The Statue That Contains a Mummified Monk

I wonder if that's a real guy in there, like a skeleton. Did you know there was a, they found, there was a Buddha statue once, and they found out that it was actually a mummified Buddha that they had covered with a statue. They did an x-ray on this thing, and inside of it is like an actual Buddha guy, like an actual yogi, who was in a lotus position, that they did the statue around him. Well that's not that weird. Well it's weird that they didn't know it. People had this statue they didn't know was a dead guy. How old was the statue? It's a good question. Because if it was, you know, I mean there's tombs and mummies and everything all over the place. But look at the statue. I think that's unreal. That's what I want. That's crazy, right? See like that thing, he ain't clicking that thing. That little thing in the corner. He has to sign up to the history channel. He's subscribing. He's like, he's subscribing every time. Could you pull back up to the images again? Like so is a monk, a mummified monk inside an ancient Buddha statue, which is wild, man. Because I don't know what the statue is made of, but it looks like, is it like pottery? What does that look like? Medical examination of a thousand-year-old Buddha statue revealed a shocking surprise hidden inside an actual person's body. So meander medical center in the Dutch town of Amser foot. Amser foot, of course. Amser fort has plenty of experience treating senior citizens, but none as old as the 1,000-year-old patient who came. Researchers brought a millennium old statue of the Buddha, which had been on loan from the Drentz Museum in the Netherlands to the state of the art hospital in the hopes that the modern medical technology could shed light on an ancient mystery. For hidden inside the gold painted figure was a secret, the mummy of a Buddhist monk in a lotus position, shown outside of China for the first time last year. So how do they know though? That's what's confusing. Did they open it up? Did they ruin the whole thing and open it up? I don't think they did, man. Just leave it in there. They sampled the material for DNA, it said. Huggelman slid an ancient artifact slowly into a high-tech imaging machine for a full-body CT scan and sampled bone material for DNA testing. Gastroenterologist, say that word. Gastroenterologist, say his name now. Roynoud Vermangelladel. Vermangeldin. Vermangeldin. Vermangeldin. Vermangeldin. Used a specially designed endoscope to extract samples from the mummy's chest and abdominal cavities. Now it's known the tests have revealed a surprise. The monk's organs had been removed and replaced with scraps of paper printed with ancient Chinese characters and other rotted materials since it's not been identified. How the organs had been taken from the mummy remains a mystery. Wow. That's cool. I wonder why they knew there was something in there though. Like that's not normal that you threw a fucking thing through a cat's skin. Yeah, you're going to do a CT scan of you. So scroll up there. No, you're right there. The body inside the statue is thought to be that of the Buddhist master Liu Quan, a member of the Chinese meditation school who died around AD 1100. How did Liu Quan's body end up inside, I hope I'm saying that right, end up inside ancient Chinese statue, one possibility explored by the Drent's museum, is the gruesome process of self-mummification in which monks hoped to transform themselves into revered living Buddhas. Oh, whoa. He put himself in there. The practice of self-mummification amongst Buddhist monks was most common in Japan but occurred elsewhere in Asia, including China, as described in Ken Jeremiah's book, Living Buddhas. Monks interested in self-mummification spent upwards of a decade following a special diet that gradually starved their bodies and enhanced their chances of preservation. Holy shit. They eschewed any food. I never know how to say that word because I only read it. How do you say that word? Eshued? Eshued. That's a word that I've never said. Eshued. I'm 54. I've never even seen that word. I've seen that word but I've only read it. I've never actually said it out loud. Any food made from rice, wheat, and soybeans and instead ate nuts, berries, tree bark, and pine needles in slowly diminishing quantities to reduce body fat and moisture, which can cause corpse to decay. Whoa. They also ate herbs. What is that word? Cisad, chisad nuts, and sesame seeds to inhibit bacterial growth. Holy fuck. They drank a poisonous tree sap that was used to make lacquer so that the toxicity would repel insects and pervade the body as an embalming fluid. Pervade? Wow. Shit, they went on a 10-year diet to kill themselves. What the fuck? And turn themselves in. But you know, that was a thing with the Buddha. There's images of the Buddha, like the original Buddha that was like he was starved to death. Have you ever seen those? No. They made statues of the Buddha where he was basically a skeleton. They're weird statues and that was, I guess, a part of that process. See if you can find any of those skeleton-like Buddha statues. How would you say it? Starved Buddha statues. But that was a thing that they would make these images of the Buddha in this state where he was apparently probably going through that thing. Like yeah, those. Oh, shit. What the fuck? That's like something out of Indiana Jones. That's scary. Say, go to that Quora thing. What does the emaciated body of the Buddha statue represent? They're not really good. Not good answers? They could be made by anybody though. But let's see. It represents the six-year period of renunciation that the Buddha practiced from age 20 to 36, approximately 446 to 440 BC, based on traditional Indian, especially Saramana belief in self-mortification before he realized the futility of extreme asceticism and renounced it as well when he was on the verge of dying. So he wised up. So the Buddha did the same thing those monks did. And he was like, what the fuck am I doing? He stopped. What the fuck am I doing? Umbr announced this. But look, he had gotten to the point of basically almost death. So that practice, since, okay, so that's 446 BC. So that statue was older than that. So the statue was 1,000 years old, right? It was 1,000 BC, wasn't it? No. No, it was 1,000 years from now. So it was 1,080. Right. So this was pre-that. So that guy was probably, he didn't get the full wire that the Buddha bailed on. He didn't get the facts. Yeah, he didn't get the full details. So he decided, well, the Buddha was a pussy. Yeah. And he quit. And he did what the Buddha couldn't do. I'm not a fucking quitter. I want to be a statue bitch. I'd be better than the Buddha. But that's the whole Buddhist monk thing is an odd practice anyway, right? Because I'm a dumbass, can you just explain? There's more than one Buddha, right? Or has been or? Well, there's the Buddha who was like, thought to be the root. Look at that image of him. Whoa. Look at his guts. Well, so I was wondering if he was holding something or what that is. I think that just represented his hands, man. That's his hips, buddy. Oh. That's no stomach at all. This is organs that shrunk up. Yeah. I think he's got too many ribs though. Those bitches need to take an anatomy lesson. Does he have too many ribs? How many ribs do you have? Do you even know how many ribs? Maybe some of its muscles. 26. I made that up completely. Because there's muscle up there. But they look different than the other one to the left. That one looks more realistic. Like that one there. The tan look. Yeah. That looks more realistic. See that looks like real ribs. Look at these sunken eyes. So look at the ribs on that one. And then look at the ribs on that gray one right there. That gray one looks fake as fuck. It's too many ribs. How many ribs do you think you have? I don't know how many ribs you have. I'm going 26. 26. You mean both sides? No, all up. 26. I might be thinking of teeth. I might be confused. I don't know how many teeth you have either. But if you think of how many ribs you have on each side, let me guess. Without touching my own ribs. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. I might have gone a bit too many. I'm going to stick with it. I'm going to say 22. I'm going to say 11 on each side. 12 on each side? Is it 12? Mm-hmm. Oh. 12 pairs. It's only 12. You're pretty close. We were right in the middle. You said 22. Yeah. But look at his though. Look at that one weird one that we just saw. That fucking guy had like 50. How many has he got? He's got shit toned. What's he saying? But look at that nice muscle he's got going. You like that? Look at that nice muscle he's got going on there. Bro, that's skin. That guy probably has tendon. That guy can't curl a fucking jar of white out. That guy didn't lift. He don't lift. No. You lift, bro? You lift, bro? How many has he got there? He's got too many. That's too many. Count them. He looks like Predator. He's got too many. They put nipples on him though too. Like the Batman suit. How many has he got? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. Yeah, he's got too many ribs. They didn't know what the fuck they were doing. It's all fake. Fake news. Fake news. This is bullshit. Fake news, bro. But that whole Buddhist monk thing, the suffering thing, is a strange thing. I have a friend who became a monk. Yeah? Yeah, he became a monk while I knew him. He was a friend of mine from Taekwondo. His name was Joe. And we used to train together. And he just decided at one point in time that he wanted to go to this Buddhist temple, to learn Buddhism. And he wanted to get control over his mind because he got very nervous during sparring and got very nervous when it came time for training and competing. He competed a few times too. He would just like lose his shit. And he was like, maybe meditation would help me get through this. So he started meditating and taking these Buddhist practices and doing this time at the temple. And then switched to a strict vegetarian diet. And then completely quit doing Taekwondo and just became a monk. And we used to go visit him. And we used to go visit Joe the monk. Where did he live at a monastery? Yeah, he lived in a monastery. He swept up at a temple. It was very odd because I knew him before that. And he was a guy that we would train with. And then over time, he became a monk. Silent? No, no, he would talk. He would laugh and joke around with you and stuff. But he would only eat vegetables. And he would never speak badly about anyone or anything. It was really interesting. Did he seem happy? Happy is a weird thing. What is happy? He didn't have a mate. He didn't have a wife or a boyfriend. There was no one in his life that seemed like it was just him and meditation and silence. He had a koan. There's a thing you're supposed to meditate on. I think that's what a koan is. And his was the sound of one hand clapping thing. Oh, yeah, right. I don't think that was it. But it was that kind of thing. It was like falling in the woods. No one's around. Well, you're supposed to think about it constantly, even though it doesn't necessarily make sense. And the idea is that through that, you somehow or another achieve enlightenment by focusing on this one thing over and over and over and over again. Maybe that's some sort of a brain hack. But I remember I was a kid at the time when he did this. I was probably 16, something like that. It was 15 when I knew him. And then maybe 16, 17 when he became a monk. And we would go visit him. It was very strange. We go to eat with him. You have to eat vegetables. Would he come out and go into the wherever you were? Yeah, he was like, He could go places. San Francisco and go and have some drinks. This was in Boston. He would know he wouldn't have drinks. No way. He just drank water and tea. And he was different, man. He was all in. He had decided that that was his life. And he was subscribing to all of their belief systems and their practices. Did you and your friends ever at any stage think we got to get him out of there? Maybe he's being brainwashed or something? No. He was older than us. We weren't in a position to tell him what to do. Because all of us were around the same age. I was the youngest guy, but only by a year or two. And I think Joe was 30-ish. So we were teens, early 20s. And this guy was in his 30s. And he was hanging around a bunch of teenagers. Well, he was training with us. Oh, okay. Wasn't hanging out with us. I'll take it back. We were all training at the same Taekwondo school. And he just decided that that was his life. And he seemed content. I'll say that. Happy is like, you're around someone, they got a big smile on their face. They love what they do. Happy is he catch a big fish. That's happy. Yeah, right. Whoa. Yeah, yeah. He wasn't that, but he seemed like he was on this path. And this path provided him some sort of clarity or some peace in his life that he seemed was worth sacrificing all... Like he didn't have sex. He was done. And we were joking around with him about that. Like, that's it forever. No more sex. Did he jack off? No. No masturbation. Bullshit. I know. That's what I say. I'm a fucking liar. Maybe he fucked a pillow. Maybe he's in a trance. You know how monks fuck pillows. Yeah, pretended. I don't know what he did. But he was the first guy that I ever met that sort of left society. And I remember he stated this temple that we knew where the temple was. We'd go see him there. I've known people that have done that, kind of left society, but not that deep. They've gone to a remote island in Indonesia and they just surf and... Yeah. You know. I've heard of that before. Yeah, I know people that have sort of like dropped out and, you know, live in a small town, live in a log cabin and shit. I've thought about it. I think it'd be good. I'd get too frustrated. I think there's something to that. There's something to like being in the woods and there's something to just being alone with nature.