Jiva wrote:I'm not sure if Buddhism is included as a RHP belief system, but there have been monks who have starved themselves to death with the intention of leaving a mummified corpse behind. I'm not particularly sure what the intention was, but I guess it's seen as another path to enlightenment with some (perhaps all?) being treated as if they were still alive. Therefore maybe this is a particularly literal interpretation of a deathless Arhat and something that makes the boundaries of life and death more permeable.
I’m familiar with this practice. It is called
mokujiki, or ”tree-eating”. The tree-eaters give up almost all food, and in the end they live only on bark and pine needles. One of the most famous tree-eater was
Mokujiki Shonin*, who died in 1810 at the age of 93. By then he had spent about 50 years of his life as a tree-eater. He was a carver of wooden images, and he left behind at least a thousand wooden images of Buddha. His woodworks were discovered by
Yanagi Soetsu in 1923, and they are somewhat famous.
There is indeed a tantric technique imported from China behind these self-mummified Buddhas, whose bodies are enshrined in some Japanese temples, for example, the
Churenji and
Nangakuji temples. It is, however, alleged that such people do not suffer death, but they are in a state of suspended animation called
nyujo. This is a state where the soul can wait even for millions of years for the coming of the Future Buddha Maitreya.
Some of these ascetics actually enter coffins while still alive, with only a straw for breathing. There is a sort of calculated receipt by which these ascetics gradually give up food by lengthening the periods between “meals”, so that they are told to be capable to know quite precisely when they will die.
My information comes mostly from Carmen Blacker’s amazing book about Japanese shamanism called “The Catalpa Bow”. The extreme fast is one of the legendary austerities of Japanese shamanism, that sort of mingled with later tantric Buddhism. I might add that there is also a tradition of suicide by starvation practice in Jainism.
It seems to me that there is often a motive of becoming powerful behind the tree-eater type of ascetism. I’ve sometimes called the ascetic practices pertaining to the black aspect collectively as “tree-eating”, because it has very black motivations behind it. These old school ways always had an element of violence in them, because in ancient times it was a necessary part of spiritual achievement. Nowdays different methods are more suitable. I think a suitable mortification for our age would be to take a sort of dis-interest to one's own interests. One may pursue them when it is possible, but when they are not, one should abandon them, no matter how important they may seem, for the needs of others or other hindrances for self-interest that the world may put on one’s way. When pursued diligently, it is a very hard practice, well worthy of the practices of the tree-eaters of yore. Though, if I’ve understood correctly, there is evidence that the classical tree-eating is still alive, at least in Japan.
*Mokujiki Shonin, meaning "The Saint Tree-eater", is a name applied to many ascetics since medieval times.