A video of a lightly-clothed yogi meditating in the middle of a snowstorm in the Himalayas has gone viral online sparking a heated debate about its authenticity.

We live in a time when the old saying “seeing is believing” just doesn’t apply anymore. The advent of artificial intelligence and deepfake technology has made it possible to create virtually anything and make it look authentic. Realistic-looking AI news anchors and digital influencers are a part of this new reality, so you can’t blame people for doubting their eyes. Case in point, a viral video out of India showing a yogi with his hair and beard caked with snow meditating high up in the mountains during a snowstorm. He looks so comfortable in one of the harshest environments on Earth that many people rightly believed it was staged or the result of AI digital manipulation.

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A number of people in Bangkok, Thailand were shocked to find that an old man they saw floating in a dirty water canal turned out not to be a corpse, but a meditating person.

Imagine walking by an urban water canal and spotting a stiff body floating in the dirty, garbage-filled water. You most likely expect the worst, so no one can really blame the people who witnessed this scene at the end of last month for calling the police. But before authorities could get there, some of the people on the banks of the canal tried shouting at the floating body to make sure it was truly dead. One brave young man even went down into the dirty water, navigating through the garbage and the mud on the bottom, and when he touched the body, it sprung to life…

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Most people will agree that nap time is one of the best things about kindergarten – which is why a Chinese primary school was severely criticized for trying to replace afternoon naps with meditation. The pilot meditation program at Shishan Shuben Primary School, in China’s Guangdong Province, ran for only two days before it was scrapped following a backlash. Parents apparently hated the idea, and the media reacted negatively to it as well.

According to news reports, notices were sent to parents before the new semester, informing them that the school was going to do away with mid-day naps and introduce guided meditation instead. When school started, the students were each given a piece of newspaper to sit on. They were then made to watch tutorial videos on how to meditate, featuring the school’s headmaster, Mr. Wu. Unfortunately, Wu’s directions did not have the intended effect – most of the students slept anyway. “He just keeps talking all the time and some of them have been falling asleep,” one little kid said.

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A mysterious mummified monk found almost perfectly preserved in a lotus position last month is causing controversy after a well-known Buddhism expert claimed he isn’t actually dead but in a deep meditative trance.

Interestingly, the monk came to the attention of the authorities after a man was attempting to sell him on the black market in the Songinokhairkhan province of Mongolia. Mongolian police have arrested the man, and the mummy is now being guarded at the National Center of Forensic Expertise at Ulaanbaatar. They believe that the man might have stolen the mummy from another part of the country – a cave in the Kobdsk region – and then hid it in his home. Scientists are currently conducting forensic examinations on the 200-year-old mummy that was found wrapped in cattle skins. They are trying to determine how the body was so well-preserved, although they do suspect that the nation’s cold weather could have played a part. Read More »