2014.
Living Mummies
Although not Yokai , but also part of the Japanese mummy scene are the » “self mummified buddhist monks”.
Some Buddhist temples in the northern regions of Japan house what monks there call “living mummies”, the remains of priests that have sacrificed themselves in order to achieve Nirvana, the enlightenment. Killing yourself is not difficult, but turning into a perfectly-preserved mummy is a real work of art, as evidenced by the fact that only about two dozen monks have managed to do it. The practice of self-mummification was forbidden in Japan around the late 19th century.
The procedure implied the monk to live for 1,000 days on just seeds and nuts, during which time he would engage in strenuous physical exercises, which would strip his body bare of any fat. For the next 1,000 days, he would eat only bark and roots, in ever-decreasing amounts, and also start drinking beverages made from a poisonous tea, boiled in water laden with arsenic. In the end, they would be sealed inside a tomb to die, with only a straw in the roof, to help them breath. If, after a year, the body was undamaged, then the monk would be forever praised and would obtain the rank of Buddha.
Scattered throughout Northern Japan are two dozen mummified Japanese monks known as Sokushinbutsu. Followers of Shugendo, an ancient form of Buddhism, the monks died in the ultimate act of self-denial. Estimates of the number of self-mummified priests in Japan range between sixteen and twenty-four priests. Impressive though this number is, many more have tried to self-mummify themselves.
For 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 three years and began drinking a poisonous tea made from the sap of the Urushi tree, which contains Urushiol (same stuff that makes poison ivy), normally used to lacquer bowls. This caused vomiting and a rapid loss of bodily fluids. 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.
As you can see, the process of self-mummification was a long and extremely painful process that required a mastery of self-control and denial of physical sensation. The self-made mummies of Japan are people who have earned the respect now shown to them, as they exemplify the teachings of the Shingon sect of Japanese Buddhism.
Not all monks who attempted self-mummification were successful, but the pay-off for the ones who succeeded was quite high. They were raised to the status of Budda, put on display, and tended to by their followers. The Japanese government outlawed Sokushunbutsu in the late 19th century, though the practice continued into the 20th.
The practice of self-mummification, which is a form of suicide after all, had to be outlawed to prevent Buddhist priests from offing themselves this way. |
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A few Buddhist temples in northern Japan are home to “living mummies” known as sokushinbutsu. The preserved bodies are purportedly those of ascetic monks who willingly mummified themselves in the quest for nirvana.
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Arisada Hōin, 300-yr-old “living mummy”
at Kanshūji temple (Fukushima) |
Shinnyokai-Shonin “living mummy”
at Dainichibo Temple (Yamagata prefecture) |
Tetsumonkai-Shonin “living mummy”
at Churenji temple (Yamagata prefecture)
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To become a living mummy, monks had to undergo a long and grueling three-step process:
Step 1. For 1,000 days, the monks would eat a special diet of nuts and seeds, and engage in rigorous physical training to strip the body of fat.
Step 2. For another 1,000 days, they would eat only bark and roots in gradually diminishing amounts. Toward the end, they would start drinking tea made from the sap of the urushi tree, a poisonous substance normally used to make Japanese lacquer bowls, which caused further loss of bodily fluid. The tea was brewed with water from a sacred spring at Mt. Yudono, which is now known to contain a high level of arsenic. The concoction created a germ-free environment within the body and helped preserve whatever meat was left on the bone.
Step 3. Finally, the monks would retreat to a cramped underground chamber connected to the surface by a tiny bamboo air pipe. There, they would meditate until dying, at which point they were sealed in their tomb. After 1,000 days, they were dug up and cleaned. If the body remained well-preserved, the monk was deemed a living mummy.
Unfortunately, most who attempted self-mummification were unsuccessful, but the few who succeeded achieved Buddha status and were enshrined at temples. As many as two dozen of these living mummies are in the care of temples in northern Honshu.
The Japanese government outlawed the practice of self-mummification in the late 19th century.
[Source: Softpedia and Pink Tentacle]
The most famous practitioners of self-mummification to modern readers are the sokushinbutsu — the Buddhas in the flesh — whose bodies have been found in Japan, primarily in Yamagata Prefecture. Some 24 individuals, mainly practitioners of Shingon Buddhism, have been found successfully self-mummified, their deaths dating between the 12th and early 20th centuries AD. However, the practice of self-mummification goes back further than that. In Science and Civilisation in China: Volume Five, the contributors speculate that self-mummification was originally a Taoist practice, and notes that, while the Japanese monks are the most famous self-mummifiers, cases of deliberate self-mummification have been recorded in China and India as well.
The practice of self-mummification among the monks of Yamagata came to light in the 1960s, after Kosei Ando and a team of researchers at Niigata University published Nihon no miira, an account of Japan's mummies, and Matsumoto Akira helped form the Japanese Mummy Research Group.
Mummies (miira) are not uncommon in Japan, but the far rarer practice of self-mummification, as you might imagine, is an extremely unpleasant one, attempted only by the most devoted of ascetics. So why go through all that trouble just to turn yourself into a particularly well preserved corpse? In Living Buddhas: The Self-Mummified Monks of Yamagata, Japan, Ken Jeremiah points out that many religions, including Christianity, have viewed the incorruptibility of the corpse as a sign of special grace or supernatural ability. There are many accounts (many of them likely apocryphal) of highly spiritual individuals dying during prayer or meditation and failing to decay after several days. Where sokushinbutsu was concerned, a successful act of self-mummification meant the successful execution of a final spiritual practice. If, after an attempt at self-mummification, the attempted practitioner was found decayed, it was taken as a sign that the spiritual goal had not been achieved.
So what was that spiritual goal? Jeremiah notes that the idea of preserving the body runs contrary to much of Buddhist scripture, which is less concerned with the physical body than with the spiritual component. However, it's important to remember that the sokushinbutsu of Yamagata were members of the issei gyonin sect of Shingon Buddhism, which married esoteric Buddhism with indigenous spiritual practices, and utilized aspects of Daoism and Hinduism. They were practitioners of shugendō, a spiritual practice closely linked with mountain dwellers, known as shugenja, who believed they attained special powers through ascetic acts. The biographies of successful sokushinbutsu (the ones that have known biographies; some information on the lives of sokushinbutsu have been lost or destroyed over time) include tales of everything from meditating under waterfalls and in caves to gouging out their own eyes.
Taoist practitioners of self-mummification saw the practice not as suicide, but as a path to immortality, and similarly, the sokushinbutsu saw the process as transcendance rather than death. Kosei Ando linked the practice to the bodhisattva Maitreya — the future Buddha who, in the meantime resides in Tuṣita Heaven —suggesting that sokushinbutsu employed their practice to aid Maitreya. They would remain in their mummified state, which was viewed as a death-like trance, for 5.67 billion years until they would be called upon to assist Maitreya for the benefit of all humankind. However, in the essay "In Search of a New Interpretation of Ascetic Experiences" from the book Rethinking Japan, Massimo Raveri seems to prefer the interpretation of Miyata Noboru, who sees a sense of optimism in the worship of the sokushinbutsu, whom it is said, will wake to "acclaim the new reincarnation of the Buddha in the world" and perhaps are the bodhisattva themselves. Whatever the specifics of their spiritual quest, the sokushinbutsu would have undertaken self-mummification as a form of spiritual transformation for the benefit of others.
How to Mummify Yourself
Mummifying yourself is not a thing you do on the spur of the moment, especially in Japan's humid climates. In fact, there is a 3,000-day "training" process for turning an ordinary ascetic's body into a mummy's. The key element of the process is dietary; Japanese ascetics would commonly abstain from cereals, removing wheat, rice, foxtail millet, pros so millet, and soybeans. Instead, they would eat things like nuts, berries, pine needles, tree bark, and resin (which is why the diet of the sokushinbutsu was called mokujikyo, or "tree-eating." Over time, the diet would become more restrictive, starving the body of nutrients and eliminating the fat and moisture that can encourage bodily decay after death; X-rays of sokushinbutsu have even shown river stones in the guts of mummies. Jeremiah suggests that, beyond the weight loss, some aspects of the diet may have helped with the preservation of the body after death. For example, certain herbs and toxic cycad nuts may have inhibited bacterial growth. And at least some sokushinbutsu are said to have drunk a tea made from urushi, the sap of Toxicodendron vernicifluum, which is typically used to make lacquer. In addition to facilitating vomiting, the urushi may have functioned as a sort of embalming fluid, rendering the body toxic to potential flesh-eating invaders.
Once the ascetic was prepared to attempt to become a sokushinbutsu, it's said he would step into a tiny burial chamber and has himself buried alive, with a small opening to allow air inside the chamber. There he would sit, chanting sutra and ringing a bell to signal that he was still alive. Once the bell stopped ringing, the chamber would be completely sealed, and after three years it would be opened again to see if the attempt at self-mummification proved successful.
What happens after you try to mummify yourself?
Hundreds of people are thought to have attempted this form of self-mummifcation, and it's not known how many were successful. However, you can visit some of the successful sokushinbutsu at their shrines. Famously, Daijuku Bosatsu Shinnyokai-Shonin, who mummified himself at the age of 96 in 1783, sits in the Ryusui-ji Dainichibou Temple in Tsuruoka City, Yamagata Prefecture. If, when your burial chamber was opened, your body was found preserved, then you could be worshipped as a sokushinbutsu. You could be dressed in robes and placed in a shrine where humanity could await your reawakening. Here, there is actually a small cheat in the self-mummification process; if the body was not decayed but not totally preserved, the skin would actually be treated with incense smoke to ensure it would last.
However, changing mores and laws meant that not all successful sokushinbutsu were enshrined. When the priest and ascetic Bukkai Shonin died in 1903, he was interred and was supposed to be exhumed after three years, but exhumation was illegal in Japan at that point in time. When Bukkai was eventually exhumed, it was in 1961 by a team of researchers, who found the ascetic quite well preserved.
And if your body was found rotting when the tomb was opened? Well, then no worship for your remains. An exorcism would be performed and the remains would be reburied. All those years of self-starvation those final days spent alone in a dark chamber, and your remains become an object of caution rather than worship.
[Source: The Gruesome and Excruciating Practice of Mummifying Your Own Body ]
— Read also:
» Cultural Anthropology - Kappa Monsters
» Mark Schumacher : KAPPA
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