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K, so I heard this crazy story on a local radio station WMMR - Preston and Steve in the morning. Luv those guys and the bizarre files.



So there were these Japanese monks who decided to self-mumify themselves by slowly comitting suicide for religious enlijghtenment.



24 Buddhist monks did this in the Yamagata Prefecture that occurred in the early 1800s (although 100's tried unsuccessfully). This practice was folklore until Buddhist monk mummies were discovered in July of 2010.



They started on a diet of 1,000 days (a little less than three years) of eating only nuts and seeds to eliminate all body fat and exercise vigourously.



For another 1,000 days, the monks only ate bark and roots and began drinking a poisonous tea made from the sap of the Urushi tree, normally used to lacquer (eliminate) their bowels. In other words, there was profuse diarrhea occurring Though the vomiting and diarrhea was important to later mummify themselves, the ideal outcome of drinking the sap of Urushi trees was to make their body poisonous and inedible to maggots. In turn, their body would not deteriorate by natural processes.



The monk would then lock himself in a stone tomb barely larger than his body, where he would not move from the lotus position. He had 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 air tube was removed.



After another 1,000 days a monk would open the tomb to see if the mumification worked. If it did monk was declared a Buddha and the body was put into the temple for viewing.

COMMENTS

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chrysanthemia
08:23 Feb 21 2011

Wow. Isn't that something? I can't imagine having so much faith in anything to go through that. I wonder if it was frightening, or liberating, or both, or what. . . .

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