Buddhist mummies, also called flesh body bodhisattvas, full body sariras, or living buddhas (Sokushinbutsu) refer to the bodies of Buddhist monks and nuns that remain incorrupt, without any traces of deliberate mummification. These are venerated by some Buddhists who believe they successfully were able to mortify their flesh to death. The practise to purposely make undecomposed bodies is seen as controversial and contradictory in Buddhism believing in impermanence. Many were destroyed or lost in history.[1]
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Some Mahayana buddhist monks left instructions to be followed after their deaths, which often included having them buried sitting in a lotus posture, put into a vessel with drying agents (such as coal, wood, paper, or lime) and surrounded by bricks, to be exhumed later, usually after three years. The preserved bodies would then be decorated with paint and adorned with gold.[2][3] It is a common method in China. Some covered the bodies with clay or salt.
According to Victor H. Mair in the Discovery channel series The Mystery of the Tibetan Mummy, the self-mummification of a Tibetan monk, who died ca. 1475 and whose body was retrieved relatively incorrupt in the 1990s, was achieved by the sophisticated practices of meditation, coupled with prolonged starvation and slow self-suffocation using a special belt that connected the neck with his knees in a lotus position, believing that could relieve a famine.
The mummies of monks (Sokushinbutsu) in Japan practised nyūjō (入定), which caused their own death by adhering to a wood eating diet made up of salt, nuts, seeds, roots, pine bark, and urushi tea. They were then buried alive in a pine-wood box full of salt connected by a tube for air and would ring a bell signaling they were alive. When the bell stopped ringing the air tube was removed.[4][5] Japan banned unburying in 1879 and assisted suicide, including religious suicide is now illegal.
Some names lost[6] or unknown.[7]
Some names lost,[16][17] Taoists[18] or Way of Former Heaven religion (先天道).
Some name lost[72]