Understanding the Body as a House : หน้า 68/263

of the six senses¹ and the deterioration of the thirty-two parts of the body², causing the body to become shrivelled and unattractive. In actual fact, this house that is our body, has craving [tanhā] as its builder — right from the foundations at the bones of the feet up to the bones of the legs as its supporting pillars. The hips are the beams. The ribs are the rafters. The collar bones are the column beams. The neck vertebra are the roof shield. The cranium is the gable peak. The arms are the gable weatherboards. The skin covering our trunk is like the roofing thatch, fastened down with the skewers of the tendons. The whole home is plastered with flesh and blood. Our house has nine doors, namely: two eye sockets, two earholes, two nostrils, a mouth, the urinary tract and the anus. The five windows are those of the outer senses, namely: eyes, ears, nose, mouth and touch. The whole structure is weatherproofed with a coating of ‘taco’, in other words, our skin, given its covering of the white and yellow powders (presumably for skin care) of cumin and talcum. The mind is the owner of this house — and is the real ’us’. When the stormy gales of aging begin to blow, the house is vulnerable. The house shakes in the face of the storm and is subject to storm damage which is cumulative in its toll with every passing day. The body becomes slower in movement between the four postures³, and the body loses its vitality. The body groans as one stands up or sits down or walks along, because of the various afflictions of suffering which one must