The Self-Mummifying Buddhist Monks of Japan
What would you do to be immortalized as a religious relic?
What would you die for? A loved one? A deeply held belief? A heroic act? How about for becoming immortalized as a religious piece of iconography? Buddhist monks in Japan, throughout much of their middle ages and even into the 20th century, would routinely commit a kind of ritualized suicide, death by a slow poisoning, in order to be preserved for posterity as a deified relic to be worshiped as an embodiment of the Buddha. The discipline of the Japanese is legend, from the ritualized code of honor among Samurai in the middle ages, to the incredible loyalty and willingness to give up their life that made it so difficult for our soldiers in World War II. However, all of that pales in comparison to the ritualistic torture that Japanese Buddhist monks would inflict on themselves for their beliefs.
A Buddhist monk already lives a life of austerity and self-denial. They are bound by a religious code that demands that they refuse their bodies all but the most essential needs in order to better commune with the divine. Priests seeking the immortality of ascendance through self-mummification, however, take that principle to an insane degree.
