Is there a tradition within the monks of Tibet where they meditate while wet towels are placed on their shoulders. Apparently they can will blood to the shoulders to such a degree that they can dry wet towels quickly. Thanks for any help.
I saw this on Discovery… the monks would pray, and wet towels were placed on them… within a few minutes, you could see steam rising from the towels. Shortly, the towels would be dry.
These same monks would go out, and with thin blankets, sleep on the side on a mountain in the Himalaya’s, with consistent sub-zero temps. They slept seperate, and had no adverse affects. Wild stuff.
Find a copy of “The Gyuto Monks: Tibetan Tantric Choir” (Windham Hill Productions - WD-2001) [produced by Mickey Hart from the Grateful Dead].
Not only do these monks have a vocal range lower than a Russian bass, they can chant/sing harmony with themselves. (Unfortunately, the liner notes do not include the prayer or the translation.)
- Guhyasamaja Tantra, Chapter II (a capella voices); and
- Melody for Mahakala (voices with bell, cymbals, drums, short trumpets and (from the liner notes)…
Pretty amazing to listen to, though if you are thoroughly entrenched in western music, it may take some getting used to. [Good comparison would be ‘Charles Ives meets Philip Glass’.]
I think what you’re talking about is ‘heat creating’, it’s actually the flashy side effect of a specific form of very concentrated meditation.
Don’t be misled, the aim is not the ability to create heat from within, it’s the honing of the mind. The heat created is just the physical manifestation of that.
There is a Buddhist story that goes like this.
There once was a monk who lived by a river. For twenty over years he lived in isolation on the river bank in meditation.
Until he could walk across the water. One day the Buddha happens by and the monk takes the opportunity to do a little boasting. And so when the Buddha askes him what he has learned, he demonstrates by walking across the river. Whereupon the Buddha promptly announces the monk has been wasting his time for these twenty over years, for the ferryman will take you across for but a few coins.
One of the greatest western misunderstandings about Buddhism is that they focus on the flash instead of the fire. This cracks up the Tibetans who cannot comprehend why anyone would want only to know about the parlour trick and care not a whit for the deep spiritual beauty of the Dharma.
Elbows, your post is right on time.
The meditation practice in question is called g Tum-mo (heat) yoga. The journal Nature, vol. 295, January 21, 1983, had an article on it:
“The neophytes sit on the ground, cross legged and naked. Sheets are dipped in icy water, each man wraps himself in one of them and must dry it on his body. As soon as the sheet is dry, it is again dipped in the water and placed on the novice’s body to be dried as before. The operation goes on in that way until daybreak. Then he who has dried the largest number of sheets is declared the winner of the competition.”
I saw a film of this two years ago at the International Conference on Tibetan Medicine, and it was amazing. You could see the steam rising from the monk’s bodies. The film was part of the lifelong research of Harvard physician Herbert Benson, who has been documenting the physical effects of meditation.
The Tibetan way of explaining this practice is that Prana is withdrawn from the normally scattered condition of everyday mind, and enters the Central Channel of the body. This Prana, or “Wind” is dissolved, igniting “internal heat”.
As elbows said, the purpose of this practice is not to say one is the number one flashy sheet-burning humdinger, but to have mastered the meditation practice enough to have the by product of outward manifestation.
GTum-mo is a practice that lends itself to the WOW factor. It has been well-documented. But the point is that if having control of one’s mind can produce such a flashy effect, think of the profound effects it can have in the more tedious terrain of the basic mind traps we find ourselves in.
I’ve done a web search but couldn’t find anything that scientifically explains the phenomenon, though I did find quite a few sites of the “Wow-gee-that’s-amazing” variety. I have a few guesses that might help explain it, but even if I’m right, it’s still pretty amazing. [ol]
[li]Evaporation tends to increase with increasing elevation, because absolute humidity tends to decrease even faster than air density. Lhasa is at an elevation of 11,800 ft., higher than the summit of Mt. Hood in Oregon.[/li][li]Evaporation tends to increase with isolation from the ocean. Although Lhasa is less than 1,000 miles from the Ocean, it is separated from it by the highest mountains in the world.[/li][li]Different textiles have different wetting and wicking properties. Some absorb less water and dry more readily than others. I don’t know what material they use in this ritual.[/li][li]Evaporation increases with temperature. Being in contact with the monk’s body, the towels will warmer than the ambient temperature, greatly incresing evaporation compared to simply hanging the material on a clothesline. But raising the temperature of the wet towel requires production of a lot of body heat.[/li][li]By all accounts that I could find, these monks eat a diet high in carbohydrates and very low (by American standards) in fat and protein. For rapid production of body heat, carbohydrates are much more efficient than protein or fat.[/li][li]The brain comsumes a surprisingly large number of carbohydrate Calories (several hundred or perhaps 1,000 Calories a day under normal circumstances), producing excess energy that the body has to get rid of somehow. It is possible the monks can significantly increase the number of Calories used in the brain by simply thinking more. [/ol][/li]Again, I have to admit, it’s still pretty amazing. Points 1 & 2 are purely geographical. If the experiment has been (or can be) performed just as successfully at sea level in a relatively moist climate, then I’m barking up the wrong tree.
biblophage, don’t forget the very importnant fact that the saturation temperature decreases steadily as altitude increases.
From a post on 11-11-2000 I made: