The Hip Bone's Connected to the Leg Bone

My sweetie is wearing his los muertos shirt every evening that we go out to dinner in the ghost town of Terlingua, Texas. I like to point out the skeleton playing the (upright) piano on his shirt, since my sweetie is a concert pianist. His shirt also features a skeleton mariachi band, a male skeleton drinking beer, and a lady skeleton dancing.

"Seeing" the skeleton in yourself as well as in everyone else is one of the meditations on the body recommended by the Buddha. An easy form of the "32 Parts of the Body" meditation is to simply become aware of 3 of the parts--skin, flesh, and bones. Try it during your next meditation. Become aware of skin. Then imagine the flesh, muscle, tendons, ligaments, and fascia--perhaps rather quickly. Finally, become aware of the bones underneath the flesh. I do a quick scan from cranium down the neck bones to the shoulder bones all the way down to the toe bones.

When you stop to think about it, our skeleton might last a heck of a lot longer than our fleshly bodies. Let's stop taking it for granted, and simply notice that we are all walking-talking skeletons.

Ghost Town

We are in Terlingua, Texas, a ghost town, staying at an Airbnb mining ruin. This miner's hut has been artfully refurbished with all the modern conveniences. Nearby stand ruins of other rock huts--two-room falling-down houses without their roofs.

The Buddha refers to our six senses as a ghost town. Specifically he is referring to our internal senses, which I would call the virtual reality of our thoughts. We see/hear/feel our thoughts and take them to be reality. But when you look more closely, you find only empty huts of seeing thoughts, empty huts of hearing thoughts, empty huts of feeling thoughts. All here and gone in a flash. But continuous enough to feel real, to feel that we ourselves have some reality.

But really, it's all a ghost town.

Building a Brush Pile

The warm weather (55 degrees here in the North Country) calls me outdoors. Of course, i find something "to do": pick up sticks and build a brush pile. My ulterior motive is a bonfire on winter solstice.

For now, i walk around my gardens and collect downed sticks and limbs. The pole bean poles are obvious candidates. My woodland walk produces a pile of sticks and branches as tall as i am. Later, i will throw rotted compost bin pallets on top of the brush pile to give the solstice bonfire a satisfying crackle and flame.

You could say i am cremating the old garden, burning up the old year.

The perennial garden is mostly dormant, except for a few hardy johnny-jump-ups that lay low. The vegetable garden and the annual flower beds are mostly dead.

I walk through the "ghost town" of my garden knowing that one day my own life will be a ghost town too.