Facebook (FB) pages and groups shared photos supposedly of a 206-year-old Tibetan monk discovered in a state of deep meditation in Nepal in January. Not true. The monk was a Buddhist guru in Thailand who died in 2017 at the age of 92.
First shared on Jan. 26, one of the posts carried the caption:
“???????? ????. A Tibetan monk, discovered in a mountain cave in Nepal this January 26, 2023, It’s now considered as the oldest person in the world at 206 ????? ???! He was found in a state of deep meditation called, ‘takatet.’ ‘If the meditator can continue to stay in this meditative state, he can become a Buddha,’ Dr Kerzin said. Archaeologists first thought he was a mummy but then noticed that he has vital signs and is alive! Among his things, they found an old scroll that says, ‘Maniwala’y ulaga’.”
The FB posts attached two versions of photos of a monk who appears to be smiling while being carried by men.
Reports show that the monk was Luang Phor Pian, a well-known Buddhist guru in Thailand who died at the age of 92 on Nov. 16, 2017. The photos, originally uploaded by AsiaWire on FB, were taken two months after Pian’s death when his followers exhumed his body to change his robes.
Some of the posts carried the term “Maniwala’y ulaga” which in one Filipino dialect translates to “Those who believe are stupid.” This indicates that some were meant as jokes. However, some posts removed this sentence to completely disinform netizens. One of them even reached an FB group where netizens share about Buddhism.
Other fact-checking organizations previously debunked false information about Pian’s photos – Asianet News in 2020, BOOM FactCheck and Newsmeter in 2021, and Newschecker in 2022.
The photos resurfaced a week after French nun Lucile Randon, formerly the world’s oldest known person, died at the age of 118. María Branyas Morera, a Spanish woman born in the United States, is now the oldest living person at 115 years old. Before this, the world’s longest living person reached 122 years old.
At least 70 public posts bore the photos with the false information, garnering 17,116 interactions according to the social media monitoring tool CrowdTangle.
The posts were shared by FB pages like Umay (June 5, 2020) and P a m p a k a l m a Dragon (April 19, 2018) and groups like KAPUSO MO JESSICA SOHO OFFICIAL GROUP (created on May 10, 2021 as KMJS Unofficial Fan page) and Homepaslupa Buddies 5.0 (Dec. 29, 2021 as Caloocan Buy & Sell).
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(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)