The Monk Who Left His Body Behind

A naked monk arrived in a city ruled by King Fine-Chariot, having mastered enough impressive-sounding astronomical and astrological knowledge to win over the entire population within days.

The king, hearing of the monk's reputation, summoned him personally and was gradually drawn into complete fascination, especially after the monk began claiming that he traveled bodily to heaven every night, leaving his lifeless body behind in his cell and returning each morning with heavenly greetings from the gods.

The king believed this entirely, growing so absorbed in the monk's company that he neglected his royal duties and every other counselor. When Counsellor Strong, who had been away settling a rebellion, returned and found the king wholly captivated by this claim, he grew immediately skeptical and asked to see proof.

The monk offered to demonstrate his nightly departure, entering his cell and barring the door, and the king explained proudly that the monk's body would lie lifeless within until he returned in a heavenly form. Strong, unconvinced, proposed a direct test: burn the cell down entirely, so that if the monk truly possessed another body waiting in heaven, he would simply reappear in that new form before the king -- and if not, the fraud would be settled definitively.

The king agreed, and Strong had the cell set ablaze with the monk still inside, ending the deception permanently and restoring the king's attention to matters of actual governance.