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Some social media algorithm once recommended to me a video about a 550-year-old, still living Japanese monk.

Turns out it was a sokushinbutsu, a self-mummifying monk who practiced extreme fasting, dietary restriction and dehydration until, emaciated and desiccated, their body died in a meditative state. Such monks were thought not to be dead but rather to have ascended to a higher plane of understanding. Their corpses would be dressed in fine clothes and venerated almost like gods. If you complete a shrine in Breath of the Wild and reach the mummified monk at the end, those monks were inspired by sokushinbutsu.

It made me think about the claims of extreme longevity, especially from the Far East, and how many of those might just be due to flexibility about the definition of "death".




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