Bag of Bones: A Miscellany on the Body

The work is arranged as a miscellany of short teachings and reflections centered on kāyagatā-sati, mindfulness occupied with the body. It begins by explaining why the body is commonly mistaken as “me” or “mine,” and why Buddhist practice uses bodily contemplation as a corrective to sensual attachment and fear of aging, sickness, and death. The anthology then presents reflections on the advantages of mindfulness of the body, the thirty-two parts of the body, bones, charnel-ground contemplations, bodily decay, food, excretion, pain, old age, death, and the non-ownership of the body. Drawing from the Majjhima Nikāya, Aṅguttara Nikāya, Saṃyutta Nikāya, Dhammapada, Sutta-nipāta, Theragāthā, Therīgāthā, and later Buddhist reflections, the text consistently directs the reader toward disenchantment, moderation, mindfulness, and insight into the body as impermanent, conditioned, unattractive, painful, and not-self.