These discarded bones, like gourds in autumn, dove-colored — seeing them, what pleasure can there be?

The image of abandoned bones like autumn gourds is one of the most vivid in the Pāli canon. Alābū are gourds or hard-rinded fruits that in autumn are found scattered and desiccated. Human bones, grayish like doves (kāpotaka), have the same appearance of natural waste.

Tāni disvāna kā rati — seeing them, what pleasure can there be?: the rhetorical question invites meditation on asubha (the un-beautiful), one of the traditional Buddhist practices. It is not about morbid fascination but realism: the body we now adorn and desire will have this destiny.

This meditation has a precise function: to weaken attachment to the body and to bodies. Not to generate aversion but to produce equanimity toward the physical, which allows a freer and less compulsive relationship with corporeality.

The autumnal image of gourds gives the verse a more melancholic than macabre tonality. There is a seasonal beauty in autumn — the beauty of what passes, of what completes its cycle and dissolves naturally.