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<\/a><\/p>\nOnce the ascetic was prepared to attempt to become a\u00a0sokushinbutsu, it’s said he would step into a tiny burial chamber and has himself buried alive, with a small opening to allow air inside the chamber. There he would sit, chanting sutra and ringing a bell to signal that he was still alive. Once the bell stopped ringing, the chamber would be completely sealed, and after three years it would be opened again to see if the attempt at self-mummification proved successful.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of people are thought to have attempted this form of self-mummification, and it’s not known how many were successful. However,\u00a0you can visit some of the successful sokushinbutsu at their shrines. Famously, Daijuku Bosatsu Shinnyokai-Shonin, who mummified himself at the age of 96 in 1783, sits in the Ryusui-ji Dainichibou Temple in Tsuruoka City, Yamagata Prefecture. If, when your burial chamber was opened, your body was found preserved, then you could be worshipped as a\u00a0sokushinbutsu. You could be dressed in robes and placed in a shrine where humanity could await your reawakening. Here, there is actually a small cheat in the self-mummification process; if the body was not decayed but not totally preserved, the skin would actually be treated with incense smoke to ensure it would last.<\/p>\n
However, changing mores and laws meant that not all successful\u00a0sokushinbutsu\u00a0were enshrined. When the priest and ascetic Bukkai Shonin died in 1903, he was interred and was supposed to be exhumed after three years, but exhumation was illegal in Japan at that point in time. When Bukkai was eventually exhumed, it was in 1961 by a team of researchers, who found the ascetic quite well preserved.<\/p>\n
And if your body was found rotting when the tomb was opened? Well, then no worship for your remains. An exorcism would be performed and the remains would be reburied. All those years of self-starvation those final days spent alone in a dark chamber, and your remains become an object of caution rather than worship.<\/p>\n