not quite nirvana
Mummified monk said to be alive and meditating
DEAD – OR MEDITATING?
A mummified monk found in the lotus position in Mongolia is believed to be around 200 years old. Dr Barry Kerzin, a famous Buddhist monk and a physician to the Dalai Lama, allegedly claims that the monk is actually in “very deep meditation” and in a rare and very special spiritual state known as tukdam. Over the last 50 years there are said to have been 40 such cases in India involving meditating Tibetan monks.
“I had the privilege to take care of some meditators who were in a tukdam state,” said Dr Kerzin. “If the person is able to remain in this state for more than three weeks – which rarely happens – his body gradually shrinks, and in the end all that remains from the person is his hair, nails, and clothes. Usually in this case, people who live next to the monk see a rainbow that glows in the sky for several days. This means that he has found a ‘rainbow body’. This is the highest state close to the state of Buddha. If the meditator can continue to stay in this meditative state, he can become a Buddha. Reaching such a high spiritual level, the meditator will also help others, and all the people around will feel a deep sense of joy”.
Initial speculation is that the mummy could be a teacher of Lama Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov. Born in 1852, Itigilov was a Buryat Buddhist Lama of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, best known for the lifelike state of his body. In 1927, Itigilov supposedly told his students he was going to die and that they should exhume his body in 30 years. The lama sat in the lotus position, began meditating and died. When he was dug up, his body was found to be well preserved. Fearing interference by the Soviet authorities, his followers reburied him and he remained at rest until 2002 when he was again dug up to great fanfare and found still well preserved. The lama was then placed in a Buddhist temple to be worshipped for eternity.
Gankhüügiin Pürevbat, founder and professor of the Mongolian Institute of Buddhist Art at Ulaanbaatar Buddhist University, said, in reference to the body of Itigilov’s alleged teacher: “The lama is sitting in the lotus position vajra, the left hand is opened, and the right hand symbolises the preaching Sutra. This is a sign that the lama is not dead, but is in a very deep meditation according to the ancient tradition of Buddhist lamas”.
The body, wrapped in cattle skins, was found on 27 January 2015 in the northcentral Mongolian province of Songinokhairkhan. It now transpires that it had been stolen from another part of the country and was about to be sold. An unnamed official said that it was taken from a cave in the Kobdsk region by a man who then hid it in his own home in Ulaanbaatar, planning to sell it on the black market at a “very high price”. Police uncovered the plot and quickly arrested a 45-year-old, named only as Enhtor. According to Article 18 of the Criminal Code of Mongolia, smuggling items of cultural heritage is punishable with either a fine of up to three million roubles (£28,000) or between five and 12 years in prison. The mummy is now being examined at the National Centre of Forensic Expertise at Ulaanbaatar.
There are some intriguing comments on the Siberian Times website. Alex Wilding in Italy writes: “Normally tukdam is said to follow death. It lasts for hours, sometimes a few days or even longer. The body, though without breath or heartbeat, stays fresh and without rigor mortis. When the tukdam ends, the body collapses, and is just like any other dead body. The rainbow body, however, is a product of a very specific line of practice, a small and particular part of dzogchen. The process starts immediately after death, but the shrinking stops if the body is disturbed. It takes a few days, even a week or two, to happen. So these are two different ideas, and this body fits neither case. It looks much more like what happens after a long, slow reduction in food intake. The digestive system then effectively shuts down – no juice, no bugs, nothing to attack the body when it dies.”
Michael Smith in New Orleans writes: “Tukdam (meditative stability on the clear light nature of the mind at the death point) is a very real phenomenon, but doesn’t usually last more than a few hours or days, and up to a few weeks in rarer instances. Not over centuries as this report suggests… Dr Kerzin doesn’t actually say that the monk is still in tukdam.”
Siberian Times, 2 Feb; BBC News, 4 Feb 2015. For more about self-mummification, see http://www.soulask.com/ sokushinbutsu-bizarre-practiceself-mummification/
LOVED TO DEATH
Charlie Manson’s supposed budding romance with a woman 53 years his junior has been allegedly exposed as a moneymaking scheme, according to journalist Daniel Simone, who has spoken extensively to Manson in Corcoran jail, California, and is planning a book on him. Afton Elaine Burton, 27, now known as Star, was hoping to gain possession of Manson’s corpse through marriage so she and her friend Craig Hammond could put it on display in a glass case in Los Angeles, just like Lenin in Moscow or Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi. They apparently thought that
the notorious Sixties hippie antihero (whose ‘Family’ murdered Sharon Tate and others) would draw a huge number of visitors and make them a pile of money. But Manson, 80, got wind of the plan and now no longer wants to marry Burton. Anyway, he believes he is immortal, so he thought the idea of displaying his corpse was stupid to begin with. The marriage license expired on 5 February, though Burton apparently remains hopeful that it will be renewed.
As Manson once said in an interview published in Rolling Stone in 1970: “Do you feel blame? Are you mad? Uh, do you feel like wolf kabob Roth vantage? Gefrannis booj pooch boo jujube; bear-ramage. Jigiji geeji geeja geeble Google. Begep flagaggle vaggle veditch-waggle bagga?” Curiously prescient, that reference to Google, 28 years before the company was incorporated... Independent, 9 Feb 2015.
MIRACLE ZOMBIE CAT
Bart, a tomcat belonging to the girlfriend of Ellis Hutson in Tampa, Florida, was found lying in the road, stiff in a pool of blood after being hit by a car, and was presumed dead. Hutson said he “couldn’t stand” to bury the animal and asked his neighbour David Liss to dig him a shallow grave. Five days later, a bedraggled Bart, weak and dehydrated, was found meowing for food by neighbour Dusty Albritton. Hutson, 52, took Bart to Tampa’s Humane Society, where on 27 January the 23-month-old cat had surgery to remove his ruined eye and treat his broken jaw. He was reported to be resting comfortably the next day. The Humane Society called Bart a “miracle cat”, while the ordeal has earned him the nickname “zombie cat” on social media. Full recovery was expected to take about six weeks. BBC News, 28 Jan; Sun, 29 Jan; Irish Examiner, 30 Jan 2015.