{"id":2857,"date":"2015-02-24T04:26:18","date_gmt":"2015-02-24T04:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=2857"},"modified":"2015-02-24T04:29:07","modified_gmt":"2015-02-24T04:29:07","slug":"x-rays-of-buddhist-statue-reveal-mummified-monk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/x-rays-of-buddhist-statue-reveal-mummified-monk\/","title":{"rendered":"X-Rays of Buddhist Statue Reveal Mummified Monk"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0<\/span>Carl Engelking<\/a>\u00a0| Discover<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"(Courtesy:<\/a>
(Courtesy: Drents Museum)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s not surprising that Southeast Asia is home to countless ancient Buddha statues, but when one of those statues contains a mummified monk, that iscertainly<\/em>\u00a0a surprise.<\/span><\/p>\n

A mummified monk is exactly what researchers at Norway\u2019s Meander Medical Center found when they placed a 1,000-year-old Chinese Buddha statue inside a CT scanner.\u00a0Researchers believe<\/span><\/a>\u00a0the statue contains the body of a Buddhist master named Liuquan, who may have practiced the tradition of \u201cself-mummification\u201d to reach his final resting place.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of a Kind<\/strong><\/p>\n

Researchers weren\u2019t\u00a0completely\u00a0<\/em>surprised by what the scans revealed. They knew there was a mummified body within the statue, but they didn\u2019t know much else about it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"(Courtesy:<\/a>
(Courtesy: Meander Medical Centre)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Buddha statues containing mummified monks are quite rare and this was the first time this particular statue was released beyond the borders of China. The statue had been displayed in a mummy exhibit last year at the Drents Museum in Netherlands, which yielded the perfect opportunity to examine it in more detail.<\/span><\/p>\n

Scientists and medical staff performed the CT scan that revealed Liuquan\u2019s mediating body in full detail. They also used an endoscope to examine the abdominal cavity of the mummy inside, and they discovered that the organs had been removed and replaced with paper scraps that were printed with ancient Chinese characters. It isn\u2019t clear what specifically was written on those paper scraps.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mummy Metamorphosis<\/span><\/h4>\n

If you were a monk that wanted to achieve enlightenment and be revered as a \u201cliving Buddha,\u201d\u00a0self-mummification was your brutal option<\/span><\/a>. Monks on this spiritual path would starve themselves for almost a decade, subsisting on water, seeds and nuts. Then, they\u2019d be sealed\u00a0inside<\/em>\u00a0the statue and ingest roots, pine bark and a toxic, tree sap-based tea for another 1,000 days \u2014\u00a0eating and breathing through a small tube. Eventually death would come, and monks mummified in this manner were said to have reached enlightenment.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the Drents Museum, this Buddha sarcophagus is\u00a0an example of self-mummification<\/span><\/a>. However, the fact that his organs were removed and replaced with paper suggests that may not be true.<\/span><\/p>\n

Regardless, let\u2019s hope sealing yourself inside a statue while surviving on toxic tea isn\u2019t the\u00a0only\u00a0<\/em>path to true enlightenment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source: DISCOVER<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Carl Engelking\u00a0| Discover It\u2019s not surprising that Southeast Asia is home to countless ancient Buddha statues, but when one of those statues contains a mummified monk, that iscertainly\u00a0a surprise. A mummified monk is exactly what researchers at Norway\u2019s Meander Medical Center found when they placed a 1,000-year-old Chinese Buddha statue inside a CT scanner.\u00a0Researchers believe\u00a0the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other","category-psychology"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/mummy2.jpg",2500,1722,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/mummy2-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/mummy2-300x206.jpg",300,206,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/mummy2.jpg",750,517,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/mummy2-1024x705.jpg",750,516,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/mummy2.jpg",1536,1058,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/mummy2.jpg",2048,1411,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/mummy2.jpg",1161,800,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/mummy2.jpg",828,570,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/mummy2.jpg",600,413,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/mummy2.jpg",600,413,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/mummy2.jpg",711,490,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/mummy2.jpg",523,360,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/mummy2.jpg",95,65,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/mummy2.jpg",640,441,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/mummy2.jpg",96,66,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/mummy2.jpg",150,103,false]},"author_info":{"info":["RevoScience"]},"category_info":"Other<\/a> Psychology<\/a>","tag_info":"Psychology","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}