[Buddha-l] Re: Self-inmolation in the Buddhist tradition

[Franz Metcalf]

Benito,

The practice has its locus classicus in (Richard's favorite) The Lotus 
Sutra, chapter 23. So there's a venerable/pitiful (choose your 
adjective) tradition of it in Buddhist history. Usually monks would 
offer just a finger, but of course the best offering is the whole body. 
(Of course all monks symbolically do this when taking the tonsure, but 
some folks just have to get literal.) In addition to Thich Nhat Hanh 
you might also want to look at

Yum-hua Jan, "Buddhist self-immolation in Medieval China", in History 
of Religion. No.2, 1965.

Jacques Gernet has also written (in French) of the practice, which 
apparently got so popular that the authorities had to proscribe it. The 
Gernet reference is in Bernard Faure's _The Rhetoric of Immediacy_, 
which I bet you have.

Franz