhamma as I previously put into being anorexic!!
By the time I was hospitalised, I had (unintentionally) trained my mind to such an extent that any food that normally would taste 'good' (cake, pizza, chocolate, and so on) was disgusting for me and would make me want to vomit. (not that the actual taste changed, but that there was nothing whatsoever agreeable in it.)
Why should it be so much more difficult to train the mind to be equanimous in regard to any sensory object? How come I am more ''loose'' in my practice of Dhamma than I was in such a stupid, wrong, pointless way of behaving? There are several kinds of ''techniques of anorexia'' I could adopt, for example mentally ''counting'' moments of akusala in the same way I would have counted calories. But I think there's something else that is the bigger problem. Whatever we do that is done for the sake of removing defilements, for the sake of purity, is always going to be more difficult and harder to maintain than whatever is done with defilements, and for the sake of our own desires.

Frankk response and follow up question

lucid24-frankk

just now

By the time I was hospitalised, I had (unintentionally) trained my mind to such an extent that any food that normally would taste 'good' (cake, pizza, chocolate, and so on) was disgusting for me and would make me want to vomit. (not that the actual taste changed, but that there was nothing whatsoever agreeable in it.)

Going on a tangent here, what you wrote there sounds similar to what Ajahn Lee wrote in one of his books about practicing revulsion of food, and not being able to eat for many days. Two questions here, to anyone who might know:

1. is revulsion of food only talked about in Vism., or do the suttas say anything about this practice?

2. And in the more general sense asubha, does the Buddha in the suttas, ever clearly say if asubha should be taken to this extreme (as the commenter above shared with the food revulsion)? Obviously we should not be revulsed to the point of committing suicide as this sutta explains. SN 54.9 Vesālī: (name of place)
   suicide of scores of bhikkhus because of asubha practice.
   ananda says: "it would be good if the blessed one explained another method of establishing final knowledge."
   16APS is then taught as an additional tool.

But it was never clear to me how could there be any revulsion as in the food example if 31 body parts practice can be practiced simultaneously with first jhana, as vimt. and vism. state, as there would be domanassa and dukkha.

So in my practice, my asubha with jhana is not revulsion as in the food example of feeling physical pain and discomfort , but more of the sense of seeing it being unattractive and not worth pursuing. I suspect I don't have enough of a revulsion aspect incorporated, but don't know exactly how to adjust it.