Sokushinbutsu: The Self-Mummified Monks of Japan
Scattered throughout Northern Japan are two dozen mummified Japanese monks known as Sokushinbutsu. Followers of Shugendô, an ancient form of Buddhism, the monks died in the ultimate act of self-denial.
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, normally used to lacquer bowls. This caused vomiting and a rapid loss of bodily fluids, and most importantly, it killed off any maggots that might cause the body to decay after death. 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.
Not all monks who attempted self-mummification were successful. When the tombs were finally opened, some bodies were found to have rotted. These monks were resealed in their tombs. They were respected for their endurance, but they were not worshiped. Those monks who had succeeded in mummifying themselves were raised to the status of Buddha, put on display, and tended to by their followers. The Japanese government outlawed Sokushunbutsu in the late 19th century, though the practice apparently continued into the 20th.
* Previously in the Proceedings: The Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei, Mellified Man, Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, The Self-Portrait of Hananuma Masakichi,
July 21st, 2007 at 4:07 am
this is so incredible I can’t even stand it.
July 25th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
i didn’t understand. what was their goal? was that all they wanted? to mummify their bodies after the death? or was there a deeper reason that we are not told about?
July 30th, 2007 at 8:09 am
Quoted from the ‘net: “For those of you new to Buddhism, the basic premise of the religion is that the whole of the phenomenal world — everything you can see, hear, touch, experience — is just an illusion that prevents you from seeing what is really true; that you are part of a greater being that stands separate and beyond our phenomenal world. As long as you don’t see this, you will be continually reborn back into this world in an endless series of illusionary lives. So the goal of Buddhist priests is to separate themselves from this world enough that at death they become one with the greater being known as Buddha instead of being re-born into this world yet again.”
August 26th, 2007 at 10:48 am
[...] Well, I’ll be a mummified monk! [...]
September 29th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
It’s a celebrity craze waiting to happen!
October 16th, 2007 at 8:43 am
I’ll keep this in mind when I retire.
December 1st, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Can anyone explain how the diet used in the process was determined ?
December 2nd, 2007 at 5:21 am
@Steve: I’m pretty sure the same way any of that stuff has been determined over time: study, trial and error.
December 2nd, 2007 at 9:36 am
I have thought about this for some time, and while I respect the discipline required to do something like this, I sincerely believe the monks were misguided in doing this. The experience of the illusion of the world is not separate from the reality, but a part of it. What we must do is to see both illusion and reality at the same time. In self-mortification, I feel that the monks stepped away from the practice of being aware of the moment of the experience, by prematurely ending the experience.
There is more that speaks against a practice such as this, such as the instruction to cause no harm, but I think that a point that can be taken away from this, is that anything can be distorted into something less than the original. Death comes anyway, in the meantime, there is no end to everything there is to learn.