The mystery of monks who die meditating without falling over

The enigma of monks who die in the lotus position without falling

The year is 1225, in a village in China: Myozen, Dōgen's direct teacher, dies while practicing zazen. The body does not collapse. Eight centuries later, the phenomenon still lacks a conclusive medical explanation and is back in the spotlight because of documented cases in Tibetan Buddhism of a state called tukdam.

It is not a myth. There is a written record that Myozen died in the meditation posture, and that is how he was found. The Zen tradition claims the same end for the master Kōdō Sawaki, who died in 1965 on his cushion. Mummies of patriarchs such as Sekitō Kisen are also preserved sitting in zazen. The underlying question: how can a dead body stay upright and take longer to decompose?

The biochemistry of the tripod: why the body holds up

The skeptical explanation starts with geometry. In the full lotus position, the two knees and the buttocks form a tripod base. Rigor mortis fixes the position for hours or days. From there, everything depends on what happens with putrefaction.

And here comes the uncomfortable detail: there is no magic, there is chemistry. Among the factors considered by those who study these deaths are plant infusions with properties that favor mummification, long periods of fasting beforehand and pogre dehydration. The body, quite literally, preserves better if it arrives at the end with less water and with plant compounds that slow bacterial growth.

Two readings: consciousness withdrawing or a body being let go

For Tibetan Buddhism, tukdam is a state in which consciousness detaches from the body gradually, even with vital signs absent by Western medical standards. This tradition holds that clinical death does not end the process. On the other side, the physiological reading: it is an organism slowly shutting down, with heart and breathing rates declining, until it stops. Some also point out that the final fast is nothing other than a self-induced death, a gesture of liberation that should not be romanticized.

The debate echoes old chapters of European history. The Cathars, in the 12th and 13th centuries, practiced the endura, voluntary fasting as a path to liberation; they too saw their gesture reinterpreted as suicide from the outside. Today, the secular West looks at Zen masters with the same mixture of fascination and suspicion.

The unsettling fact is this: the toolkit of mummification is made up not of deities but of plants, dryness, time and muscles trained for decades to hold a posture. Science has not closed the case because no one has been able to study a tukdam in real time under laboratory protocols. Meanwhile, the monks keep meditating. And some of them die sitting up.