Cílem této práce je seznámit čtenáře s tzv. praxí sokušinbucu, kterou podstupovali někteří členové školy Šingon. Zaměřuji se na podrobnější popis jednotlivých stádií praxe a snažím se určit možné důvody pro její podstupování. Aby však čtenář mohl lépe pochopit původ praxe, začínám svou práci od obecného popisu buddhismu a dějin jeho rozvoje v Japonsku. Poté se věnuji škole Šingon, a uvádím velmi zajímavý životopis zakladatele školy, mnicha Kúkaie, který by se dal pokládat za původce praxe. Při psaní práce jsem vycházela zejména z odborné literatury k daným tématům v anglickém jazyce.This bachelor thesis deals with the Buddhist school of Shingon and the practice sokushinbutsu. In the beginning I focus on the history of Buddhism in Japan, which had a very important role in shaping of the Japanese history. It used to be religion practiced only by elite but it later spread through the whole country. Through Buddhism Japan was introduced to many various Buddhist schools. One of such schools was Shingon the school of esoteric Buddhism. The main doctrines of Shingon were much simpler than those of previous schools therefore it spread quickly through the whole Japan and became very popular. The founder of the School was Kukai a Buddhist monk, who brought the teaching of this school from China. There were many legends after his death, from which the practice of sokushinbutsu originated. In the last part of this thesis, I describe the stages of this practice as well as reasons, why monks endured such long and painful practice. During my research for this thesis used scholarly books regarding Buddhism and Shingon. However, when describing the phenomenon of sokushinbutsu, I rely mostly on one book. The reason for that is that there apparently exist only a few scholarly books on this topic, which are in Japanese, French and Italian.