Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I am
Speaker 1: Christian Stager. If you've been listening to our podcast, you
Speaker 1: may have tuned into our episode on Egyptian mummification and
Speaker 1: the long history and evolution of mummification there from a
Speaker 1: purely environmental mummification into this ultra refined mortuary art. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We went over the history of thousands of years of
Speaker 1: how mummification evolved, and during that episode we we said
Speaker 1: to you the audience, Hey, you know, there are lots
Speaker 1: of other forms of mummification out there. We're not going
Speaker 1: to be able to do them justice in this one episode,
Speaker 1: So do you want to hear more? And the answer
Speaker 1: seemed to be yes. Yeah, enough people said yes that
Speaker 1: we went ahead and did what we were going to
Speaker 1: do anyway. Yeah, well, this one's too fascinating to pass
Speaker 1: up to. Yeah, because in this we're getting into um.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's still elements of environmental mummification and funerary mummification,
Speaker 1: but there's this added element of self mummification. So and
Speaker 1: of course when I started researching this, it immediately made
Speaker 1: me think of seppuku, which is another form of suicide
Speaker 1: in this same region in Japan. Uh And this is
Speaker 1: essentially suicide, in fact, so much so that it was
Speaker 1: banned by the Japanese government in the nineteenth century. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we can't help withdraw a line between these
Speaker 1: two forms of ultimately highly ritual life self destruction. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, I would go so far as to say
Speaker 1: that this has some elements in common with uh DR Kevorking,
Speaker 1: for instance. I mean, it's on a much longer term scale.
Speaker 1: You're not This takes like ten years, I think right
Speaker 1: to self mummify. Yeah, It's definitely a deliberate act in
Speaker 1: which the individual is accepting death and really speeding along
Speaker 1: to a certain degree, in taking a certain amount of
Speaker 1: command over the process. Yeah. Absolutely. So, Okay, enough enough
Speaker 1: teasing on our part here. What are we talking about here?
Speaker 1: This is the suku shin Botsu of Japan. Yeah. This
Speaker 1: practice lasted from about seven hundred and seventy four Common
Speaker 1: Era until the twentieth century, and aside from nineteen mummified
Speaker 1: members of the twelfth century Fujiwara clan, it constitutes the
Speaker 1: only mummification right in Japanese culture. One of our resources
Speaker 1: for this episode is an excellent piece by Kim Jeremiah
Speaker 1: titled Buried a Lie, The Forgotten practice of self Mummification,
Speaker 1: and he does a great job outlining this practice that
Speaker 1: was carried out by certain Shinn Buddhists who sought to
Speaker 1: serve Miroku Bosatsu, the Bodhisattva of the future who will
Speaker 1: arrive on Earth some five billion, six hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: million years from now. So this is essentially a Buddha
Speaker 1: that will arrive on Earth tremendous amount of time in
Speaker 1: the future. And and so from what I was reading, UH,
Speaker 1: he is said to currently reside in what is called
Speaker 1: Tussida Heaven, which is this place is depicted as flooded
Speaker 1: with rotating light, and this rotating light apparently reveals a
Speaker 1: forty nine story palace uh. And it is a you know,
Speaker 1: as most heavens are a paradise with no sorrow or sin.
Speaker 1: The thing that's really interesting here about this particular group
Speaker 1: is uh the Sokushan Budsu practicing. It was in Yamagata,
Speaker 1: and there were members of a specific sect that brought
Speaker 1: together parts of esoteric Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, and some kind
Speaker 1: of local spiritual practices. So this is I guess like
Speaker 1: like the version of mysticism, right, like Buddhist mysticism sort of. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll discuss you see this um. You know, like
Speaker 1: with any religion, religions don't travel on James. Any culture
Speaker 1: they enter, they end up with absorbing pieces of pre
Speaker 1: existing religions. They emerge with a with cultural values. And
Speaker 1: so as Buddhism UH emerges from India, travels through China
Speaker 1: UH into Japan, it ends up picking up all these
Speaker 1: different elements sort of like how when we talked about
Speaker 1: the serpent and the rainbow in one episode, like the
Speaker 1: Vuodha and culture incorporates aspects of local culture and Haiti
Speaker 1: as well as Catholicism into the mysticism and myth of zombies. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think it's one of the things that makes
Speaker 1: any discussion of a religious worldview fascinating, that ever changing
Speaker 1: nature of it. So these guys in particular thought that
Speaker 1: they could achieve special powers, obviously one of which was
Speaker 1: to live for five billion years and meet this Buddha
Speaker 1: in the future, but other things where they practiced meditating
Speaker 1: in caves or under these really cold waterfalls, and then
Speaker 1: some of them even stabbed out their own eyes and
Speaker 1: performed other forms of mutilation on themselves, uh, in order
Speaker 1: to gain these powers that were part of their beliefs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a huge trend here with a just
Speaker 1: a complete I mean, they were they were aesthetics. They
Speaker 1: were rejecting the physical world, um, showing them in almost
Speaker 1: a contempt for the physical world in their devotion to
Speaker 1: to the spiritual realm. And and you know, there are
Speaker 1: definitely some kind of cool quasi sci fi elements here too,
Speaker 1: because essentially they're they're wanting to put their body into
Speaker 1: a spiritual suspended animation so that they can reach this
Speaker 1: far distant time and place. Yeah. Absolutely, I think you
Speaker 1: should explain that process because it's it's pretty wild. It
Speaker 1: reminds me of that Darren Aronofsky movie The Fountain. Have
Speaker 1: you seen that? Yeah, it reminds me of that this
Speaker 1: idea that like you're not even reincarnated, but like there, uh,
Speaker 1: you will exist in this other state for this long
Speaker 1: long period of time so that you can ultimately achieve transcendence. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I would not be surprised of if he was
Speaker 1: inspired by these Eastern models. Yeah. So, in order to
Speaker 1: reach that five point six billion year point in the
Speaker 1: future and meet the Bodhistotta of the future and and
Speaker 1: serve him um, you have to self mummify as a
Speaker 1: living Buddha, which Jeremiah explains as a as a means
Speaker 1: again to reach this towout sue heaven, which is the
Speaker 1: current residence of the Bodhisatta of the future. So you
Speaker 1: have a What you do is you engage in a
Speaker 1: slow and meditative approach to the death point, and it's
Speaker 1: only then that the monk can self guide their soul
Speaker 1: through the void to a realm of his choosing. And
Speaker 1: this reminds me of of elements of Tibetan Buddhism as well,
Speaker 1: where there's this huge emphasis on what happens immediately following death,
Speaker 1: and you've got to be prepared for that journey between
Speaker 1: this incarnation and the next. And as we learned, there
Speaker 1: is a connection between Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism and this practice.
Speaker 1: Their culture really connected in a way, and we'll get
Speaker 1: to that later, but we wanted to start with these
Speaker 1: guys the and I say guys. They were all men
Speaker 1: the soku shin butsu practice. Now another source, we're looking
Speaker 1: at his mummification in the ancient and new world. This
Speaker 1: is a wonderful resource for anything related to mummies. Will
Speaker 1: include a link up. This is our goat here every
Speaker 1: time we do something about yeah yeah, from Anna Maria
Speaker 1: Rosso and she classifies shing gone self immuni mummification as
Speaker 1: a case of entering a kind of undead suspension in
Speaker 1: which the monk's body is preserved for resurrection upon Mikoru
Speaker 1: Bosatsu's arrival. So they're kind of two different takes. They
Speaker 1: are probably amounting to the same thing. Either you're sticking
Speaker 1: around and tell he comes, or you're preserving your body
Speaker 1: is kind of an anchor for your wandering spirit to
Speaker 1: go and serve him. Now. Yeah, And so the first
Speaker 1: I guess founder of this that practiced this was Kobu Daishi,
Speaker 1: and he was alive from seven seventy four war to
Speaker 1: eight thirty five. And the idea here is that he
Speaker 1: remained in this particular state within the Gogyo mausoleum, and
Speaker 1: monks to this day right still bring food to him
Speaker 1: as he awaits the arrival of their you know this
Speaker 1: this Buddha in heaven essentially. Yeah, there's some wonderful images
Speaker 1: of monks bring into the highly ritualized affair. It's not
Speaker 1: just someone pushing ateria tray under a crypt door or anything.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a it's very ritualized. And they bring
Speaker 1: this fine chest up with with food for him. One
Speaker 1: of the things I read was that supposedly his nails
Speaker 1: and hair continued to grow for years after his death. Uh,
Speaker 1: And monks would go in there when they would feed him,
Speaker 1: they would also give him a trim and redress his body. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you know, they'd go back another thirty years
Speaker 1: later or whatever, and they'll just be dust. And the
Speaker 1: dust was the rags of the robes essentially, and they
Speaker 1: clear it out and do the whole process all over again.
Speaker 1: But the myth is that his hair and nails kept
Speaker 1: growing and so they had to cut it. Huh. So
Speaker 1: in all of this, um, obviously we need to we
Speaker 1: need to state that we're dealing with the religious interpretations
Speaker 1: and often in supernatural layers, all on top of a
Speaker 1: body's decomposition or lack of decomposition. So as we go
Speaker 1: through all of this, you keep an open mind about it,
Speaker 1: but also you know, don't feel I mean, feel free
Speaker 1: to pick at a little bit with your mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think, like the Egyptian mummies, there is of
Speaker 1: course the cultural and religious aspect that comes into play
Speaker 1: that you know, promotes this activity. But then there's a
Speaker 1: science behind it to actually achieve mummification in such a
Speaker 1: way that the body doesn't decay. Right, Yeah, because okay,
Speaker 1: so so what's the goal here? The goal is to
Speaker 1: gradually reduce one's physical body to a withered state, just
Speaker 1: like how much of a mummy can I become while
Speaker 1: still alive, while just meditating and trying to re to
Speaker 1: that death point and then to remain dry and for
Speaker 1: the most part incorruptible. So in order to achieve this
Speaker 1: state would be Soko shum bits who first practices a
Speaker 1: starvation diet. Okay, and this consists of just nuts and
Speaker 1: berries and tree bark and roots and uh this phase
Speaker 1: apparently last would last between three and ten years, however
Speaker 1: long it took to whittle that body down to the
Speaker 1: skin and bone state atlasientially starving themselves. Yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: that diet, did you know, like it was designed specifically
Speaker 1: to strip them of body fat. That's what specifically ate
Speaker 1: those things. And in fact, some of the herbs and
Speaker 1: nuts that were involved in that diet were designed to
Speaker 1: I mean, they didn't have the science of this, but
Speaker 1: they inhibited bacterial growth. So that was part of the
Speaker 1: process here of helping you mummify yourself. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: guess that could conceivably cut down on decomposition too, because
Speaker 1: so much of the decomposition, as we've discussed in the
Speaker 1: previous momification episode, is coming from within. So keep that
Speaker 1: in mind as well. You're dealing with early people that
Speaker 1: are looking at a corpses decomposition, they're often thinking of
Speaker 1: it as an externalized decomposition, the elements making the body decompose,
Speaker 1: when really it's most of the decomposition is occurring within,
Speaker 1: as the body begins to fall apart of the bacteria
Speaker 1: feeds on everything. Yeah. And as part of that too,
Speaker 1: they weren't even allowed to eat specific things as part
Speaker 1: of their diet too, so like cereal, wheat, rice, foxtail, millet,
Speaker 1: proso millet, and soybeans were all things they had to
Speaker 1: stay away from because of you know, it would promote
Speaker 1: bacterial growth. Now, Atlas Obscura also has a has a
Speaker 1: page about self mumification, and they mentioned that the poisonous
Speaker 1: sap from the rushi tree uh was also used to
Speaker 1: the monks consumed this to purge their bodily fluids and
Speaker 1: and supposedly repel scavenging parasites. Yeah, and this is brutal,
Speaker 1: Like the several accounts that I read of this, I mean,
Speaker 1: purge bodily fluids is accurate, but I mean it was
Speaker 1: violent vomiting uh. And but they did it, you know,
Speaker 1: for this reason. It was part of the sacrifice of
Speaker 1: being able to make this journey through time. And in fact,
Speaker 1: here's another interesting tidbit that I read. They did X
Speaker 1: rays of some of these monks uh and they found
Speaker 1: that there were river stones in their guts. So apparently
Speaker 1: they ate those two. I don't know what the promotion
Speaker 1: would be like what you know, how that would affect
Speaker 1: the mommification process. But they were filling their stomachs with stones.
Speaker 1: And it goes without saying, if anyone out there is
Speaker 1: looking to lose weight, um, please don't try this diet.
Speaker 1: Please don't try the self modification diet. Although I could
Speaker 1: see that being the next big thing. Yes, Okay, so
Speaker 1: you're finally reduced to the state of walking or maybe
Speaker 1: just sitting here. I wonder if they could even walk.
Speaker 1: I would imagine the other monks maybe had to help
Speaker 1: them get from place to pull, because they have to
Speaker 1: be pretty frail at this point. UM. So at this
Speaker 1: point they be You're buried alive with a little help
Speaker 1: from your friends, obviously, um for three years, with only
Speaker 1: bamboo breathing tubes to sustain you down there in the darkness,
Speaker 1: and here you meditate, you recite sutras, and you periodically
Speaker 1: ring a bell um to let everyone know that you're
Speaker 1: still down there, still meditating, until eventually you're gonna die
Speaker 1: from dehydration. Yeah. So the idea here is that they're
Speaker 1: when they're buried alive, they're buried alive in the lotus position.
Speaker 1: So I think that the box or whatever they're in
Speaker 1: is designed to fit their bodies in the lotus position.
Speaker 1: And then when you stop ringing that bell, I think
Speaker 1: that you ring the bell once a day basically to
Speaker 1: say like, hey, I'm still moving down here. And when
Speaker 1: it stops, that's when they take the tube out. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they sealed the tomb uh, and there's a thing
Speaker 1: here too, that the number three is very important to
Speaker 1: this ritual. They did things in threes, uh, and it
Speaker 1: was particular to the Buddhist priesthood. The reason why is
Speaker 1: that apparently there's three jewels in Buddhism, the Buddha, the Sanga,
Speaker 1: and the Dharma. And then there's the three great secrets
Speaker 1: of secret of the body, which are moodras, which we
Speaker 1: know over here as you know yoga practice basically. And
Speaker 1: then there's a secret of speech mantras, and the secret
Speaker 1: of the mind which is meditation. So that's why they
Speaker 1: wait for three years before they pull them back up.
Speaker 1: And so when they do pull them up, the first
Speaker 1: thing you check is that could be corruption level of
Speaker 1: the body. If it's uncorrupted, then the then hey, success
Speaker 1: self mummification has taken place. You dress uh the monkey
Speaker 1: in robes and put them on display for veneration. If
Speaker 1: the body's rotted, however, you're going to perform an exorcism
Speaker 1: and bury the corpse. Yeah. That two extremes. One is
Speaker 1: you're venerated forever. The other is this is a hideous,
Speaker 1: disgusting thing. We have to exercise it like you don't
Speaker 1: exercise just a regular dead body. Right, but this this
Speaker 1: process went wrong, and it's you know, within that practice,
Speaker 1: I can sort of understand how they would they would
Speaker 1: see it as being the opposite of holy. Yeah, is
Speaker 1: well discuss later. You see this this interesting um dichotomy here,
Speaker 1: where on one hand, there's still very much this idea
Speaker 1: that a corpse is a thing that is not it's
Speaker 1: not pleasant, it's not to really be dealt with, you Bury,
Speaker 1: I can get rid of it, except if it's the
Speaker 1: body of a very special individual. Is that if the
Speaker 1: body itself is in this strange, undeath uncorrupted state, and
Speaker 1: then it is an object of veneration. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: want to add here they had a couple of little
Speaker 1: cheats that they were here too. After they pulled the
Speaker 1: bodies out. It's true that, you know, if the body
Speaker 1: itself hadn't decayed, that that was when they venerated them.
Speaker 1: But after they pulled it out, if it hadn't decayed,
Speaker 1: they would preserve it by adding incense to the body,
Speaker 1: and then they would um dry it out over a
Speaker 1: charcoal fire. Yeah. And this is this kind of gets
Speaker 1: back to the original idea from our Egyptian Amumies episode,
Speaker 1: where you have mummification begin as environmental process, and when
Speaker 1: the environmental process fails due to different environmental circumstances such
Speaker 1: as more elaborate tombs so that are being used, then
Speaker 1: you have to begin employing mummification techniques, uh to to
Speaker 1: fake what you're not achieving naturally. And so we see
Speaker 1: a bit of that here. It's like, Okay, if it
Speaker 1: has corrupted or it looks like it's corrupting a little bit,
Speaker 1: what are some cheats we can apply to get it
Speaker 1: back into that that desired zone. Yeah, in the same
Speaker 1: way that the Egyptians started off by burying their bodies
Speaker 1: in the dry sands, and that would help to prevent
Speaker 1: them from decaying. They're in Japan just using charcoal, fire
Speaker 1: and smoke basically to achieve the same thing. Less than
Speaker 1: thirty Japanese monks are known to have completed this grueling
Speaker 1: journey to the death point. And of course we have
Speaker 1: no idea if they found the Boodhystot buddhistop of the future,
Speaker 1: or if they're going to at some point the distant future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's still to come. Yeah, five billion years,
Speaker 1: that's the way is off. But the Japanese government, like
Speaker 1: I said at the top. They did not like this,
Speaker 1: and as of the nineteenth century it is illegal to
Speaker 1: do that, though some of these monks did continue this
Speaker 1: practice and into the twentieth century. I think, like the
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds, they were a monks doing this um
Speaker 1: the majority of which happened at a temple on Mount
Speaker 1: you don't know called da Nichi bu uh and they're
Speaker 1: basically there's an idea that there's a local spring there
Speaker 1: that high has high levels of arsenic in it, so
Speaker 1: they think that has something to do as well with
Speaker 1: the mummification process, that somehow arsenic is contributing to those
Speaker 1: uh in The area around there is where they conducted
Speaker 1: their exercises UH. And in Japanese the area is called
Speaker 1: sennen Zawa and that translates into the mountain stream of
Speaker 1: otherworldly men or swamp of wizards or swamp of immortals,
Speaker 1: which I like. I liked both of those quite a bit.
Speaker 1: The swamps swamp of wizards. Yeah, uh, you can still
Speaker 1: visit sixteen of these uh soku shinbutsus of the twenty
Speaker 1: eight that remain, there were thirty that no were known
Speaker 1: to have completed it. But I think that some of
Speaker 1: them are off limits, you know, for obvious reasons. They're
Speaker 1: probably pretty fragile, but in various locations around Japan you
Speaker 1: can visit these. Uh. The hundreds of people are thought
Speaker 1: to have attempted this, so that, you know, getting back
Speaker 1: to that those exorcisms there, that means there were hundreds
Speaker 1: of these exorcisms of these bodies that did decay. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also it's such a grueling endeavor to undertake. I
Speaker 1: can't I can't imagine everyone who started out on this path,
Speaker 1: had the had the afforded to do actually make it
Speaker 1: to that death point in the original prescribed way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, And I want to add two stories about
Speaker 1: two of these monks that I think put it into
Speaker 1: a little bit of perspective here. And this isn't to
Speaker 1: say that all of the hundreds of monks that attempted
Speaker 1: this had these kinds of background. But the most famous
Speaker 1: of which, uh, that you can I think still visit
Speaker 1: is Daijuku Bosatsu Shinyo Kai Shonen uh. And he mummified
Speaker 1: himself at the age of nineties six in seventeen three,
Speaker 1: and he's at that mount uh you don't know temple.
Speaker 1: He was a farmer. And the story goes that he
Speaker 1: was a farmer. He was walking along the road one
Speaker 1: day and a samurai bumped into him, and the samurai
Speaker 1: took offense to this and started to fight, essentially drew
Speaker 1: sword and started to fight, and this farmer only had
Speaker 1: a walking stick and somehow defeats the samurai and kills
Speaker 1: him in battle. Uh. But killing a samurai was illegal then, uh,
Speaker 1: And the punishment was death. So he didn't want to
Speaker 1: die for defending himself on the road, so he fled
Speaker 1: to this temple and took up the religious you know
Speaker 1: practice in the name Shinyo Kai. So that's what led
Speaker 1: to his eventual you know, immersion into this culture and
Speaker 1: then leading on to the self mummification practice. But I
Speaker 1: gotta say, like, if I got to ninety six, you know,
Speaker 1: I'd give it a shot. Why not? I mean, you
Speaker 1: can you can only be in control of so many
Speaker 1: different things at that point. Why not be in control
Speaker 1: of your your journey to the death point. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: there's another monk known as Tetsu Monkei who's another part
Speaker 1: of this order, and he supposedly killed two samurai with
Speaker 1: a fire hook. Wait, what's a fire I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's I was just imagining it was a hook that's
Speaker 1: on fire, but I bet it's like a hook that
Speaker 1: you used to move charcoals around something like that. It's
Speaker 1: that because we also see this this traditional element of
Speaker 1: the common man does not have access to weapons and
Speaker 1: then must create a martial art around common farming or
Speaker 1: you know, crafting tools. Well, this story was like a
Speaker 1: little too large for some people to believe, so they
Speaker 1: looked into it some more and they think what actually
Speaker 1: happened as he killed a prostitute, okay, and then like
Speaker 1: like the other guy fled to the monastery. Same thing.
Speaker 1: But this guy, Remember I was talking about how they
Speaker 1: would cut their own eyes out as part of aractice.
Speaker 1: He's one of them. He cut out his own eye
Speaker 1: and threw it into a river because he wanted to
Speaker 1: pray for a cure for a local eye disease. It
Speaker 1: was infecting the local villages. So that gives you kind
Speaker 1: of an idea of the you know, these practices. We
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of information on this, but it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty extreme. Yeah, and I believe you were looking
Speaker 1: into this and you found that there there is a
Speaker 1: group that is that is advocating for more more access
Speaker 1: to the existing mummified monks. Yeah. My understanding is that
Speaker 1: it's called the Japanese Mummy Research Group and that apparently
Speaker 1: they're responsible for studying, you know, the mummified monks, and
Speaker 1: they petitioned the government for permission to exhume the graves
Speaker 1: of the ones that they find. But I believe that
Speaker 1: this was started around the same time that the practice
Speaker 1: was ending, probably the beginning of the twentieth century. So
Speaker 1: now we're going to venture away from Japan and into China,
Speaker 1: and particularly we're going to look at Chan Buddhism. This
Speaker 1: is a cool of my Yana Buddhism that developed in
Speaker 1: China from the sixth century uh CE onward. So here
Speaker 1: we see a definite merging of Buddhist and dallast ideas.
Speaker 1: And interesting here is the notion that Buddhism and dallas
Speaker 1: to sorcery seem to combine into a notion of Buddha
Speaker 1: is a sort of foreign immortal who achieved some form
Speaker 1: of death. Yeah, there's a fantastic piece that we used
Speaker 1: for this, uh well as one of our sources for
Speaker 1: this episode. That's up on Ion I and from a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, I think, and it's you know what,
Speaker 1: I didn't realize it until I've finished the piece and
Speaker 1: I rolled back up and I realized it's written by
Speaker 1: one of my favorite writers over there, woman named Lauren Davis.
Speaker 1: She's good. Yeah, it's some of my favorite stuff on
Speaker 1: their site is by her. But this is specifically about
Speaker 1: in the Science and Civilization in China, a book, which
Speaker 1: is the fifth volume of that series. Uh. And they
Speaker 1: speculate that the self mummification originally was a dallast practice.
Speaker 1: They note that while Japanese monks are the most famous
Speaker 1: self mummifiers, there are deliberate self mummifications that have also
Speaker 1: been recorded in China and India as well. So this
Speaker 1: is where like, clearly there's a connection somehow between these
Speaker 1: two things. They couldn't have just especially because they're from
Speaker 1: the same belief systems. They couldn't have just independently sprung
Speaker 1: up on their own. Yeah, And so that's why we're
Speaker 1: looking at a Chan Buddhism and some particular examples here
Speaker 1: among the some of the Chan masters, because you seem
Speaker 1: of a form of mummification that maybe isn't quite as
Speaker 1: deliberate and self destructive as the Japanese models we were
Speaker 1: looking at, but but definitely similar blue print. And the
Speaker 1: idea here is that they're this particular sect of Buddhism,
Speaker 1: which I was unfamiliar with until we researched. This is
Speaker 1: known for rejecting empty rituals and unworthy authority figures. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a quote that I was reading and one of
Speaker 1: the great sources for this section of the podcast, Robert H.
Speaker 1: Sharks the idolization of Enlightenment on the mummification of Chan
Speaker 1: masters in medieval China. Uh. People is how there's there's
Speaker 1: a quote that the Chan would use where it says,
Speaker 1: if you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: other words, saying that if you meet somebody claiming to
Speaker 1: be this great individual, reject them. Yeah. I've heard that
Speaker 1: term before and I've always liked it, but I didn't
Speaker 1: realize that it originated here, and in fact that this
Speaker 1: particular school, you know, the idea was they didn't wanna
Speaker 1: be based around superstition essentially. Uh. And so it's strange
Speaker 1: then that they were involved in the mummification thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is definitely a fascinating area where you
Speaker 1: see these merging and in times contradictory ideas coming from
Speaker 1: the Dallist roots and the Buddhist roots, where on one
Speaker 1: level Buddhism, you think of Buddhism and you think of, oh,
Speaker 1: it's all about not caring. It's about about setting aside
Speaker 1: any high levels of anxiety about death or even life
Speaker 1: itself that you're you're disconnecting. And then with with Dallas Sorcery,
Speaker 1: you have a farm more supernatural understanding of man's place
Speaker 1: in the universe and what's possible with the physical body,
Speaker 1: and these two things kind of merged together into one form. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure too that like the political and economic
Speaker 1: and cultural pressures that were going on in the area
Speaker 1: at the time contributed to this melding. You know, the
Speaker 1: the the economic aspect of were interesting when we get
Speaker 1: into it. Yeah, especially, So one thing about this, you know,
Speaker 1: it's important to say you hinted at it here, is
Speaker 1: that most Buddhism regards corpses as just lifeless lumps of flesh,
Speaker 1: right rotting flesh in particular, and you just dispose of them.
Speaker 1: It's no longer a person. So again it's it's a
Speaker 1: little strange, this veneration thing, but we'll get into you know,
Speaker 1: there there is a worship that was applied to their
Speaker 1: abbots in particular. Uh. And this explains their fascination with
Speaker 1: the possibility of bodies not decomposing. So they thought that
Speaker 1: if their bodies didn't decompose, that they were incorruptible. And uh.
Speaker 1: This involved you know, artificial mummification the same way that
Speaker 1: we've talked about previously, but it was thought as a
Speaker 1: mean to achieve spiritual purity and preserve it within their remains. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you see this, this idea that an individual is
Speaker 1: is going to be wholly enough, pure enough that there
Speaker 1: there's gonna be residual purity, residual karma even in the body. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and the dallast roots here, apparently are that a
Speaker 1: Daoist master sheds his body like the shell of a cicada,
Speaker 1: and then his spirit alone ascends into the spirit realm,
Speaker 1: leaving behind and this incorruptible body and the body serves
Speaker 1: as a kind of anchor for an immortal soul wandering beyond,
Speaker 1: which which is a fabulous idea that is is almost
Speaker 1: science fiction in its elements, like the idea of say
Speaker 1: a a body and some suspended state, but the mind
Speaker 1: is wandering around in some some sort of virtual reality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think it's important to note too that these abbots,
Speaker 1: my impression from the reading was these abbots, uh, we're
Speaker 1: venerated because they're very charismatic and and the followers within
Speaker 1: their temples and their communities loved them dearly. And so
Speaker 1: part of this also was that the preservation allowed for
Speaker 1: the new abbot that would come in, who was maybe
Speaker 1: a little green and maybe not known so well, to
Speaker 1: have a little bit of leeway uh and at time
Speaker 1: to to get to know them better and build his
Speaker 1: reputation and charisma, while the mummified version of the previous
Speaker 1: abbot was still there for them to connect with. Yeah. Because, yeah,
Speaker 1: the the center that the abbot and his charismatic power,
Speaker 1: it had a lot to do with the support from
Speaker 1: the community, the support from the government. It's like having
Speaker 1: the lead singer of a band change, how right, But
Speaker 1: imagine if the new lead singer could say, actually, the
Speaker 1: old lead singers right here. He's in this he's not dead.
Speaker 1: He's in this undeathed state, so he's technically still here.
Speaker 1: You can come and venerate him. He's still the the
Speaker 1: ritual spiritual center of of the monastery. And and that's
Speaker 1: important to it's it's not only the outside forces, but
Speaker 1: the inside forces. The the Abbot in this undeathed state,
Speaker 1: in this mummified state, remains the rallying point for everyone.
Speaker 1: That's what Black Sabbath should have done is mummified Ozzy
Speaker 1: Osbourne and then had Ronnie James Dio you know, performed
Speaker 1: with Azzi's uh mummified body on stage. Or Van Halen
Speaker 1: could have done it as well. Sammy Haggard performs with
Speaker 1: the body of David. They had the idea of an
Speaker 1: aged rocker as a mummy. It is just perfect, I
Speaker 1: mean because they kind of reached that state on their own.
Speaker 1: Look at any and you can easily see a month. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Mick Jagger is definitely approaching mummification. So okay. So the
Speaker 1: first chin Master mummy that we know of was a
Speaker 1: guy named Tao Sin And who was alive from five
Speaker 1: eighty to six fifty one. When he passed away at
Speaker 1: the age of seventy two, his students wrapped him in
Speaker 1: lacquered cloth so they could preserve the miracle of his
Speaker 1: natural incorruptibility. Uh and so like like what you're saying,
Speaker 1: this wasn't a you know, a normal practice for Buddhism.
Speaker 1: Is sometime in Eastern Han or early six Dynasties period,
Speaker 1: the rationale around this changed. They wanted to maintain the
Speaker 1: integrity of the body and the soul together after death
Speaker 1: through this kind of preservation. Now, another example that Robert H.
Speaker 1: Sharf brings out in his piece is that of Sean
Speaker 1: wou Wei, who died in seven thirty five at age
Speaker 1: ninety nine, but he wasn't buried until seven forty, and
Speaker 1: according to his biography, he was he was so quote
Speaker 1: imbued with meditation and wisdom that no decay occurred in
Speaker 1: the five years between death and the tomb, and in
Speaker 1: seven fifty eight, eighteen years later, his dissiples dug him
Speaker 1: back up and then discovered very little decay. Or so
Speaker 1: it's said, again, you kind of have to throwing a
Speaker 1: little grain of salt here and there when it comes
Speaker 1: to the the official religious account. So what's the common
Speaker 1: practices here, so that it's different from what you're talking
Speaker 1: about with the Japanese model earlier there it's not self
Speaker 1: mumification in the sense that they starve themselves and eat
Speaker 1: nuts and berries and then bury themselves life. Right, it's
Speaker 1: not that gory. Uh. It's almost like the kind of
Speaker 1: mummification in a lot of ways, similar to Egyptian mummification. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you do see these varying levels of embalming techniques
Speaker 1: coming online to to make up for missing environmental factors.
Speaker 1: Mummification itself in China goes back as far as two
Speaker 1: hundred and six BC. Uh. And then the notion of
Speaker 1: a lingering soul presence in the body like may underlie
Speaker 1: all of it it, just as it seems to underlie
Speaker 1: any mommification practice. Yeah. And the spirits of your ancestors
Speaker 1: still to this day, seems to be fairly potent cultural
Speaker 1: idea China. So they had various preservation practices. Uh. One
Speaker 1: is just temporary burial, which again has a lot in
Speaker 1: common with the Egyptian model bearing in the ground. If
Speaker 1: the ground is dry, then it's going to dry the
Speaker 1: body out, drying over a fire, which you mentioned already. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is my favorite though. Salt brine in a used
Speaker 1: inside of an urn to pickle the body, essentially tick
Speaker 1: all the body. I read about that one. That is,
Speaker 1: so you put the body in there and let it
Speaker 1: soak for like years, right, and then you take it
Speaker 1: out and momify it. And in any of these cases,
Speaker 1: when you get the body back out, it's it's dried out.
Speaker 1: You wrap it in various layers, including lacquered cloth, then
Speaker 1: you dress it in robes, and you place it in
Speaker 1: a in a position and befitting a chan master. So
Speaker 1: from what I was reading, the lacquering process is actually
Speaker 1: very similar to the same process that they used to
Speaker 1: produce specific kinds of Buddhist sculptures, and it resulted in
Speaker 1: a durable finished product. So I think that that's where
Speaker 1: they got the idea from. They said, well, let's apply
Speaker 1: this statue process to you know, venerating our elders. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so do you want to get into the thing
Speaker 1: about that there's a technique of placing aid and bone
Speaker 1: in the nine orifices of the body. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: interesting and I don't have a lot of details on this.
Speaker 1: I probably don't have to to employ them. But the
Speaker 1: the the use of jade is interesting, um because it
Speaker 1: was a common Han dynasty method for the wealthy to
Speaker 1: be buried in a suit of jade. Uh. People may
Speaker 1: have seen images of this. It tends to it's not
Speaker 1: a solid suit of jade, but it has like jade que,
Speaker 1: jade squares, jade tiles um. And this is because the
Speaker 1: stone was thought to prevent decay. So if it works
Speaker 1: on the outside, which there's no evidence that it did,
Speaker 1: but if it worked on the outside, then the magical
Speaker 1: thinking is that it would work inside as well. Because
Speaker 1: it's as with the Egyptian model of momification, you see
Speaker 1: this continuing struggle to try and figure out where decay
Speaker 1: is coming from from the outside or from the inside. Therefore,
Speaker 1: put the jade on the outside and put it on
Speaker 1: the inside. Um. If you ever have the opportunity to
Speaker 1: see a Chinese mummy, definitely take advantage of it. I
Speaker 1: got to see one at the Museum of the Western
Speaker 1: Han Dynasty Mausoleum in Guangzhoe when I was there a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago to get my son. He was
Speaker 1: not impressed. He was a year and a half and
Speaker 1: did not see the beauty of everything there and cried
Speaker 1: his head off. But I did get to see a
Speaker 1: fabulous restored mummy there with the the jade suit, and
Speaker 1: that would have been zal May, the second ruler of
Speaker 1: the Kingdom of southern you. Yeah, I think I've brought
Speaker 1: up on the show before that I spent some time
Speaker 1: in my childhood in Southeast Asia and I lived in
Speaker 1: China for six or seven weeks on my own. Actually
Speaker 1: it was a teenager, which is kind of a wild story.
Speaker 1: But I never got to see anything like that that
Speaker 1: sounds really cool. Well, apparently there are only a handful
Speaker 1: of these. I think they're more than more than ten,
Speaker 1: so that's about how many have been recovered. Only five
Speaker 1: have been restored. So I just kind of looked into
Speaker 1: gain to see one while in Guangjoe. So another thing
Speaker 1: about these specific Chun Buddhist monks the way that they
Speaker 1: were preserved. After they were covered in the lacquered cloth,
Speaker 1: they were gilded as well, so they're they're they're there's
Speaker 1: elements of gold here, right or some kind of metal,
Speaker 1: and uh, they're dressed in fine robes afterwards as well.
Speaker 1: So when you saw that one, did it have that
Speaker 1: kind of shiny exterior? Um, I don't remember there being
Speaker 1: as much of a shiny exterior so much, but the
Speaker 1: jade suit was the thing that made the big impact.
Speaker 1: And given how old they are too, I would imagine
Speaker 1: over time that you know, that would kind of fade. Um.
Speaker 1: So one of the things about this is that there
Speaker 1: was a traditional funeral practice even before this mummification came
Speaker 1: into effect, which the abbots were always buried with a
Speaker 1: portrait of themselves nearby. Uh. And at some point mummifying
Speaker 1: the abbot replaced the portrait the idea of being able
Speaker 1: to interact with the you know, the the abbot and
Speaker 1: his spirit. So it created a flesh icon and yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that that's the term that the traffic uses
Speaker 1: in his piece, flesh icon. So they could use these
Speaker 1: as both an effigy and a holy relic. But there's
Speaker 1: also as we talked about a little bit earlier, is that, Um,
Speaker 1: there's the aspect of interacting with the government here too
Speaker 1: in the economy. So a lot of these temples and
Speaker 1: institutions were supported by government funds, and so if the
Speaker 1: abbot was very popular with the community and very charismatic
Speaker 1: and then passed away, there's always the possibility that the
Speaker 1: government might withdraw funding and think, oh, well, this is
Speaker 1: no longer an active institution, right. Yeah, it comes back
Speaker 1: to the lead singer scenario exactly. The lead singer drops
Speaker 1: out and how are you going to keep the support
Speaker 1: for your product going, so they mummified them in order
Speaker 1: to keep it active. And again, like we're talking about, yeah,
Speaker 1: the the new singer, the new abbot comes in and
Speaker 1: kind of gets used to the community then and hopefully
Speaker 1: builds up enough of a following that he too gets mummified.
Speaker 1: You know, I do want to throw in real quick
Speaker 1: that another fascinating aspect of this, uh that came out
Speaker 1: in my my research is that according to Holmes aged Welch,
Speaker 1: that's he's an early twentieth century expert on East Asian culture,
Speaker 1: particularly Taoism and Buddhism, and he's talking about the mummification
Speaker 1: of the bodies and he points out, of course how
Speaker 1: they were gilded, but quote sometimes the lobes of the
Speaker 1: ears were lengthened and a dot was placed between the eyebrows.
Speaker 1: Golden skin, long lobes and the uma dot were among
Speaker 1: the thirty two sacred marks of a Buddha. The implication
Speaker 1: was therefore that in his lifetime, the monk whose corpse
Speaker 1: the visitors saw before him, had attained buddhahood. So in
Speaker 1: this we see postmortem body modification, which granted any form
Speaker 1: of mummification or funerary, right, you know, anytime anything a
Speaker 1: mortician does is body modification. But generally we were all about,
Speaker 1: let's just make it look as much like it did
Speaker 1: when it was alive. But here we see a modification
Speaker 1: to make the body look more like the spiritual idea
Speaker 1: idea as as as opposed to just what they were. Definitely,
Speaker 1: from what I've seen the photographs during the research, I mean,
Speaker 1: these do not retain human form in the way that say,
Speaker 1: like our typical idea of an Egyptian mummy does, right,
Speaker 1: because it's not stuff full of blackered linen and all
Speaker 1: all kinds of materials, but it is you know, designed
Speaker 1: to be an icon in the same way like a
Speaker 1: statue would be, and really to be kind of a
Speaker 1: trans human body for a different type of being, which
Speaker 1: is such a fascinating idea. And I think there are
Speaker 1: elements of that in Egyptian um momification as well, but
Speaker 1: they I think it's often lost on us, And I
Speaker 1: feel like this example brings out that motif in a
Speaker 1: in a new way. Yeah it. You know, every time
Speaker 1: we get into this kind of stuff, I have to
Speaker 1: think to myself, like, what kind of uh post death
Speaker 1: rituals are we going to come up with in the future,
Speaker 1: you know, like where we go on with that when
Speaker 1: we start taking our bodies and you know, with trans
Speaker 1: humanism coming along, know, when we start trying to make
Speaker 1: them look more alien or something like that. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: ended up being Joe did a podcast episode on the
Speaker 1: near future of various funeral rights. Yeah, we didn't get
Speaker 1: into this as much, but I can't help but think
Speaker 1: of RoboCop, remember, because there's a whole scene where it's
Speaker 1: like RoboCop meeting his former wife and someone's pointing out, well,
Speaker 1: this isn't him, that we did this to honor him,
Speaker 1: which if you take the place is just like glued
Speaker 1: on over. So in a sense, he's buried within RoboCop.
Speaker 1: He kind of like a like a Warhammer four eight
Speaker 1: thousand dreadnought where the tomb is the robot. Which so
Speaker 1: in a way, RoboCop is a funeral rite and one
Speaker 1: that I think we should all be open to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: why not. Let right, it's in the movies. It went
Speaker 1: really well, it did, Yeah, it went great. Alright, So
Speaker 1: we've discussed the Soko Shimbidsu, We've talked about the John
Speaker 1: Masters and those are just two specific examples from East
Speaker 1: Asian mom of the Asian history, and we we can't
Speaker 1: get into all of the examples in this podcast. Maybe
Speaker 1: we'll come back for more later. You do see related examples,
Speaker 1: particularly in Thailand. Um, very much of the same model
Speaker 1: I think is Sean Buddhism, but certainly an area that
Speaker 1: deserves its own spotlight, perhaps at a later date. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in fact, you know, there's of course other mummies too,
Speaker 1: especially in the American continent. So uh, there's possibility that
Speaker 1: we could talk about Mayan or Tintrue mummies in the
Speaker 1: future too. So if you're interested, let us know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sounds good to me. I am certainly down to do
Speaker 1: more episodes on global mummification rituals me too, So let
Speaker 1: us know. There's tons of avenues to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us. In fact, we are on Facebook, Twitter and
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Speaker 1: haven't used periscope before, you get to see us hanging
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Speaker 1: conversations that we had last week. We're about the possibility
Speaker 1: of you, Joe and I writing our own horror anthology books.
Speaker 1: One of our fans suggested that, all right, keep suggesting that. Yeah. Uh,
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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, where we've got
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Speaker 1: that's not just the podcast. We work hard on Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind, and we've got all kinds of
Speaker 1: crazy things out there, especially about mummies, right exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of content about mommies, and don't
Speaker 1: make sure include some links to it in the landing
Speaker 1: page for this episode, as well as links out to
Speaker 1: some of these key resources if you want to deeper
Speaker 1: dive into the topics. And hey, if you want to
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