is a type of Buddhist mummy. In Japan the term refers to the practice of Buddhist monks observing asceticism to the point of death and entering mummification while still alive. Although mummified monks are seen in a number of Buddhist countries, especially in Southeast Asia where monks are mummified after dying of natural causes, it is believed that it is only in Japan where monks have induced their own deaths by starvation.

There is a common suggestion that Shingon school founder Kūkai brought this practice to Japan from Tang dynasty China as part of secret tantric practices he learned. During the 20th century, Japanese scholars found very little evidence of live burial or . They rather concluded that mummification took place after the demise of the monk practising this kind of asceticism, as seen in Southeast Asian lands.

Origin

There is at least one "self-mummified" 550-year-old corpse in existence: that of a Buddhist monk named Sangha Tenzin in a northern Himalayan region of India, visible in a temple in Gue village, Spiti, Himachal Pradesh.A 500 year old Mummy with teeth, BBC News This mummy was rediscovered in 1975 when the old stupa preserving it collapsed, and it is estimated to be from about the 14th century. The monk was likely a Tibetan dzogpa-chenpo practitioner. Similar mummies have been found in Tibet and East Asia.Ken Jeremiah (2010), Living Buddhas: The Self-mummified Monks of Yamagata, Japan, McFarland, pp. 36–37 The cold weather and aridity of the area facilitated the preservation of the mummy for at least five centuries.

According to Paul Williams, the ascetic practices of Shugendō were likely inspired by Kūkai, the founder of Shingon Buddhism, who ended his life by reducing and then stopping intake of food and water, while continuing to meditate and chant Buddhist mantras. Ascetic self-mummification practices are also recorded in China and associated with the Chan tradition there. Alternate ascetic practices similar to are also known, such as public self-immolation practice in China. This was considered as evidence of a renunciant bodhisattva.

Japan In the 7th century, a mountain-worshipping religion called Shugendō emerged in Japan as a syncretism between Vajrayana Buddhism, Shinto and Taoism, which stressed ascetic practices.Ken Jeremiah (2010), Living Buddhas: The Self-mummified Monks of Yamagata, Japan. McFarland, pp. 10–11 One of these practices was (or ), connoting mountain austerities in order to attain Enlightenment in a single lifetime. This practice was perfected over a period of time, particularly in the Three Mountains of Dewa region of Japan, that is the Haguro, Gassan and Yudono mountains. These mountains remain sacred in the Shugendō tradition to this day, and ascetic austerities continue to be performed in the valleys and mountain range in this area.

In medieval Japan, this tradition developed a process for , which a monk completed over about 3,000 days. It involved a strict diet called (literally, ); the monk abstained from any cereals or cooked foods and relied on pine needles, resins, and seeds found in the mountains, which would eliminate all fat in the body. Increasing rates of fasting and meditation would lead to starvation. The monks would slowly reduce then stop liquid intake, thus dehydrating the body and shrinking all organs. The monks would die in a state of jhana (meditation) while chanting the (a recitation of the Buddha Amitabha's name in remembrance of him), and their body would become naturally preserved as a mummy with skin and teeth intact without decay and without the need of any artificial preservatives.Ken Jeremiah (2010), Living Buddhas: The Self-mummified Monks of Yamagata, Japan, McFarland, pp. 11–14 Many Buddhist mummies have been found in northern Japan and are estimated to be centuries old, while texts suggest that hundreds of these cases are buried in the stupas and mountains of Japan. These mummies have been revered and venerated by the laypeople of Buddhism.

One of the altars in the Honmyō-ji temple of Yamagata Prefecture continues to preserve one of the oldest mummies—that of the ascetic named Honmyōkai. This process of self-mummification was mainly practiced in Yamagata in Northern Japan between the 11th and 19th century, by members of the Japanese Vajrayana school of Buddhism called Shingon ("True Word"). The practitioners of did not view this practice as an act of suicide, but rather as a form of further enlightenment.

Emperor Meiji banned and criminalized this practice in 1877, viewing it as "anachronistic and depraved". However, in 1903, a Buddhist monk named Bukkai succeeded in transforming into a sokushinbutsu, becoming the last person in Japan to do so. Bukkai's remains were later exhumed by researchers at Tohoku University in 1961 and now rest in Kanzeon-ji, Fukuoka.

In popular culture The practice was satirized in the story "The Destiny That Spanned Two Lifetimes" by Ueda Akinari, in which such a monk was found centuries later and resuscitated. The story appears in the collection .Paul Gordon Schalow, Janet A. Walker The Woman's Hand: Gender and Theory in Japanese Women's Writing 1996, p. 174. "Most likely, Akinari's principal source for "The Destiny That Spanned Two Lifetimes" was "Sanshu amagane no koto" (About the rain bell of Sanshu [Sanuki province]), from Kingyoku neji-bukusa (The golden gemmed twisted wrapper; 1704)."

In the video game Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice by creator FromSoftware (2019) the player character can see monks specifically undergoing a form of this process in a twisted search of a form of immortality. The game specifically has a region called Shugendo, named after the religion, with obvious connotations.

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