Taco
Skin
Taco — the skin, the closer of the skin-pentad and the canonical fifth part. Visuddhimagga VIII.89 famously instructs the meditator to mentally peel back the skin and view the body without it: 'this body, peeled of its skin, is loathed even by dogs and jackals'. The skin is the cosmetic surface; under it the inner parts are themselves repulsive. We render the rendered point at the sternal-notch landmark as a midline proxy for the skin-as-such, recognising that taco has no single locus — it covers the entire body. The proxy convention follows the Visuddhimagga's own treatment, which describes the skin as enveloping all other parts.
Point 3 of 8 in Theravāda 32 Parts of the Body (Dvattiṃsākāra)
Cross-tradition overlaps
No overlapping points are registered for this point.
Sources
Majjhima Nikāya 10.10 (primary_canonical)
“In this body there are head hairs, body hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, large intestines, small intestines, contents of the stomach, feces, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, grease, saliva, mucus, oil of the joints, and urine.”
MN 10.10 names skin (taco) fifth in the canonical list of bodily parts. The passage uses the list for direct contemplation of the body as bounded by skin and filled with diverse impurities.
Visuddhimagga VIII.89 (primary_canonical)
“When this body is stripped of its skin, no being from a dog up to a man would touch it.”