Burning for the Buddha

Chapter 4. Is Self-Immolation a “Good Practice”?: Yongming Yanshou on Relinquishing the Body

104 C H A P T E R 4 Is Self-Immolation a “Good Practice”? Yongming Yanshou on Relinquishing the Body o far we have viewed self-immolation largely through the lens of biographies —that is to say, through literary descriptions of monks’ actions. But if self-immolation did in fact offer a somatic path to liberation, as I believe it did, then what did Chinese Buddhist authors who worked with doctrine make of the practice? How did they ¤t self-immolation into the larger framework of valid and orthodox praxis? In this chapter we shall examine two such attempts to do so. The ¤rst is the enthusiastic defense of self-immolation offered by Daoxuan’s contemporary Daoshi in his “encyclopedia” Fayuan zhulin. The second is the more sophisticated and extended discussion offered by Yongming Yanshou in the Wanshan Tonggui ji 萬善同歸集 (The Common End of the Myriad Good Practices, T 48.2017, hereafter Tonggui ji). Yanshou’s approach to self-immolation will occupy most of our attention in this chapter. By the time he was writing, he could look back on nearly six hundred years of self-immolation in China. But while the practice was well attested , the question of its orthodoxy continued to vex the Buddhist community . In addition to occasional criticisms from without levelled at selfimmolators by rulers and of¤cials, the Buddhist translator, pilgrim, and Vinaya master Yijing had composed a sharp critique of the practice based in part on his experiences in India. Yanshou brought his extensive knowledge of scripture and the history of the Chinese saœgha to bear on the potentially divisive issue of whether monks could or should burn their bodies. Before we come to grips with Yanshou, let us ¤rst consider a mid-seventhcentury perspective on self-immolation composed by a monk who, like Daoxuan, viewed such matters from a metropolitan monastery close to the center of political power. Daoshi’s writing combines scriptural sources, scholarly opinion, and biography to offer a comprehensive vision of self-immolation. A Grove of Pearls in a Dharma Garden The Fayuan zhulin is the largest, most exhaustive Buddhist compendium that survives in the Chinese canon and is a fascinating source for the study of Tang S Is Self-Immolation a “Good Practice”? 105 Buddhism and Tang social history. Daoshi was a close associate of Daoxuan and was familiar not only with Buddhist literature that had been translated into Chinese, but also with Chinese works, both religious and secular.1 The Fayuan zhulin was an ambitious attempt to integrate Buddhist theory and practice with Chinese culture and values. Chapter 96 of Daoshi’s work covers self-immolation in a self-consciously encyclopedic and didactic manner. The chapter on self-immolation (sheshen pian 捨身篇) follows the Fayuan zhulin’s standard format: It opens with an “overview” (shuyi bu 述意部); continues with “evidence,” or the citation of scripture (yincheng bu引證部); and concludes with “stories of stimulus and response ,” or biographies (ganying bu 感應部).2 Although Daoshi showed that he was aware of objections to self-immolation, he was unequivocally in favor of the merits of the practice. His overview makes no attempt to de¤ne selfimmolation , nor discuss the practice, but proceeds along the following lines, now familiar to us from the critical evaluations of Huijiao and Daoxuan: The universe itself is impermanent and so is the body. Any notion of a “self” is fundamentally illusory. However, unlike the bodhisattva who works tirelessly for others, lifetime after lifetime, ordinary people are fundamentally greedy and try desperately to amass possessions, which like themselves are inherently devoid of any real existence. The bodhisattva, on the other hand, is always aware that the body is but a phantom or a dream.3 Daoshi ends this short argument by comparing secular and Buddhist ideas about the value of life: An outer text [Zhuangzi 莊子] says, “When alive I take the body as a lodging, when dead I take heaven and earth as a cof¤n.”4 We Buddhists say, “When the prince discarded his body the merit [allowed him to] pass over nine kalpas , when he sliced his thigh and exchanged [the ¶esh] for a pigeon, the shock reverberated through the trichiliocosm.”5 When we take cases from the present and compare them with these from the past, [we ¤nd that selfimmolators ] all had the same intention. They wanted to enable the white ox[cart] to have the capacity for the long journey, and the precious raft to have the ability to reach the other shore.6...