The beginning of the practice of samumification was laid by the monk Kukai, who settled a thousand years ago on the sacred Mount Koya (Wakayama Prefecture). On his own experience, he developed a stepwise system of approaching the ideal, the passage of which took a whole decade …
In the beginning it was necessary to radically change the diet. The monk was allowed to eat nuts and seeds, which he looked for in the forest surrounding the temple. The stay at this first stage lasted for a thousand days, that is, about 3 years.
In addition to restrictions on food, the monk had to experience the whole brunt of daily work, prolonged physical exertion, and religious vigils. As a result, the body fat practically disappeared. This rid the body of the substance that decayed most rapidly after death.
After the first thousand days of mortification of the flesh, the second stage began, associated with further restrictions on food.
Now it was permissible to eat only a small amount of bark and roots of pine trees. On this diet, the monk had to go on for another thousand days, by the end of which his body resembled a living skeleton.
At the same time, it was necessary to reduce the amount of moisture consumed.
At the end of the second thousand-day fasting period, the monk switched to a special tea infused with urushi - the juice of a lacquer tree. Japanese and Chinese craftsmen use this varnish to cover the dishes to give them a varnish shine. Urushi juice is very poisonous, so the absorption of tea infused with it leads to a painful reaction of the body, expelling the remaining moisture from itself.
But the main thing is different: the poisonous juice with which the monks who decided on this process soaked themselves, rid their dried bodies after death from the encroachments of any bacteria and insect larvae.
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Having passed this stage, the sufferer passed into a stone room intended to become his grave. It was so small that it could only be accommodated while sitting in the lotus position. It was connected to the world by a narrow gap in the wall through which air entered. At this time, the person did not eat or drink anything. Only the rare blows of the bell, from which the rope led to the stone crypt, testified that the ascetic was still alive. When the bell fell silent forever, the air gap was walled up.
After some time, the body of the deceased was taken out and carefully examined. If the process of self-mummification was successful, the remains were exhibited in the temple for viewing and worship as a divine manifestation of the Buddha himself. If the experiment on oneself ended unsuccessfully, and this was the case most often, the body was forever immured in a stone grave.