10 Superpowers That Monks Have In Real Life

You have probably heard of Buddhist, Shaolin, or Himalayan monks who can do incredible things. These are men who go through intense training and learn how to achieve amazing things through deep meditation. Many monks claim to have special powers, but are these real super powers? Take a look at 10 Superpowers that monks have in real life, and we will let you decide if some of these are true or not.

1. Running on water – you may have heard that monks can walk on water. Well some of these stories are likely not true because it’s not physically possible. However, Shi, a Shaolin monk, ran across 125 meters of floating wood planks across the water in Quanzhou, China.

2. Superhuman Strength – There is a type of Buddhism called Chan Buddhism which uses hard physical labor to the point that the monk is completely exhausted, thereby achieving enlightenment through freeing your mind from physical pain.

3. Maintaining body temperature - Some monks live in the Himalayas where temperature is always very low. In the 80’s a professor and his research team went to remote monasteries in the Himalayan mountains in the 1980′s to discover, decode, and document the subtle ways through which the monks manipulate their bodies.

4. Immortality – OK so we know there is no such thing as immortality when it comes to humans, regardless if you are monk or not, but this story is worth mentioning. The Buddhist monk, Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov, officially died 90 years ago in Buryatia, a region in Siberia.

5. Agility – Monks start training at an early age and have been known to do amazing feats of agility. Everything from doing gymnastic moves, incredible stretches and jumping begins with training when they are young and continues throughout their lives.

6. Endurance – Monks have incredible endurance. A lot of training and meditation is used to acquire such high endurance. Somewhere in the mountains around Kyoto live the marathon monks. Legend has it that the monks of Mount Hiei run 1,000 marathons in 1,000 days in their quest to reach enlightenment.

7. Speed – Monks are said to have incredible speed in their use of weapons and martial arts. Most are probably not as quick and agile at first, but as time goes by, speed becomes a secondary ability with the years of training.

8. Fearlessness – Buddha taught that, at the base, all beings experience a state of anxiety, fed by our habit of resisting the impermanence of our existence.

9. Sixth Sense – When you tune your mind and body using all the techniques that monks do, you become more aware of your surroundings and the world you live in.

10. High Pain Threshold – Through intense training and meditation, monks are able to withstand incredible amounts of pain, or actually use their minds to feel no pain at all.