Everyone is welcome to attend:

 In this talk, I examine the case of self-mummified monks whose robed remains are on display and worshipped in a few temples in the Mount Yudono area. They are revered as ‘living Buddhas’ by temple patrons who petition them in prayer and who, in some cases, claim to receive messages from them while awake or dreaming. There is, within the Mount Yudono community, a politics of authenticity between the temples with mummies, however. Living monks of the same sect but at different temples have competing claims about which mummies are forgeries and which are real. Such claims are grounded in historicities of the auto-mummification process and if it was undertaken properly but are also, as I demonstrate, connected to competition in the domestic and international tourism industry.