Overview of Buddhism
Let's analyze Buddhism, in the style of Stephen Prothero in his God is not One (2011)! According to Prothero, every religion has a problem, a solution, a list of techniques for solution, and a list of role models.- Problem: life is full of suffering (dukkha). There are four great life events, and every one creates great suffering: birth, old age, sickness, and death. Further, the suffering doesn't stop at just one life, because souls are reincarnated endlessly.
- Solution: achieve nirvana, which is freedom from life, time, and the cycle of rebirth, by becoming absolutely nonexistent. The word "nirvana" literally means "blown out", and a person achieving nirvana is like an oil lamp blown out. They aren't gone to a heaven, but completely nonexistent. No thought, no nature, no self, absolutely nothing.
- Techniques: varied, but the most famous ones are in the The Noble Eightfold Path, a list of eight practices that allows one to see through the illusion of existence, realize that everything is fundamentally empty, and achieve nirvana.
- Role models: all the famous Buddhists and their stories. One example is, of course, Gautama Buddha himself. Another is a certain god called the Medicine King, which would be a role model for many Buddhist self-immolators, as discussed later.
You can play six kinds of character, each having a different play-area.
- Gods: the world of gods is full of pleasures and powers.
- Humans: the world we know, full of pleasures and pain.
- Titans: titans are kind of like gods, but they are angrier and often fight with gods. They are too occupied with war-making to think about nirvana. This level is controversial and many Buddhists think they don't exist.
- Animals: the world we know, but as a non-human animal!
- Hungry ghosts: they live in our world, but we can't see them. They are constantly hungry and thirsty.
- Hell-beings: hell, basically. There are many sub-levels of hell, too [click for a post all about them]! From painful to extremely painful.
No level is permanent: you eventually die and respawn at a new level determined by your karma balance. Higher karma gives higher respawning levels. Committing great crimes would slap you with so much negative karma that you might even get sent to hell without dying! The ground would literally open up and let you fall into hell directly.
God-level is nice, but not valuable, because most gods are too busy having fun to think about nirvana. God-level is basically an expensive vacation supported by your karma-account. Once it runs out, vacation is over and back to human-level you go. God-level is basically a giant area of side-missions and easter eggs to play with. However, the more enlightened gods would find it easier to meditate and work towards nirvana in a more powerful body that's not afflicted by sickness.
From titans to hell-beings, their lives are so full of instinct and strife that they don't have time to think. All they could do is to keep living until they fill up the karma-account, so they can return to human-level. These levels are basically slow and painful grinding missions. Good Buddhists must avoid rebirth in these realms. Some classic sutras have however recorded exceptional animals (like the daughter of a naga king who managed to undergo a spontaneous sex-change and become a male Bodhisattva) who has managed to be enlightened, and sometimes very enlightened beings (especially Kshitigarbha) would choose to be reborn in these lower realms and, retaining their enlightenment, bring spiritual and physical care to the masses of suffering creatures there.
Human-level is the best, because it's got the perfect mix of suffering and pleasure to allow the cultivation of spirit, leading to nirvana. This level is the main level, where all the main missions are.
While in the human-level, there are two kinds of missions: karma missions and enlightenment missions. Karma missions are doing good/bad things to gain/lose karma. Enlightenment missions are practicing the eightfold paths to reach true ending.
Just before true ending is reached, you could attain several possible titles: Arhat, Buddha, Bodhisattva, among others. They are basically achievements that you get to wear before you reach the end of the game.
Your end-game can be particularly dramatic, like that of Dabba Mallaputta. According to Dabba Sutta of Udana, Buddha was visiting Dabba, and Dabba told Buddha that he was ready for his "total unbinding" (nirvana). Buddha told him to do what he think he should do. Then he sat cross-legged, floated in midair, and spontaneously combusted into nothing.
Head burning
It's an open secret that Buddhism involves some kind of body-harming. The dots on a monk's bald head are in fact the burn marks. Every monk at initiation must shave his head and get burn marks on the head.
This is quite tame, although there has been recent push to reform this initiation ritual away.
Burning the body (烧身)
So where did this tradition of burning the head come from? Two Chinese sutras, it turns out.
I will quote from this source:
- Benn, James A., ‘Where Text Meets Flesh: Burning the Body as an Apocryphal Practice in Chinese Buddhism’, History of Religions, 37.4 (1998), 295–322 <https://doi.org/10/djd3t2>
This article investigates the recommendation of burning the body (烧身) in two apocryphal texts that were well known and extremely influential in the Chinese Buddhist tradition-the Fanwang jing (Brahma's Net Sutra) and the Shouleng'yan jing (Śūraṅgama Sūtra).Chinese Buddhists practiced many kinds of body-burning:
These practices extend from the least common and most spectacular -- autocremation of the living body, through the burning off or branding of limbs (usually the arms), and the burning off of fingers -- to the most common practice, the burning of incense or moxa (i.e., Artemisia tinder) on the body (the crown of the head or the forearm) at ordination. The primary source of information on autocremation is that contained in collections of biographies of Chinese monks and nuns, where self-immolators merited a biographical category all of their own, and it is clear that the Lotus Sutra was by far the most common legitimating text for this type of ritual suicide.
The Lotus Sutra
The Lotus Sutra, indeed, records one particular instance of self-burning of the "Medicine King", a bodhisattva. According to Burning for the Buddha: self-immolation in Chinese Buddhism (2007),The Bodhisattva doused himself in fragrance and oil, drank scented oil, and wrapped his body in an oil-soaked cloth. He made a vow and then burned himself. The light of his burning body illuminated world systems to the number of eight hundred million times the number of grains of sand in the Ganges. The Buddhas of all the world systems were favorably impressed and praised his action:
Good man, this is true perseverance in vigor! ... Among the various gifts, it is the most honorable, the supreme. For it constitutes an offering of Dharma to the thus come ones.The fire lasted 1200 years [insert fat joke here], and he was rewarded by a great respawn:
Because he had made such a great offering he was immediately reborn again in the realm of the Buddha Pure and Bright Excellence of Sun and Moon. He was born not in the usual manner but by transformation, and he materialized sitting cross-legged in the household of King Pure Virtue.He immediately fanboyed over the Buddha in this realm.
Chinese Buddhists who would burn themselves often imitated the Medicine King by only taking water and scented oil for the days before the great event.
However, the Lotus Sutra could be interpreted to say that self-burning is for great bodhisattvas, not normal Buddhist monks. The two sutras quoted seemed to be constructed specifically to justify body-burning for normal Buddhist monks.
What do they contain, then?
The Chinese addition
From the Buddha's Net Sutra:In accordance with the dharma he should explain to them all the ascetic practices, such as setting fire to the body, setting fire to the arm, or setting fire to the finger. If one does not set fire to the body, the ann or the finger as an offering to the Buddhas, one is not a renunciant bodhisattva. Moreover, one should sacrifice the feet, hands and flesh of the body as offerings to hungry tigers, wolves, and lions and to all hungry ghosts.
... if there is a bhiksu who gives rise to a mental state wherein he is determined to cultivate samddhi, and he is able to bum his body as a torch or to set fire to a finger joint before an image of the Tathiigata, or even to bum a stick of incense on his body, then in a single instant he will have repaid the debts of his previous existences since the beginningless past. He will always avoid [being reborn] in the world and he will be eternally free...So how exactly is burning done?
Why use moxa for ritual burning? Why not simply use incense (xiang), which is what is specified in the Shouleng'yan jing? The answer seems to be that the intention is not to cause pain, simply to leave a visible scar. Moxibustion practitioners all claim that the pain of moxibustion is not an unpleasant one but instead produces a deep glowing sensation (chang kuai, kuai Ordained Chinese monks and nuns whom I questioned about their experiences at ordination agreed that the sensation was "not unpleasant."So the burning of the head is probably inspired from moxibustion, which isn't painful, but merely for leaving symbolic marks on the head.
That's nice to hear, but we know that some Buddhists burn more than just their scalps. Self-immolation is a well-known Buddhist protest method, and these two sutras do support self-immolation as a devotional method.
So where did self-immolation come from? It might be from a Chinese tradition of rainmaking. Historical books as far back as Zhou dynasty mentions various rainmaking rituals, that go from
Rainmaking was normally practiced by the emperor or one of his representatives exposing his body to the rays of the sun, causing rainfall by a kind of reverse sympathetic magic.
But when this ritual exposure failed to produce a result, stronger measures were called for. Our first account comes from the biography of an official called Dai Feng in the Hou Hun shu (History of the Later Han): "That year (90 c.E.) there was a great drought. Feng prayed and petitioned [for rain] without success. So, he piled up firewood and sat on top in order to bum himself, as the fire rose, thereupon there was a heavy downpour of rain."Even an emperor of Song got into the action. From History of Song, Book 5, Section 87:
以歲蝗旱禱雨弗應，手詔宰相呂蒙正等：「朕將自焚，以答天譴。」翌日而雨，蝗盡死。
There was persistent locust and drought, and rainmaking rituals had no reply [from the gods], so the emperor wrote a degree to ministers, "I shall immolate myself in order to answer the wrath of the heavens." On the next day it rained, and all locusts died.This belief in the magical power of self-immolation might be the origin of Buddhist self-immolation, even if it is not admitted in the original sources.
Buddhist scriptures say many interesting things, but even apocryphal sutras do not permit monks to burn their bodies in order to bring rain. So it is interesting to see this intersection between indigenous and Buddhist practice, legitimated in the acts of eminent monks. These monks themselves had two sources of legitimation: on the one hand they did what any self-respecting emperor or official would have done; on the other they were aware that "burning the body as an offering to the Buddha" (explicitly marked in the text here) was a legitimate Buddhist act.
Okay but let's see some actual mutilation!
It was all a very interesting conjecture, but enough history, let's see some explicit descriptions of body-mutilation! I found some in Mortification Practices in the Obaku School (Baskind, 2007).I was not looking for it, but I got my daily dysphoria fix!
If one discards this body, then all one is throwing away is [nothing more] than a [lump of] infinite tumors, malignant illnesses, and 100,000 worries. This body is composed of merely urine and excrement and is as insubstantial as a bubble. It is the gathering place of myriad insects. The blood, veins, sinews, and bones [within the body] together bring great suffering and lament. Therefore, I now truly [desire] to discard it and thereby seek unsurpassed and final nirvana, forever departing from the pain of impermanence and suffering.According to Holmes Welch, there are seven levels of self-mortification that a Buddhist can do:
1) striking a bell for the sake of the nether world; 2) sealed confinement; 3) vows of silence facing a wall; 4) writing [sutras] in blood; 5) burning scars on the body; 6) burning off fingers; and 7) self-immolation by fire.We will cover blood-writing later. We already saw about burning scars. Burning off fingers is new...
This [burning fingers] offered a larger fraction of the body to the Buddha and argued a higher level of religious enthusiasm. Another of my informants, who had burned off the two outer fingers of each hand, was very proud of it and was eager to tell me how it had been done. He said that twenty or thirty monks have assisted him. Two of them wound a string around one of his fingers just inside the inner joint, then pulled it tight from each side with the whole weight of their bodies. This cut off both nerve impulses and blood supply. His hand was then placed, back down, in a basin of mud and salt. The two upper joints of the finger to be sacrificed stuck up above the surface of the mud, but the rest of his hand was flat at the bottom of the basin, protected from heat. Pine resin and sandalwood, apparently in a sort of amalgam, were then applied to the finger…They burned with a fierce flame, consuming flesh and bone. As they burned, all the monks, including the owner of the finger, would recite the Ch’an-hui wen [忏悔文, "Sutra of repentence"]. The whole ceremony took about twenty minutes.And self-immolation...
The person in question, Taihō Jōkō 泰峰淨高 (1697-1721) was a native of Mino province. Taihō took orders under the Ōbaku monk Mongoku Jōchuu 聞谷淨抽 (?1666-1742)75 at eleven years of age, and remained under him until the end of his short life. At least as early as his twenty-fifth year, Taihō was already engaging in mortification practices. After a period of fasting, he approached his master and related his desire for self-immolation. His master at first tried to stop him, but after Taihō refused to comply, he entered the abbot’s quarters and made a final verse. The incident is recorded as thus:
On the seventeenth of the first month in the year 1721, Taihō Jōkō entered the master’s quarters and presented a death verse saying, “the mind is empty, and [one’s] nature is empty. In the final analysis, emptiness itself is empty. From the start the buddhas and patriarchs only cloud one’s eyes, [and] the worlds of confusion and enlightenment are equally empty.” The master held up his whisk saying, “You understand the emptiness of self-nature. Therefore I pass you [this whisk]. Take and preserve it well, and when you come again [be sure to] help raise up the dharma.”
The next day he entered the master’s quarters, and after a final question and answer session he set himself aflame. The act of self-immolation is described as follows:
After the question and answer session ended, the master said, “Return to your original source and quickly enter complete and total extinction.” Taihō, without waiting for his master to speak, blithely entered the flames, sat in the lotus position, and was transformed [into flames]. At that time, the smoke and flames rose in the sky and formed a purple cloud. A fragrant scent emanated, and there was no trace of a bad odor. A gentle breeze suddenly stopped, and the trees in the forest were still. The mountains and hills were glowing brightly. Truly everyone was very moved. After the flames consumed him, there were no bones remaining [since] everything had been transformed into ash, leaving no traces. The people were all greatly surprised, and there was not a single one who did not gasp [in amazement].Here it relies on the magical idea of "human-heaven resonance" (天人感应) that is popular in Chinese thought. Basically, the heavens and humans can influence each other. Doing good things would cause the environment to respond with certain beautiful and miraculous events.
These did not merely remain in literature, either. Liu Benzun (柳本尊, flourishing around the 9th century) was a Chinese esoteric Buddhist, and one of his claims to fame was his "Ten Austerities". In 安岳毗卢洞, these are illustrated in a sculpture complex called "Ten Austerities Illustrations" (十炼图). For example, this depicts him removing an eye.
How to deal with an itchy eye!
Overview of Buddhist self-immolation in China
Here we summarize the book Burning for the Buddha: self-immolation in Chinese Buddhism (2007).
Origin
We have noted above how Chinese rainmaking traditions include burning and self-burning as a desperate ritual. Self-immolation (which includes all kinds of religious self-sacrifice, not just self-burning) is recorded in the 520s in Biographies of Eminent Monks (名僧传) by Baochang. In this book, 19 out of . Biographies of Buddhist Nuns (比丘尼传) by the same author records 65 biographies of Buddhist nuns, at least 6 were self-burners.
In 531, the highly influential Biographies of Eminent Monks (高僧传), was completed by Huijiao, who took much of material from Baochang's book without attribution. In the preface, Huijiao explained why he included a specific section (section 6) on self-immolators:
When [the Vinaya masters] propagated the Vinaya, conduct in accord with the prohibitions was of limpid purity. When [the self-immolators] were oblivious to their physical forms and abandoned their bodies, then prideful and avaricious people experienced a change of heart.We thus see that since the 500s, proper self-immolation is considered a virtuous act that could inspire people to convert to Buddhism and save their souls from the eternal rebirth.
The types of self-immolation
The most popular method is self-burning, and sometimes it can be quite dramatic. The very first recorded Buddhist self-burner is Fayu (法羽), in 396:
Fayu staged his performance in North China, then under the firm control of non-Han rulers, and it may be that the religious atmosphere and types of devotional practice that were in vogue in the North were particularly conducive to auto-cremation... His intended auto-cremation was well advertised, drawing huge crowds and large amounts of donations.
The crowds were here in order to receive the positive karma from such a virtuous act, and the donations were particularly effective at the scene, because self-burning has an area-of-effect multiplier on all donation-to-karma conversion rates.
As early as the self-burning of Huishao in 451, the main elements of a typical Buddhist self-burning are there:
Huishao obviously wanted to make the most of his performance. He planned it for the hours of darkness, when the flames would be most spectacular. During the first part of the night religious ceremonies were performed, and Huishao himself took part in the ritual “procession of incense” (香行). Then he took a torch and set fire to the pyre. He got inside the niche, sat down, and began to recite the chapter on “The Original Acts of the Medicine King” (藥王本事品). Although the firewood was completely aflame, the crowd could still hear Huishao reciting. When the fire reached his forehead, they heard him chant “one mind” (一心), and with those words his recitation ended. The pyre must have been fairly substantial; it took another three days to burn out completely.
The next most popular method is by presenting oneself to a hungry beast. The other methods are very eclectic: drowning, jumping off cliffs, cutting open one's stomach...
While most recorded self-immolations are very public, even festive, some are very private, such as that of Fa Kuang (法旷) in 633:
每曰。余惟生死滞着无始轮回。生厌者希死厌又少。常怀怏怏欲试舍之。以贞观七年二月二十一日。入终南山。在炭谷内四十里许。脱衣挂树以刀自刎。既独自殡无由知处。诸识故等。至八月中。方始访得其遗身颂云。
He always said, “I think that attachment to birth and death constitutes samsara without beginning. Those who detest life are rare, but those who detest death are even fewer.” He always felt that he had had enough, and he wanted to attempt to discard [his life]. On April 5, 633, he entered Zhongnan Mountain. More than forty li within the Tan val- ley, he took off his robes, hung them on a tree, and cut his throat with a knife. 24 Because he died all alone, no one knew where he was until the middle of the eighth month, when, after an extended search, his friends found his “Eulogy on Abandoning the Body” (遺身頌).
A modern Western diagnosis would just call that chronic depression...
The political use of self-immolation
The Tang Dynasty brought a new threat to Chinese Buddhists. The first emperor of Tang (Li Shimin), to gain legitimacy, claimed descent from Laozi (Li Er), the founder of Taoism. While Tang was generally tolerant of religions, this still put pressure on Chinese Buddhists. The lowest point was the great prosecution of Buddhists by emperor Wuzong in 845.
The texts might in fact represent a kind of moral blackmail—a way of saying to the Tang rulers (probably to Taizong in particular), “You see what happens when you do not support the sangha: Eminent monks jump off cliffs or they publicly burn off their arms and die.”
The apocalyptic use of self-immolation
China in the 500s was full of war and turmoil, sometimes it could feel like the world was ending. During the Liang dynasty, a Buddhist master Mahasattva Fu (傅大士) had a large following who went rather extreme in their fears of a coming apocalypse, and started doing extreme acts of self-mutilation to delay the apocalypse.
In 548, during the disorder of Hou Jing’s (侯景, ?– 552) rebellion, Fu, who was regarded by many of his contemporaries as an incarnation of the Buddha Maitreya, vowed to burn himself as a living candle. Rather than allow him to do so, large numbers of his disciples burned themselves alive; others burned off fingers, cut off their ears, and fasted. They were convinced that the period of 像法 (counterfeit dharma) had come to an end, and they wanted their leader to remain in the world to save sentient beings.
In 555 the situation had not improved and the people of the Liang were faced with constant warfare, banditry, disease, and starvation. Fu appealed to his followers to offer their bodies “to atone for the sins of sentient beings and pray for the coming of the saviour.” Three more of his disciples burned themselves to death, becoming flaming lamps by hanging themselves from metal lantern frames.
In 557, when the Liang was on its very last legs, Fu asked his disciples to burn off their fingers “to invoke the Buddhas to save this world.” In 587, long after Fu’s death in 569, one of his sons burned himself to death.Since self-mutilation as an offering to the Buddha could increase the positive karma in the world, it would delay the apocalypse, which is brought about by too much negative karma in the world.
The chan/zen use of self-mutilation
As we will mention a bit later, a master of Chan Buddhism mounted a vigorous defense of self-immolation. This might not be such a strange fact, since there has been quite a few famous stories where great violence is used to help achieve enlightenment.Consider the famous story of Juzhi One Finger (俱胝一指).
Zen Master Juzhi was known for answering all questions by holding up his index finger. One day, Juzhi was gone from the temple, and someone asked his young attendant about the nature of his master’s teachings. The boy held up one finger. When Juzhi heard about this after returning to the temple, he promptly called the boy to his side and cut off his finger. The boy fled the room screaming, but Juzhi called out to him. When the boy turned out around, Juzhi held up one finger. The boy became enlightened.While the common reading of this story is a pure fiction, I think it could have very well been a true story. If self-immolation is a valid method of achieving nirvana, and burning off fingers is a good offering to the Buddha, what's wrong with cutting off a finger of a faithful student?
Benn does not see anything special about Chan Buddhist self-immolation though, compared to general Chinese Buddhist self-immolation.
The number of Chan self-immolators in Zanning’s collection reflects the dominance of this new style of Buddhism south of the Yangzi in the period from the late Tang to the early Song. Many of these monks shared lineage connections with each other and with Zanning. The distinctive style of their practice clearly did not replace other types of traditional training. The Chan monks here chant scriptures, burn off their fingers, and set fire to themselves; in these respects they are just like any other kind of monk. A consideration of Chan self-immolators offers us an interesting perspective that complements our examination of the Chan master Yanshou’s opinions of the practice. Both types of evidence would seem to confirm that there was nothing particularly distinctive about “Chan” self-immolation.
Motifs of a self-immolation
Buddhist self-immolation stories often reuse certain motifs. Here we document some.
Cutting off parts of the body to offer to a hungry or greedy creature. This trope went viral from a famous story in the Jataka tales, where one of the many, many incarnations of king Sibi sacrificed himself to feed a hungry tigress. In one of his other lives, he sacrificed his flesh to ransom a dove from a hawk, and in another, he gave up his eyes when asked.
If the method is self-burning, the person could prepare by stopping eating, drinking only water and oil, and sending out invitations.
The person expresses a desire to emulate the Medicine King.
The action is approved by a Buddhist authority, or done by a Buddhist authority. It is also approved by a secular authority, such as the mayor or the emperor.
There is a large witnessing crowd of both Buddhists and laypeople who give much donation.
The person keeps their cool, reciting the sutra (often the section about the Medicine King's self-immolation) while sitting with hands together in the lotus position.
The fire might be started by spontaneous combustion.
Perhaps all cases of spontaneous combustion can be explained in this manner, but many accounts speak of monks exhaling jets of flame from the nose or mouth and give no hint of any suspicion of trickery.
A miraculous response from the natural environment, such as earthquake, sound of bell in the air, flower rain, fragrance, laser show, purple smoke, or a flashmob of butterflies.
The body is transformed into a higher being, such as a golden body, or a dragon, or a rising meteor.
One day in 455 Tanhong gathered up firewood on the mountain and set fire to himself in secret. His disciples res- cued him. About a month later he again attempted to burn himself. When the villagers reached him he was already dead, so they added more firewood. They saw his golden body heading west, riding a golden deer. A pagoda was erected for his ashes and bones.Some relics are left behind, such as a piece of bone, a tree growing at the place of burning, or a tongue that stays wet and pink, which could be used to perform powerful helping magics, such as converting more creatures to Buddhism.
The local people build a stupa or other kind of monument for the person.
Theological justification
Buddhist theology has struggled with the problem of self-immolation, mainly in how it brings good karma, even if suicide brings bad karma. This is a serious problem, because according to canon, the self-immolation of the Medicine King was widely praised by the buddhas of many universes.
The Fayuan zhulin (法苑珠林), compiled in Tang dynasty by Daoshi (释道), is the largest, most exhaustive Buddhist compendium that survives in the Chinese canon.
Although Daoshi showed that he was aware of objections to self-immolation, he was unequivocally in favor of the merits of the practice... Daoshi forcefully advances the idea that Chinese self-immolators are just as good as the bodhisattvas described in translated scriptures. Their acts are part of the greater propagation of Buddhism.For the prepared Buddhist, self-immolation is merely a transformation into a purer body that's closer to nirvana.
The bodhisattva’s giving away his body is not a neutral act. Rather, it only results in merit, since it extirpates klesa (defilement) and extinguishes the body, and one obtains a pure body. It is just like when you wash stained clothes with ashes and water: The stain is eradicated, but the clothes remain.An important master of Chan Buddhism, Yanshou (永明延寿大师), wrote in The Common End of the Myriad Good Practices (万善同归集) a justification for self-immolation from Section 34 to 39. The argument is pretty elaborate so I'll simplify:
- Some say that although self-immolation might be an offering to the Buddha, give you lots of good karma, and offer a better rebirth, it does not improve one's wisdom into understanding that everything is fundamentally empty.
- But there are two ways to achieve nirvana: by self-cultivating actions and by acquiring wisdom into the fundamental emptiness of all things. Both are necessary.
- To concentrate on only a few methods for nirvana is not part of a balanced spiritual diet. One needs to practice many.
- The many legendary instances of self-immolation in the sutras are worthy of emulation for the prepared minds.
- Self-immolation in previous lives has been a factor in the ascensions of all the buddhas, especially that of the buddha closest to us: Gautama Buddha.
- If the self-immolation was done with the correct intention and proper mental preparation, then they would gain a pure and incorruptible body ("golden body") after the immolation.
- Self-immolation also brings good karma to the whole universe.
- In conclusion, one should use wisdom to determine whether to discard the body or retain it.
Also, note that Chan Buddhism is what zen is based on. Zen is not just contemplation of paradoxical things, but is in fact compatible with self-mutilation.
Sometimes it just makes me go wat
In the Karunapundarika (White Lotus of Compassion), it's recorded that King Durdhana split his country between his sons,but because they had not listened to him preach the dharma, they quarrelled and the state was overrun with wars, disasters, disease, and famine. Durdhana vowed to save beings by sacrificing himself. He climbed to the top of Mount Dagapala and jumped off, vowing to transform himself into a mountain of meat for beings to eat. He became such a mountain with thousands of heads. He was constantly eaten by humans and animals but still the meat mountain grew larger. His self-sacrifice lasted for ten thousand years.A mountain of meat with thousands of heads... I don't need sleep anyway!
Spontaneous combustion is used as a clever excuse to allow Buddhist monks to engage in self-immolation without the suspicion of committing (bad) suicide. Since only the monks that are far enough on the journey towards nirvana could command the power to spontaneously combust, this sanctifies the self-immolation. This fire is often called the "fire of samadhi", which anime fans might recognize.
As an example,
After forty years in Jingmen, one day 明秀 bathed, did obeisance to the Buddha, and announced that he was going to the West. As he sat cross-legged on his meditation mat, fire shot out from within his body, rapidly consuming him while he chanted the name of the Buddha. The account goes on to reveal that the meditation mat was actually placed on top of a large stack of firewood and kindling that was used to supply the kitchens.
Perhaps all cases of spontaneous combustion can be explained in this manner, but many accounts speak of monks exhaling jets of flame from the nose or mouth and give no hint of any suspicion of trickery.Wat. Are you saying that true Buddhists can be like charizards??
Also, turns out pregnant women are unclean. From the death of 康齋:
Seated on top of the wood, he covered his head in an oil-soaked turban and “spat out samadhi fire to burn himself.” But then he lifted off the turban and shouted that there was a pious woman in the audience whose “qi of birth within her” was conflicting with his attempt to burn himself. Sure enough, a pregnant woman was in the audience. After she was pointed out and had retreated, blushing, Kangzhai replaced the turban and was able to burn himself.And in general,
The power of naked, menstruating, or urinating women to negate or destroy ritual and magic was well known in the Ming and continues to be attested today.Here's a hot tip on how to get born in the Western Pure Lands: Don't turn your back on the west.
There he read a collection of miracle tales called the Xifang jingtu lingrui zhuan 西方淨土靈瑞傳 (Accounts of Numinous Signs of the Western Pure Land) and was converted to practices designed to ensure his rebirth in the Pure Land (for example, not sitting with his back to the west).
Blood writing
若实爱法，当以汝皮为纸，以身骨为笔，以血书之，当以与汝！
If you truly love the dharma, you should use your body to make paper from your skin, make a brush from your bone, and use your own blood as ink to copy the sutras!
Copying sutras is a karma-earning sidequest. Some Chinese Buddhists copied sutras with their own blood (usually from the finger or the tongue), which presumably earns them more karma. This post: Blood writing contains some good pictures of such blood sutras.
I would note that blood writing also has a tradition of use in secular Chinese society. Important contracts were signed in blood, or sealed with a bloody fingerprint from a pricked finger. There were also legends of some generals, running completely out of supplies, writing a last letter for help with blood.
From chapter 2 of Sanctity and Self-Inflicted Violence in Chinese Religions, 1500-1700 (Jimmy Yu, 2012):
... blood writing, which was one of the most potent rituals to conveying one’s message and authenticating one’s sanctity. Performers engaged in this practice used it to accomplish many things, including negotiating amnesty from the emperor, transferring religious merit to deceased parents, curing illness, and securing or challenging existing religious or political order. It argues that even though scholars commonly associate blood writing with Buddhist monks copying Buddhist scriptures, this ritual simultaneously elicited many associations. It had complex origins in blood covenant, sacrifice, and the production of apotropaic talisman.
Blood bowl sutra
This is just apocrypha, isn't "canon", but it's got quite a bit of scholarship done on it, so I'll mention it. Basically, it's a sad sutra that got popular in 12th century with a disturbing moral:The Blood Bowl Sutra describes how Maudgalyāyana, disciple of the Buddha famous for his supernatural or magical powers, descended to hell to save his mother. He finds her in the company of women who are tormented by the hell wardens and are forced to drink their own menstrual blood. They are punished like this because the blood produced by their bodies pollutes the ground and offends the earth gods, or ends up in rivers from which the water to make tea for holy men is drawn.Yes... menstruation is pollution and women would go to hell if they let their menstruation pollution into the rivers or the grounds... and where could menstruation blood go, if not into the ground or the water? But don't worry. The sutra explains a way out: just recite and copy this sutra! You would then gain a get-out-of-blood-bowl free card for yourself, or someone you care about (like your mom).
Appendix: Modern self-immolations
Sself-immolation is in the news since 1960s, mainly interpreted as a non-violent political action to protest against a state power. For example, Thích Quảng Đức protested against South Vietnamese government persecution of Buddhists, followed by several Americans who protested against American involvement in the Vietnam War. More recently, Tibetan monks has used self-immolation to protest against Chinese suppression.
There has also been several cases of Falun Gong self-immolation to protest Chinese suppression. It is controversial mainly because it is a central battlefield in the massive propaganda war between the Chinese government and the Falun Gong. The government uses self-immolation as a definitive proof that Falun Gong is harmful to its believers.
Considering the long tradition of self-immolation in China and especially in Chinese Buddhism, as well as the fact that Falun Gong takes much of its theology from Buddhism, I think it's possible that Falun Gong practitioners could be inspired to use self-immolation as a last protest weapon, although the truth cannot be determined in the massive propaganda war. No matter the truth, the public perception regarded self-immolation as illegitimate political action, and as a result, Falun Gong propaganda has stuck to the point that the Falun Gong self-immolations were faked.
From what I see, I think it is strange why Falun Gong is spending so much effort to explain away the alleged self-immolations. The effort might be more profitably used in changing public perception so that they see self-immolation as a legitimate method of nonviolent action. I mean, Americans are generally okay with the recent self-immolation of Tibetan monks. Why not Falun Gong practitioners?
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