Asceticism profoundly impacts the secularized contemporary Western imagination and is often viewed as fanaticism. Christianity has known asceticism at least since the latter half of the 3rd century, with the anchorites and cenobites of the Thebaid, or the stylites and dendrites of the Near East. However, their deprivations rarely reached the extremes of *sokushinbutsu*, or “Buddha in his own body.” This term refers to a monk who, after a long period of mendicancy and increasingly strict diets lasting from three to eight years, would bury himself alive in meditation, waiting to die. The ascetic had a small air passage that would be sealed off once he stopped ringing a bell he kept with him.

This practice originated in the 12th century CE, within the Shingon Buddhist school, in Japan’s Yamagata region. It is difficult to determine how many individuals undertook this practice, as only those whose bodies, after three years, were exhumed and found in a well-preserved state were commemorated. These mummies were transported to the temples of the three sacred mountains of Dewa and revered as enlightened beings. It was believed that they were not dead but in a level of meditation that transcended the life/death dualism, allowing them to await the arrival of Maitreya, the prophesied successor of Gautama, who would renew the faith and transform the world into a paradise. Those who were not preserved were cremated and forgotten.

Similar practices existed in Thailand and China. The mummification process was the result of the loss of body fat and fluids, the ingestion of specific substances, such as tea containing the sap of the urushi lacquer tree, which made the body toxic to decomposing organisms, and total isolation within the burial chamber. However, just as the stylites were not truly isolated—being able to influence the decisions of Eastern princes and emperors—these Asian ascetics brought exceptional benefits to their monastic communities. Pilgrims would come to venerate their remains, offer gifts to the temples, and draw closer to a doctrine so powerfully exemplified.