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Tonight’s story takes us deep into the mountains of Japan, where silence and devotion could lead a monk down a path few would dare follow. This is the horrifying fate of a Sokushinbutsu monk — a man who renounced comfort, endured years of hunger and poison, and sealed himself within stone to seek eternity.

What begins in serene meditation soon descends into pain, claustrophobia, and silence, as the body withers in pursuit of incorruptibility. Some were enthroned as “living Buddhas,” revered for centuries. Others were forgotten in darkness, their suffering erased by time.

It is a story of faith and endurance, but also of the unbearable cost of devotion — where the search for eternity meant becoming a husk, a relic, and silence itself.

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