Asian Self-Mummification

In parts of Tibet and Japan, Buddhist monks would commit an act of suicide that would leave their bodies preserved in a form of non-wrapped mummification.

In Tibet, the monks would sit in a lotus position with a belt attached from their legs to their throats that would slowly suffocate them as they passed out from lack of food/ sleep. The rarified climate so high in the Himalayas would mummify the bodies.

In Japan, the Sokushinbutsu would prepare a regimen over 1000 days. It consisted of eating seeds and nuts and wood bark while they exercised rigorously to remove fat from their bodies. Towards the end, they would start to drinl a poisonous solution that was to render the body inedible by maggots. When the time arrived to finish the act, they would sit in an stone tomb only big enough for them to sit in the lotus position. For the Monks, their only contact with the outside was a small tube to allow in air, and a bell that the monk would ring daily to leth others know he was still alive. When the bell was no longer heard, the air tube would be removed and the tomb sealed. The monk would be left for another 1000 days upon which the tomb was opened, and if the mummification was successful, the monk was seen as a Buddha and displayed in the monestary.