Scan Reveals Mummified Corpse In Buddha Statue

[bust]

 

The above Buddha statue, currently on display for the first time outside of China, at the Drents Museum in the Netherlands, actually contains the mummified corpse of a Buddhist monk. The mummy, revealed by a CT scan, is believed to be from the year 1100, and is potentially a Sokushinbutsu.

A Sokushinbutsu is a monk who undergoes the process of self-mummification. According to Buddha World,

“For 1,000 days (a little less than three years) the priests would eat a special diet consisting only of nuts and seeds, while taking part in a regimen of rigorous physical activity that stripped them of their body fat. They then ate only bark and roots for another thousand days and began drinking a poisonous tea made from the sap of the Urushi tree, normally used to lacquer bowls. This caused vomiting and a rapid loss of bodily fluids, and most importantly, it made the body too poisonous to be eaten by maggots.

Finally, a self-mummifying monk would lock himself in a stone tomb barely larger than his body, where he would not move from the lotus position. His only connection to the outside world was an air tube and a bell. Each day he rang a bell to let those outside know that he was still alive. When the bell stopped ringing, the tube was removed and the tomb sealed. After the tomb was sealed, the other monks in the temple would wait another 1,000 days, and open the tomb to see if the mummification was successful.â€

Compared to present day, where lazy people accomplish all of this by merely sitting immobile on their couches while binge-watching “House of Cards.â€

Most of the time the technique didn’t work (only ~24 have been found of the hundreds of known attempts), and the other monks would just find a rotting corpse. Always a bummer.

[Coss]

That was before refrigeration, higher success rates now.

[Guest]

http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/n0105-mummified-monk-is-not-dead-and-in-rare-meditative-state-says-expert/

[Coss]

"The monk is now being guarded at the National Centre of Forensic Expertise at Ulaanbaatar."

 

in case he wakes up and legs it...

[Guest]

" He had then been planning to sell it on the black market at a 'very high price',"

 

Yes, not exactly something you might come across on Ebay ...