Name: The Statue That Contains a Mummified Monk
Uploaded: 2022-03-22T17:06:59.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Statue That Contains a Mummified Monk' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-03-22. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Statue That Contains a Mummified Monk' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-03-22. Transcript available.

- The Joe Rogan Experience.
- I wonder if that's a real guy in there,
like a skeleton.
Did you know there was a,
they found a, there was a Buddha statue once,
and they found out that it was actually a mummified Buddha
that they had covered with a statue.
They did an x-ray on this thing,
and inside of it is like an actual Buddha guy,
like an actual yogi who was in a lotus position,
that they did the statue around him.
- That's not that weird.
- Well, it's weird that they didn't know it.
People had this statue,
they didn't know it was a dead guy inside of it.
- How old was the statue?
- That's a good question.
- 'Cause if it was, you know,
I mean, there's tombs and mummies and everything
all over the place.
- But look at the statue.
- I think that's unreal, that's what I want.
- That's crazy, right?
See, like that thing, he ain't clicking that thing.
That little thing in the corner.
- He has to sign up to the History Channel.
- That guy's subscribing.
- 'Cause he's like, ah, crap.
- He's subscribing every time.
Could you pull back up to the images again?
Like, so is a monk,
a mummified monk inside an ancient Buddhist statue,
which is wild, man.
'Cause I don't know what the statue's made of,
but it looks like, is that pottery?
What does that look like?
Medical examination of a thousand-year-old Buddhist statue
revealed a shocking surprise
hidden inside an actual person's body.
So, um, Meander Medical Center in the Dutch town of Amsterfoort.
- Ah, Amsterfoort, of course.
- Amsterfoort has plenty of experience treating senior citizens,
but none as old as the 1,000-year-old patient
who came, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Researchers brought a millennium-old statue of Buddha,
of the Buddha, which had been on loan from the Drents Museum
in the Netherlands to the state-of-the-art hospital,
in the hopes that the modern medical technology
could shed light on an ancient mystery.
For hidden inside the gold-painted figure
was a secret, the mummy of a Buddhist monk
in a lotus position,
shown outside of China for the first time last year.
So how do they know, though?
That's what's confusing.
- Did they open it up?
Did they ruin the whole thing and open it up?
- I don't think they did, man.
- Just leave it in there.
- Oh, they sampled the material for DNA, it said.
"Hugelman slid an ancient artifact slowly
into a high-tech imaging machine for a full-body CT scan
and sampled bone material for DNA testing.
Gastroenterologist," say that word.
Gastroenterologist.
- And say his name now.
Try that.
- "Roynaud vermenschladl."
- Ver-ma-j-d-d-d-d-d.
- Ver-ma-j-d-d.
- Ver-ma-j-d-d-d.
- Ver-ma-j-d-d.
- "Used a specialty,
a specially designed endoscope
to extract samples from the mummy's chest
and abdominal cavities.
Now it's known the tests have revealed a surprise.
The monk's organs had been removed
and replaced with scraps of paper
printed with ancient Chinese characters
and other rotted materials
since it's not been identified.
How the organs had been taken from the mummy
to the remains of mystery.
- Wow.
- That's cool.
- I wonder why they knew
there was something in there, though.
Like, that's not normal
that you threw a fucking thing.
- Yeah, you go and do a CT scan of you.
- You threw a cat's gun.
So, look, scroll up there.
No, you're right there.
The body inside the statue
is thought to be that of the Buddhist master Liu Quan,
a member of the Chinese meditation school
who died around AD 1100.
How did Liu Quan's body end up inside,
I hope I'm saying that right,
penned up inside ancient Chinese statue,
one possibility explored by the Drent's Museum,
is the gruesome process of self-mummification
in which monks hope to transform themselves
into revered living Buddhas.
- Oh.
- Whoa.
- He put himself in there.
- The practice of self-mummification amongst Buddhist monks
was most common in Japan,
but occurred elsewhere in Asia, including China,
as described in Ken Jeremiah's book, Living Buddhas.
Monks interested in self-mummification
spent upwards of a decade following a special diet
that gradually starved their bodies
and enhanced their chances of preservation.
Holy shit.
They eschewed any food,
I never know how to say that word,
'cause I only read it.
How do you say that word?
Eschewed?
- Eschewed.
- That's a word that I've never said.
- Eschewed.
- I'm 54.
- I've never even seen that word.
- I've seen that word,
but I've only read it.
I've never actually said it out loud.
Any food made from rice, wheat, and soybeans,
and instead ate nuts, berries, tree bark,
and pine needles in slowly diminishing quantities
to reduce body fat and moisture,
which can cause corpse to decay.
Whoa.
They also ate herbs.
What is that word?
Cy-sad?
Ky-sad?
Cy-sad nuts?
And sesame seeds to inhibit bacterial growth.
Holy fuck.
They drank a poisonous tree sap
that was used to make lacquer
so that the toxicity would repel insects
and pervade the body as an embalming fluid.
Pervade?
- Wow.
- Shit, they went on a 10-year diet to kill themselves.
- What the fuck?
And turned themselves in.
But you know, that was a thing with the Buddha.
Like there's images of the Buddha,
like the original Buddha that was like,
he was starved to death.
Have you ever seen those?
- No.
- They made statues of the Buddha
where he was like basically a skeleton.
They're weird statues.
And that was, I guess, a part of that process.
See if you can find any of those skeleton-like Buddha statues.
How would you say it?
It's starved Buddha statues.
But that was like a thing that they would make these images
of the Buddha in this state
where he was apparently probably going through that thing.
Like yeah, those.
- Oh, yeah.
- Oh, shit.
- What the fuck?
- That looks like something out of Indiana Jones.
It's scary.
- See, go to that Quora thing.
What does the emaciated body
of the Buddha statue represent?
- They're not really good.
- Not good answers?
- Sometimes.
- Not bad anybody, though.
- Well, let's see.
- That's the beauty of the internet.
- It represents the six-year period of renunciation
that the Buddha practiced from age 20 to 36,
approximately 446 to 440 BC,
based on traditional Indian, especially Saramana,
belief in self-mortification,
before he realized the futility of extreme asceticism,
and renounced it as well when he was on the verge of dying.
So he wised up.
So the Buddha did the same thing those monks did.
And he was like, "What the fuck am I doing?"
He stopped.
- He stopped.
"What the fuck am I doing?"
"I'm renouncing this."
But look, he had gotten to the point of basically almost death.
So that practice, since, okay, so that's 446 BC.
So that statue was older than that.
So the statue was 1,000 years old, right?
It was 1,000 BC, wasn't it?
- No.
- 1,000 years from now, so it was 1,000 AD.
So this was pre that.
So that guy was probably,
he didn't get the full wire that the Buddha bailed on.
- He didn't get the facts.
- Yeah, he didn't get the full details.
So he decided, well, the Buddha was a pussy.
- Yeah. - And he quit.
- I'm gonna do what the Buddha couldn't do.
- I'm not a fucking quitter.
I want to be a statue, bitch.
- You'll be better than the Buddha.
- But that's, the whole Buddhist monk thing
is an odd practice anyway, right?
- Because I'm a dumbass, can you just explain?
Is there's more than one Buddha, right?
- Oh, it has been, or?
- Well, there's the Buddha,
who is like, thought to be the root.
Look at that image of him, whoa.
Look at his guts.
- Wow, so I was wondering what,
if he was like holding something, or what that is.
- I think that just represented his hands, man.
That's his hips, buddy.
- Oof.
- That's no stomach at all.
His organs had shrunk up.
- Yeah.
- I think he's got too many ribs though.
These bitches need to take an anatomy lesson.
Does he have too many ribs?
How many ribs do you have?
Do you even know how many ribs?
- Maybe some of it's muscle.
- 26.
I made that up completely.
- 'Cause there's muscle up there.
- But they look different than the other one to the left.
That one looks more realistic.
Like that one there, the tan looking, yeah.
That looks more realistic.
See, that looks like real ribs.
- Look at his sunken eyes.
- So look at the ribs on that one,
and then look at the ribs on that gray one right there.
That gray one looks fake as fuck.
It's too many ribs.
How many ribs do you think you have?
I don't know how many ribs you have.
- I'm going 26.
- 26, you mean both sides?
- No, all up, 26.
- I might be thinking of teeth.
I might be confused.
- I don't know how many teeth you have either.
But if you think of how many ribs you have on each side, let me guess, without
touching my own ribs.
1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12,
12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12,
12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12,
12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12,
12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12,
12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12
Look at that nice muscle he's got going on there.
Bro, that's skin.
Yeah.
That guy probably-
That's tendon.
That probably-
That guy can't curl a fucking jar of white out.
That guy don't lift.
He don't lift.
You lift, bro?
You lift, bro?
How many has he got there?
He's got too many.
That's too many.
Count them.
He looks like Predator.
He's got too many.
They put nipples on him, though, too.
Yeah.
It's like the Batman suit.
How many has he got?
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17.
Yeah, he's got too many ribs.
They didn't know what the fuck they were doing.
It's all fake.
Fake news.
Fake news.
This is bullshit.
Fake news, bro.
But that whole Buddhist monk thing, the suffering thing, is a strange thing.
I had a friend who became a monk.
Yeah?
Yeah.
I became a monk while I knew him.
He was a friend of mine from Taekwondo.
His name was Joe.
And we used to train together.
And he just decided at one point in time that he wanted to go to this Buddhism,
this Buddhist temple, to learn Buddhism.
And he wanted to get control over his mind because he got very nervous during
sparring
and got very nervous when it came time for training and competing.
He competed a few times, too.
He would just lose his shit.
And he was like, maybe meditation would help me get through this.
So he started meditating and taking these Buddhist practices and doing this
time at the temple.
And then switched to a strict vegetarian diet and then completely quit doing Taekwondo
and just became a monk.
And we used to go visit him.
And we used to go visit Joe the monk.
Where?
Did he live at a monastery?
Yeah, he lived in a monastery.
He swept up at a temple.
It was very odd.
Because I knew him before that.
And, you know, he was a guy that we would train with.
Yeah, right.
And then over time, he became a monk.
And, you know, he...
Silent?
No, no.
He would talk.
I mean, he would laugh and joke around with you and stuff.
But, like, he would only eat vegetables.
And he would never speak badly about anyone or anything.
It was really interesting.
Did he seem happy?
Happy is a weird thing.
Like, what is happening?
Like, he didn't have a...
He seemed content.
He didn't have a mate.
He didn't have a wife or a boyfriend.
Or, you know, he didn't have...
There was no one in his life that, you know...
Uh-huh.
He...
It seemed like it was just him and meditation and silence.
And he would, like...
He had a koan.
You know, like, there's a thing you're supposed to meditate on.
I think that's what a koan is.
And, like, his was the sound of, like...
It was, like, one of those the sound of one hand clapping thing.
Oh, yeah, right.
I don't think that was it.
But it was that kind of thing where it's, like...
A tree falling in the woods.
Yeah.
That one's around.
Well, it's...
You're supposed to think about it, like, constantly, even though it doesn't
necessarily make sense.
And the idea is, like, that through that, you somehow or another achieve
enlightenment by focusing on this one thing over and over and over and over
again.
Hmm.
I mean, maybe that's, like, some sort of a brain hack.
But I remember I was a kid at the time when he did this.
I was probably 16, something like that.
I mean, it was 15 when I knew him.
And then maybe, like, 16, 17 when he became a monk and we would go visit him.
It was very strange.
We'd go to eat with him.
We'd have to eat vegetables.
Would he come out and go into wherever you were?
I don't know.
Yeah.
He was, like, he could go places.
Go and go and go and have some drinks?
This was in Boston.
No, he wouldn't have drinks.
No way.
He just drank water and tea.
And he was different, man.
Like, he was all in.
Like, he had decided that that was his life.
And, you know, he was subscribing to all of their belief systems and their
practices.
Did you and your friends ever, at any stage, think we've got to get him out of
there?
Like, maybe he's being brainwashed or something?
No.
I mean, he was older than us, you know?
So, like, we weren't in a position to tell him what to do.
Right.
Because we were all, all of us, we're, like, around the same age, maybe.
I was the youngest guy, but only by, like, a year or two.
And I think Joe was, like, 30-ish.
So, we were, like, teens, early 20s, and this guy was in his 30s.
And he was hanging around a bunch of teenagers?
Well, he was training with us.
Oh, okay.
He wasn't hanging out with us.
We were all training at the same Taekwondo school.
And, you know, he just decided that that was his life.
And he seemed content, I'll say that.
It didn't seem, like, happy is, like, you're around someone, they've got a big
smile on their face, they love what they do.
Like, happy is you catch a big fish.
That's happy.
Whoa, look at that.
He wasn't that.
But he seemed like he was on this path, and this path provided him some sort of
clarity or some peace in his life that he seemed was worth sacrificing all.
Like, he didn't have sex.
He was done.
And we were joking around with him about that.
Like, that's it?
Forever?
No more sex?
Did he jack off?
No.
No masturbation?
Bullshit.
I know.
That's what I say.
Fucking liar.
Maybe he fucked a pillow.
Maybe, you know, maybe he's in a trance.
You know how monks fuck pillows?
You know.
Yeah.
Pretended.
I don't know what he did.
You know, but he was the first guy that I ever met that sort of, like, left
society.
And I remember he stayed at this temple that we knew where the temple was.
We'd go see him there.
I've known people that have done that, kind of left society, but not that deep.
Like, they've gone to a remote island in Indonesia, and they just surf and, you
know.
I've heard of that before.
Yeah, I know people that have sort of, like, dropped out and, you know, live in
a small town, live in a log cabin and shit.
I've thought about it.
I think it'd be good.
I'd get too frustrated.
I think there's something to that.
There's something to, like, being in the woods, and there's something to just
being alone with nature.

The Statue That Contains a Mummified Monk

- The Joe Rogan Experience.
- I wonder if that's a real guy in there,
like a skeleton.
Did you know there was a,
they found a, there was a Buddha statue once,
and they found out that it was actually a mummified Buddha
that they had covered with a statue.
They did an x-ray on this thing,
and inside of it is like an actual Buddha guy,
like an actual yogi who was in a lotus position,
that they did the statue around him.
- That's not that weird.
- Well, it's weird that they didn't know it.
People had this statue,
they didn't know it was a dead guy inside of it.
- How old was the statue?
- That's a good question.
- 'Cause if it was, you know,
I mean, there's tombs and mummies and everything
all over the place.
- But look at the statue.
- I think that's unreal, that's what I want.
- That's crazy, right?
See, like that thing, he ain't clicking that thing.
That little thing in the corner.
- He has to sign up to the History Channel.
- That guy's subscribing.
- 'Cause he's like, ah, crap.
- He's subscribing every time.
Could you pull back up to the images again?
Like, so is a monk,
a mummified monk inside an ancient Buddhist statue,
which is wild, man.
'Cause I don't know what the statue's made of,
but it looks like, is that pottery?
What does that look like?
Medical examination of a thousand-year-old Buddhist statue
revealed a shocking surprise
hidden inside an actual person's body.
So, um, Meander Medical Center in the Dutch town of Amsterfoort.
- Ah, Amsterfoort, of course.
- Amsterfoort has plenty of experience treating senior citizens,
but none as old as the 1,000-year-old patient
who came, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Researchers brought a millennium-old statue of Buddha,
of the Buddha, which had been on loan from the Drents Museum
in the Netherlands to the state-of-the-art hospital,
in the hopes that the modern medical technology
could shed light on an ancient mystery.
For hidden inside the gold-painted figure
was a secret, the mummy of a Buddhist monk
in a lotus position,
shown outside of China for the first time last year.
So how do they know, though?
That's what's confusing.
- Did they open it up?
Did they ruin the whole thing and open it up?
- I don't think they did, man.
- Just leave it in there.
- Oh, they sampled the material for DNA, it said.
"Hugelman slid an ancient artifact slowly
into a high-tech imaging machine for a full-body CT scan
and sampled bone material for DNA testing.
Gastroenterologist," say that word.
Gastroenterologist.
- And say his name now.
Try that.
- "Roynaud vermenschladl."
- Ver-ma-j-d-d-d-d-d.
- Ver-ma-j-d-d.
- Ver-ma-j-d-d-d.
- Ver-ma-j-d-d.
- "Used a specialty,
a specially designed endoscope
to extract samples from the mummy's chest
and abdominal cavities.
Now it's known the tests have revealed a surprise.
The monk's organs had been removed
and replaced with scraps of paper
printed with ancient Chinese characters
and other rotted materials
since it's not been identified.
How the organs had been taken from the mummy
to the remains of mystery.
- Wow.
- That's cool.
- I wonder why they knew
there was something in there, though.
Like, that's not normal
that you threw a fucking thing.
- Yeah, you go and do a CT scan of you.
- You threw a cat's gun.
So, look, scroll up there.
No, you're right there.
The body inside the statue
is thought to be that of the Buddhist master Liu Quan,
a member of the Chinese meditation school
who died around AD 1100.
How did Liu Quan's body end up inside,
I hope I'm saying that right,
penned up inside ancient Chinese statue,
one possibility explored by the Drent's Museum,
is the gruesome process of self-mummification
in which monks hope to transform themselves
into revered living Buddhas.
- Oh.
- Whoa.
- He put himself in there.
- The practice of self-mummification amongst Buddhist monks
was most common in Japan,
but occurred elsewhere in Asia, including China,
as described in Ken Jeremiah's book, Living Buddhas.
Monks interested in self-mummification
spent upwards of a decade following a special diet
that gradually starved their bodies
and enhanced their chances of preservation.
Holy shit.
They eschewed any food,
I never know how to say that word,
'cause I only read it.
How do you say that word?
Eschewed?
- Eschewed.
- That's a word that I've never said.
- Eschewed.
- I'm 54.
- I've never even seen that word.
- I've seen that word,
but I've only read it.
I've never actually said it out loud.
Any food made from rice, wheat, and soybeans,
and instead ate nuts, berries, tree bark,
and pine needles in slowly diminishing quantities
to reduce body fat and moisture,
which can cause corpse to decay.
Whoa.
They also ate herbs.
What is that word?
Cy-sad?
Ky-sad?
Cy-sad nuts?
And sesame seeds to inhibit bacterial growth.
Holy fuck.
They drank a poisonous tree sap
that was used to make lacquer
so that the toxicity would repel insects
and pervade the body as an embalming fluid.
Pervade?
- Wow.
- Shit, they went on a 10-year diet to kill themselves.
- What the fuck?
And turned themselves in.
But you know, that was a thing with the Buddha.
Like there's images of the Buddha,
like the original Buddha that was like,
he was starved to death.
Have you ever seen those?
- No.
- They made statues of the Buddha
where he was like basically a skeleton.
They're weird statues.
And that was, I guess, a part of that process.
See if you can find any of those skeleton-like Buddha statues.
How would you say it?
It's starved Buddha statues.
But that was like a thing that they would make these images
of the Buddha in this state
where he was apparently probably going through that thing.
Like yeah, those.
- Oh, yeah.
- Oh, shit.
- What the fuck?
- That looks like something out of Indiana Jones.
It's scary.
- See, go to that Quora thing.
What does the emaciated body
of the Buddha statue represent?
- They're not really good.
- Not good answers?
- Sometimes.
- Not bad anybody, though.
- Well, let's see.
- That's the beauty of the internet.
- It represents the six-year period of renunciation
that the Buddha practiced from age 20 to 36,
approximately 446 to 440 BC,
based on traditional Indian, especially Saramana,
belief in self-mortification,
before he realized the futility of extreme asceticism,
and renounced it as well when he was on the verge of dying.
So he wised up.
So the Buddha did the same thing those monks did.
And he was like, "What the fuck am I doing?"
He stopped.
- He stopped.
"What the fuck am I doing?"
"I'm renouncing this."
But look, he had gotten to the point of basically almost death.
So that practice, since, okay, so that's 446 BC.
So that statue was older than that.
So the statue was 1,000 years old, right?
It was 1,000 BC, wasn't it?
- No.
- 1,000 years from now, so it was 1,000 AD.
So this was pre that.
So that guy was probably,
he didn't get the full wire that the Buddha bailed on.
- He didn't get the facts.
- Yeah, he didn't get the full details.
So he decided, well, the Buddha was a pussy.
- Yeah. - And he quit.
- I'm gonna do what the Buddha couldn't do.
- I'm not a fucking quitter.
I want to be a statue, bitch.
- You'll be better than the Buddha.
- But that's, the whole Buddhist monk thing
is an odd practice anyway, right?
- Because I'm a dumbass, can you just explain?
Is there's more than one Buddha, right?
- Oh, it has been, or?
- Well, there's the Buddha,
who is like, thought to be the root.
Look at that image of him, whoa.
Look at his guts.
- Wow, so I was wondering what,
if he was like holding something, or what that is.
- I think that just represented his hands, man.
That's his hips, buddy.
- Oof.
- That's no stomach at all.
His organs had shrunk up.
- Yeah.
- I think he's got too many ribs though.
These bitches need to take an anatomy lesson.
Does he have too many ribs?
How many ribs do you have?
Do you even know how many ribs?
- Maybe some of it's muscle.
- 26.
I made that up completely.
- 'Cause there's muscle up there.
- But they look different than the other one to the left.
That one looks more realistic.
Like that one there, the tan looking, yeah.
That looks more realistic.
See, that looks like real ribs.
- Look at his sunken eyes.
- So look at the ribs on that one,
and then look at the ribs on that gray one right there.
That gray one looks fake as fuck.
It's too many ribs.
How many ribs do you think you have?
I don't know how many ribs you have.
- I'm going 26.
- 26, you mean both sides?
- No, all up, 26.
- I might be thinking of teeth.
I might be confused.
- I don't know how many teeth you have either.
But if you think of how many ribs you have on each side, let me guess, without
touching my own ribs.
1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12,
12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12,
12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12,
12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12,
12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12,
12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12
Look at that nice muscle he's got going on there.
Bro, that's skin.
Yeah.
That guy probably-
That's tendon.
That probably-
That guy can't curl a fucking jar of white out.
That guy don't lift.
He don't lift.
You lift, bro?
You lift, bro?
How many has he got there?
He's got too many.
That's too many.
Count them.
He looks like Predator.
He's got too many.
They put nipples on him, though, too.
Yeah.
It's like the Batman suit.
How many has he got?
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17.
Yeah, he's got too many ribs.
They didn't know what the fuck they were doing.
It's all fake.
Fake news.
Fake news.
This is bullshit.
Fake news, bro.
But that whole Buddhist monk thing, the suffering thing, is a strange thing.
I had a friend who became a monk.
Yeah?
Yeah.
I became a monk while I knew him.
He was a friend of mine from Taekwondo.
His name was Joe.
And we used to train together.
And he just decided at one point in time that he wanted to go to this Buddhism,
this Buddhist temple, to learn Buddhism.
And he wanted to get control over his mind because he got very nervous during
sparring
and got very nervous when it came time for training and competing.
He competed a few times, too.
He would just lose his shit.
And he was like, maybe meditation would help me get through this.
So he started meditating and taking these Buddhist practices and doing this
time at the temple.
And then switched to a strict vegetarian diet and then completely quit doing Taekwondo
and just became a monk.
And we used to go visit him.
And we used to go visit Joe the monk.
Where?
Did he live at a monastery?
Yeah, he lived in a monastery.
He swept up at a temple.
It was very odd.
Because I knew him before that.
And, you know, he was a guy that we would train with.
Yeah, right.
And then over time, he became a monk.
And, you know, he...
Silent?
No, no.
He would talk.
I mean, he would laugh and joke around with you and stuff.
But, like, he would only eat vegetables.
And he would never speak badly about anyone or anything.
It was really interesting.
Did he seem happy?
Happy is a weird thing.
Like, what is happening?
Like, he didn't have a...
He seemed content.
He didn't have a mate.
He didn't have a wife or a boyfriend.
Or, you know, he didn't have...
There was no one in his life that, you know...
Uh-huh.
He...
It seemed like it was just him and meditation and silence.
And he would, like...
He had a koan.
You know, like, there's a thing you're supposed to meditate on.
I think that's what a koan is.
And, like, his was the sound of, like...
It was, like, one of those the sound of one hand clapping thing.
Oh, yeah, right.
I don't think that was it.
But it was that kind of thing where it's, like...
A tree falling in the woods.
Yeah.
That one's around.
Well, it's...
You're supposed to think about it, like, constantly, even though it doesn't
necessarily make sense.
And the idea is, like, that through that, you somehow or another ac