Buddhist mummies

[Twilight Hue]

If Only They had channeled that Zeal into something more productive

I don't know how practicing aestheticism fits in with Buddhism, but it does look like some can get a cool pair of sunglasses.

Anyways the practice has long since been outlawed.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Were the Buddhist mummies found near the Buddhist daddies?

Daddy left mummy a long time ago. Sad Tale.

 

[Grandliseur]

Were the Buddhist mummies found near the Buddhist daddies?

No. Mommies are found with daddies. Mummies are found with duddies. (duddies from dud)

 

[David1967]

Does such acts of self-discipline inspire you in any way?

Not at all. That's some crazy stuff. Self torture leading to a slow agonizing death. Not very "enlightening" IMO.

 

[Enoch07]

View attachment 20025 One of the worst ways to go would be buried live. Some Buddhist monks welcomed it as a final means of gaining total victory over the flesh.

Who are the Sokushinbutsu, you ask? The Japanese Buddhist monks who mummified themselves while still alive. The bodies that have been found by archeologists date to between the 12th and 20th centuries AD. But apparently, the process is much older. Keep reading to find out everything you need to know about mummifying yourself while still alive, as the Japanese Buddhist monks did.

self-mummification was originally a Taoist practice, and notes that, while the Japanese monks are the most famous self-mummifiers, cases of deliberate self-mummifcation have been recorded in China and India as well."

There’s a lot of talk about the “spiritual goal” as far as the Sokushinbutsu are concerned. "Where sokushinbutsu was concerned, a successful act of self-mummification meant the successful execution of a final spiritual practice,” according to Davis. "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."

The process of self-mummifcation wasn’t seen as suicide by the Taoists who practiced it, but more a path toward immortality. The Sokushinbutsu, in a similar way, thought of the process as a way to transcend death

They would remain in their mummified state, which was viewed as a death-trance, for 5.67 billion years until they would be called upon to assist Maitreya for the benefit of all humankind,” Davis reports.

So, apparently, you don’t just wake up one day and decide you want to mummify yourself. Sorry for those of you at home with hopes of trying. There’s actually a 3,000-day training process of sorts.
The key element of the process is dietary,” Davis reports. "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.'"

Then, you’re essentially buried alive up to your neck with a little space left for you to breathe, and you kind of just.. wait to die. "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,” Davis writes. "There he would sit, chanting sutra and ringing a bell to signal that he was still alive."
How Japanese Buddhist Monks Mummified Themselves While Alive

Does anyone feel inspired by this epic display of self-discipline? I confess that I found inspiration from it.View attachment 20026

I never understood people's lust for immortality. I've only been in this earth for 40 years and I am about dome with it already. LoLz, I have seen my fair share of pain and happiness. I don't see the happiness out weighing the pain by extending life beyond, let's say 100 years?!? No thanks!

 

[Srivijaya]

Does such acts of self-discipline inspire you in any way?

Not at all. Death is inevitable anyway. If these monks had attained true cessation, then it was their duty to become teachers and pass that knowledge on, not end it prematurely. I feel that such practices represent contaminated Dharma. You can learn nothing from a corpse.

 

[Jumi]

Well at least that lets me feel that if meditation can give these guys the power to bury themselves alive, meditation can give me the power to suffer my lot in life

Meditation works for that, but you don't want to go the route that these guys did.

If Only They had channeled that Zeal into something more productive

They thought it was productive.

 

[Jumi]

I never understood people's lust for immortality. I've only been in this earth for 40 years and I am about dome with it already. LoLz, I have seen my fair share of pain and happiness. I don't see the happiness out weighing the pain by extending life beyond, let's say 100 years?!? No thanks!

Well they believed they would reincarnate into multiple lives, more of the same for those billions of years and wanted out of that. In the end they would resurrect to meet their messiah to bring about something like a paradise on earth... sounds like a lot of religions.