India, which is right next to the mainland, has always been regarded as a magical country. It covers an area of less than one-third of the mainland, but has a population of 1.4 billion.
The ancient and feudal caste system allowed the aristocracy to firmly control the economic, political, cultural and other aspects of the ruling power, although the caste system was abolished by law, but the inherent inequality has long been ingrained in the minds of Indians.
The underprivileged population, who depend on agriculture, handicrafts and primary manufacturing for their livelihoods, live in poor conditions, have low levels of education, let alone social welfare. However, with such a large population base and inactive government, social revolutions are rare.
This has to do with Buddhism, which originated in India and permeates all aspects of Indian people's lives.
The teachings of Buddhism, pay attention to the cycle of cause and effect, emphasize the poverty and restraint of people, the eyes are empty, empty and impermanent, walking on the streets of India, you can often see a simple robe covering the body, staring at all beings with contempt, a group of ascetics who are empty of everything.
Pilarad Jenny
Piralad Djani is an extremely ordinary member of India's nearly five million dervishes.
The ascetics of India can be traced back to three or four thousand years ago, and this way of cultivation is different from the assiduous monks in traditional Buddhism, who abandon worldly greed such as good food, sleep, and good clothes, and pursue selfless "righteous asceticism".
The ascetics of India use an extreme kind of "outer asceticism", such as cutting off food and water, sleeping on thorn beds, walking in coals and other unreasonable behaviors, in order to get rid of the suffering of endless samsara and receive an oracle in this life, and enter heaven.
There is no age limit for ascetics in India, from 6 to 65 years old, they can join this special ranks.
Piralad Jeni began his ascetic practice at the age of 13. The reason why he was able to attract the public's attention is that at the age of 91, he claimed that he had not eaten for 78 years since he started practicing at the age of 13, as if he had been in a state of detachment, and he felt that he had received God's instructions.
"78 years of hunger strike", this gimmick is estimated to be able to distinguish between true and false in China, but in India, it has spread to the hundreds, and tens of thousands of Pilarad's "fellow believers" have rushed to his residence, just to get a glimpse of the demeanor of the "holy monk".
Pilarad lives alone in a cave on a barren mountain, and below the mountain are his "earthly" relatives.
Indians are good at practicing yoga, and the ascetics are all yoga masters, although yoga can indeed mobilize the body's functions, but it will not bring such counterintuitive effects.
The ascetic's "three nos": no sexual intercourse, no lying, and no killing, Pilarad is even more resolute in implementing it, and more and more people come to ask him questions, and the fame of this "living bodhisattva" spreads farther and farther.
Everyone who comes to pay their respects will ask how he managed to stay in such good shape after 78 years without eating.
Pilarad always proudly opened his mouth to show that his palate was close to the back of his throat, and that there was a hole the size of a little finger cover, and that he could not feel hungry if he had just moistened a small drop of water from this hole.
Pilarad claimed that he had been with him since birth, and that a monk who had passed through this place had made a fortune for him when he learned about it, telling his parents that it was a godsend from Lord Shiva and that he was destined to be an ascetic from birth.
The weather in India is hot and humid all year round, and Pilarad's complexion is also a bronzed color that glows dazzlingly white in the sun.
With curly gray hair and an off-white beard that covers the entire chin, and wide eyes that are blazing and staring ahead, it is as if you have really seen a miracle.
In India, it is not uncommon for ascetics like Pilarad to have a certain identity.
Some people, in order to practice, raise their right hand from the age of ten years and never put it down for decades, until their entire arm has become necrotic and fixed.
They believe that this is the real hard work, and that they are worthy of respect, and no one will regard such behavior as "dementia".
Bigu and fasting
In the pre-Qin period of the mainland, there were also various attempts to make the human body in pursuit of immortality, and it was from that time that the art of Bigu arose.
After the establishment of Taoism, Bigu was used by Taoist priests as a law for cultivating immortals, and some women who pursued physical beauty would also use Bigu to achieve the effect of fitness and longevity.
In many ancient books on the mainland, it is recorded that the people who practiced Bigu "no longer starved and were strong".
The core essence of Bigu is to take medicine and serve qi.
Although its principle has not been reasonably explained in medicine, the art of Bigu cannot be easily imitated without professional guidance.
On the Internet, it is common to see some women who go on hunger strike in order to lose weight suffer from eating disorders, which seriously disrupts various bodily functions.
So if a person like Pilarad, who has not eaten for 78 years, and whose mental state and physical fitness are no different from normal people, can not be explained by science to bring about great change?
Therefore, after the story of Pilarade spread, not only the ascetics were concerned, but even the government agencies were of great interest.
There are many millionaires in India who, after success, suddenly get some kind of "opportunity" and then scatter their wealth in search of monasticism and enlightenment.
Such examples are common, but the core gist illustrates the deep-seated influence of religion on Indian perceptions.
Phenomena like Pilarad directly show people's greed for immortality completely and undoubtedly.
After Qin Shi Huang unified the six countries, he gathered a huge team of warlocks for immortality, and took some so-called "elixir", and even the mausoleum built after his death was filled with overwhelming mercury, so that even the professional archaeological team did not dare to enter rashly.
Pilarad's 78-year ascetic career not only did not require food, but also had no effect on the physical body, although it is impossible to explain such a phenomenon in traditional medicine, but the Indian people are immersed in religious ideas, and all they want to explore is the feasibility behind it, rather than wonder if Pilarad is lying.
Soon, both official and military hospitals took notice, and for a moment Pilarad became famous in India.
After discussions with a number of organizations, it was decided to observe Pilarad for ten days in an all-round way, both to verify the authenticity of his lack of food and drink, and to prove that ascetics could indeed attain physical liberation through so-called "monasticism."
Naturally, Pilarad was not afraid of this so-called "all-round observation", and when an official military hospital pickup truck came outside his cave, Pilarad was basking in the sun, enjoying his "good time" one step closer to monastic success.
People from the local villages came to watch curiously, and the unwitting melon eaters thought that Pilarad was going to be arrested for "human experiments".
The female representative of the military hospital very cordially explained their intentions to the eminent monk, and asked Pilarad himself for his opinion on participating in this all-round observation.
If he was not good at lying, he might have panicked at the sight of these green pickup trucks, but Pilarard was very calm and agreed to their invitation without hesitation.
Afterwards, Pilarad entered his cave, changed into the only clean, spacious robe, and got into the green pickup truck at the head of the row.
The convoy passed by the "earthly" family of Pilarad at the foot of the mountain, and when he told the crowd that he was going to let them know, he walked slowly to the shantytown, which was even more dilapidated than his cave, and in a short time said goodbye to the convoy and went with the convoy to the test.
The experiment of the whole people
After the green convoy left, the village exploded.
Some of the dervishes who practiced with Pilarad sat down in the streets, closing their eyes and listening to the word of mouth about Pilarade's abduction.
People are afraid of being famous, pigs are afraid of being strong, they are eager to be the next Pilarad, and they are afraid that they will not even be able to see the sun tomorrow.
The convoy travels from the shantytowns on one side through the city centre to the shantytowns on the other, where it finally stops in the suburbs. Pilarad was taken to a makeshift break room, where he was told by staff that the experiment would begin tomorrow.
He was offered one last glass of water before leaving, but when Pilarad left the next day, it was unchanged.
It is said to be an experiment, but in fact it is only a ten-day observation of Pilarad, and there is no research in any scientific sense.
He was kept in a room with no monitoring corners, only a simple wooden bed spread on the floor, and the medical limit of a person's physiology without eating or drinking was seven days, and in order to prove that Pilarad was not lying, the experiment lasted ten days.
Because he claimed that he did not need to eat, drink, or have a bowel movement, the staff would only provide him with a glass of mouthwash in the morning, and an additional empty cup of the same scale would be used to hold the water that Pilarad spat out after rinsing his mouth, to ensure that he was not using his mouth to drink water.
On the first day of the experiment, people from nearby towns who heard the news came to the laboratory to watch.
One dervishew performed a fireball stomping in the crowd, another demonstrated a difficult yoga session, and others meditated around the periphery of Pilarad's room at night to show their devotion to the monastic path and their support for Pilarad.
On the third day of the experiment, the doctors and scholars who observed Pilarad did not find anything abnormal.
He spends most of his time meditating and meditating, occasionally doing weird yoga poses to move his muscles, but he doesn't really ask for water, and he doesn't have any weakness in his limbs or a tendency to go into dehydration shock.
With each passing day, more and more people believe that Pilarad is a true monk, and every day the authorities release a small surveillance video to show people that Pilarade's personal safety and physical condition are no different.
Perhaps, as he himself said, the small orifice in the palate is a gift from Lord Shiva, who is truly the chosen one.
On the seventh day of the experiment, Pilarad was as comfortable as the first day in his room.
With slightly sunken cheeks, you can see that there has been a certain change in his weight, but just the fact that he has not had a bowel movement for seven consecutive days has become a phenomenon beyond human common sense.
As a result, not only in India but around the world, the news media has focused on this miraculous experiment.
As the experiment drew to a close, the number of dervishes who came here reached hundreds.
Ten days later, Pilarade walked out of the laboratory unharmed, and the medical staff conducted a comprehensive physical examination on him, and all of his physical indicators showed normal except for a slight weight loss.
The crowd of onlookers at the scene could not wait to listen to the staff announce the final results of the experiment: Pilarad had not drunk, eat, or defecated for 10 days, and there was no adverse condition.
In order to show that the ascetic practice was indeed effective, it was demanded that all surveillance footage be released to the public, and Pilarad himself agreed.
Just as a giraffe has evolved a neck of one to two meters long in the natural conditions of years without low grass vegetation, Pilarad's body may be able to go without food or drink for ten days under years of extreme patience, but in the end, the images hidden in the video surveillance still reveal the truth of the matter.
A farce
The news that Pilarad had withstood the test of ten days spread throughout India with lightning speed.
He was respectfully escorted back to his village in a green pickup truck, still wearing the robe of the day he came, and the convoy stopped at the village gate, because Pilarad had said that he would pray to the gods here and wash the soil before returning home.
The villagers, who had thought that Pilarad would be arrested for "human experimentation", flocked to him and sang old Indian folk tunes, as if Pilarad's so-called prayer was fake, and enjoying people's reverence was true.
This 91-year-old ascetic finally enjoyed the glory of the world in his last year.
Many media outlets have come to this humble little village, as if they were about to dig three feet into Pilarad's living environment, and many monks who have worked hard all their lives to satisfy themselves have regarded Pilarad as a role model and began to imitate it and start a hunger strike.
The reason why dervishes are so common in India is inseparable from the extremely difficult living conditions of the people at the bottom.
Pilarade's small village is even more dilapidated than China's last century, with clusters of shantytowns in a precarious position that will collapse one day.
The popularity of Pilarad made the lower class people who practiced ascetics seem to see a class jump, which is a happy event worthy of celebration by all the toiling people.
As a result, no one wanted to inquire about whether it was contrary to scientific principles, but the experiment was publicized by the authorities, and Pilarad himself was invited to preach by various schools of thought.
This beautiful drama has been sung for nearly two to three months, and finally sensible netizens have begun to question it.
In the official surveillance video, Pilarad did spend ten days without any abnormality, and in order to ensure the effectiveness of the experiment, the surveillance at night was also carried out with infrared cameras, so he did not have any chance to show any small movements at all.
But sharp-eyed netizens still found that Pilarad has a very skilled strange appearance, that is, wiping his nose.
In the first two days of the video, he wiped his nose very little, and the more he reached the end of the experiment, the more times he wiped his nose in a day.
His wide, large robe hung down his arms, obscuring him from the nose down.
Every time he wiped his nose, there was a cough, and Pilarade's cheeks twitched with the cough, and it didn't take long for him to return to his original state.
This always happened halfway through his meditation, and it happened once or twice during the day, and more often two or three times at night, and those who could think a little more immediately understood that it was just a self-directed farce.
Even before officials noticed Pilarad, his family had prepared a contingency plan for him.
When Pilarad passed by his earthly home in a green pickup truck before the experiment began, he said he wanted to get out of the car to say goodbye to his family, and it was during this time that he hid a very small amount of dry food that he had prepared in his robe.
Declaring that he has not eaten for 78 years is naturally not his idea alone, but the idea of the entire family.
Because of his perennial residence in caves and the high temperatures of India, Pilarad's patience for water is extremely strong, and ascetic cultivation has a way of enduring extreme hunger, so these ten days of comprehensive monitoring are only a small meaning to him.
Without much food and drink, he naturally did not need to defecate, relying on a small amount of dry food in his robe, Pilarad was able to maintain his basic mental state without going into shock, but he had not eaten for 78 years, and he only relied on ascetic gimmicks to attract attention.
After all the nose-wiping shots were intercepted one by one, this farce also came to an end.
As the most religiously influenced country in the world, India has always been a magical presence.
In the modern 21st century, Indian women have a higher status in society than in ancient times, and civil conflicts and turmoil in Indian society have emerged one after another under the guidance of religion.
Ascetic cultivation may be the power of faith, but if superstition overrides science, it will only bring regression.
Behind Pilarad's farce is not only the personal yearning for fame, but also the poison of people's minds by the feudal superstition of practicing asceticism and attaining eternal transcendence.
If this belief had been transformed into a transformation of the country's economy or the life of the world, perhaps the shantytown in Pilarade's hometown would have ushered in a great change long ago.