Mummified Monk Found Inside 1,000-Year-Old Buddha Statue

An anonymous reader writes Using a CT scanner, scientists and hospital staff at the Meander Medical Center in the Netherlands have discovered the mummified body of a Chinese monk inside a statue of Buddha. The monk is believed to have lived around the year 1100. From the article: "Glowing through the statue's golden cast, the human skeleton is believed to belong to Buddhist master Liu Quan, a member of the Chinese Meditation School. To further investigate the mummy, the researchers took the statue to the Meander Medical Center in Amersfoort and carried out an endoscopy and additional CT scans. They found out that Liu Quan's internal organs had been removed and replaced with scripts covered in Chinese writing. The museum speculates Liu Quan may have 'self-mummified' in order to become a 'living Buddha.'

Comments

Re:Thank you for reminding us.

[zoffdino]

He dedicated his body to his conviction, he personally suffered for what he believes is the path to a better life, he left this world in a peaceful and voluntary mean. He didn't bomb another religion, or shoot the infidels, or behead the non-believers. To each his own religion. Religions only become bad when they creeps up on others.

Re:Most likely not mummified...

[retech]

If you can't laugh at a 1k yr old meditating monk, then who can you laugh at. =)

Re:Preservation

[I'm New Around Here]

My wife's family is Buddhist, and none of them are anything like you describe.

Re:I would like to see your double blind study

[Jeremi]

Sounds more like all ideologies are harmful, religious or otherwise.

It's not that ideologies are always harmful, so much as that acting without thinking can be harmful, and ideology discourages people from thinking things through for themselves.

If people are carefully and honestly thinking through the consequences of their actions, they are less likely to harm themselves or others.

If, OTOH, people are blindly following dogma rather than engaging in rational thought.... well, often that isn't an immediate problem (either because the dogma is reasonably applicable to the situation at hand, or because the consequences of the decisions being made on auto-pilot are not too severe). But it does open the door for serious harm to occur, because people who aren't thinking are not able to quickly or easily detect or amend their mistakes.