Copyright (c) 2007 Derek Clontz/4-Page Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
BUNS-OF-STEEL Buddhist Takimo Shiyama sat hip deep in a giant, flame-licked “wok of doom” for 23 amazing minutes to prove the human mind is stronger than any adversity – including the boiling, 212-degree water he was stewing in.
And far from complaining about the heat, the 54-year-old monk told silly jokes between his prayers and meditations, off-handedly boiled shrimp that he occasionally flicked to passersby and insisted throughout the ordeal that far from being hot, he was cold.
In fact, at one point, Takimo begged attendants to stoke the fire higher to, as he put it, “take the chill off.”
“It’s not hot, it’s cold – the boiling water is cold,” the monk told me exclusively in a telephone interview following the demonstration in Tokyo. “Hot water is cold water. Even the little children know this simple truth.
“Only the adults make the distinctions. Avoid distinctions. Then you will see that cold water cannot hurt you because it is hot – and hot water cannot hurt you because it is cold.
“Distinguish nothing. Be one and in union with all things.”
If you think Takimo’s offhanded explanation sounds like mystical gibberish, you’re not alone.
Of the estimated 10,000 people who traveled to an outdoor shopping plaza to witness the feat, only a handful claimed to have the slightest idea what he was talking about, sources on the ground in Tokyo confirmed.
“But we don’t have to understand his speech to appreciate the results of his spiritual and mental discipline,” research psychologist Dr. Akiro Nakamura told me a few days after the show.
“He should be dead or at the very least hospitalized in critical condition with over half his body seared with third and fourth degree burns.
“But he’s not dead. He’s not injured. He’s healthy and exhibits no adverse affect. Had I not seen this with my own eyes I wouldn’t have believed it. But I did see it and I do believe it.
“It truly is amazing what these monks can accomplish just by saying … ‘I think I can … I think I can … I think I can … ‘ like The Little Engine That Could from the children’s story.”
