Self-immolation refers to killing oneself as a sacrifice.
While usage since the 1960s has typically referred only to setting oneself on fire,
the term historically refers to a much wider range of suicidal options, such as leaping
off a cliff, starvation, or seppuku . Self-immolation is often used as a form of protest or for
the purposes of martyrdom.
It has centuries-long traditions in some cultures, while in modern times it has become a type
of radical political protest.
Michael Biggs compiled a list of 533 "self-immolations" reported by Western media from the 1960s to
2002; this list uses the more general definition of self-immolation, including any intentional
suicide "on behalf of a collective cause."
Etymology The English word immolation originally meant
"killing a sacrificial victim; sacrifice" and came to figuratively mean "destruction,
especially by fire."
Its etymology was from Latin immolare "to sprinkle with sacrificial meal; to sacrifice"
in ancient Roman religion.
Self-immolation "setting oneself on fire, especially as a form of protest" was first
recorded in Lady Morgan's France.
It was Western media coverage of Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc immolating himself in
protest of the Buddhist crisis by the Vietnamese Ngo Dinh Diem regime in 1963 that introduced
the word "self-immolation" to a wide English-speaking audience and gave it a strong association
with fire.
The alternative name bonzo comes from the same era, because the Buddhist monks who immolated
themselves were often referred to by the term bonze in English literature before the mid-20th
century, particularly when describing monks from East Asia and French Indochina.
This term is derived from the Japanese word bonzou for a priest or monk, and has become
less common in modern literature.
History
Self-immolation is tolerated by some elements of Mahayana Buddhism and Hinduism, and it
has been practiced for many centuries, especially in India, for various reasons, including Sati,
political protest, devotion, and renouncement.
Certain warrior cultures, such as in the Charans and Rajputs, also practiced self-immolation.
The act of sacrificing one's own body, though not by fire, is a component of two well-known
stories found in the ancient Buddhist text known as the Jataka tales, which, according
to Buddhist tradition, gives accounts of past incarnations of the Buddha.
In the "Hungry Tigress" Jataka, Prince Sattva looked down from a cliff and saw a starving
tigress that was going to eat her newborn cubs, and compassionately sacrificed his body
in order to feed the tigers and spare their lives.
In the "Sibi Jataka", King Śibi or Shibi was renowned for unselfishness, and the gods
Śakra and Vishvakarman tested him by transforming into a hawk and a dove.
The dove fell on the king's lap while trying to escape the hawk, and sought refuge.
Rather than surrender the dove, Śibi offered his own flesh equivalent in weight to the
dove, and the hawk agreed.
They had rigged the balance scale, and King Śibi continued cutting off his flesh until
half his body was gone, when the gods revealed themselves, restored his body, and blessed
him.
The Buddhist god of healing, the "Medicine King" or "Medicine Buddha" was associated
with auto-cremation.
The Lotus Sutra describes the Medicine King drinking scented oils, wrapping his body in
an oil-soaked cloth, and burning himself as an offering to the Buddha.
His body flamed for 1,200 years, he was reincarnated, burned off his forearms for 72,000 years,
which enabled many to achieve enlightenment, and his arms were miraculously restored.
Zarmanochegas was a monk of the Sramana tradition who, according to ancient historians such
as Strabo and Dio Cassius, met Nicholas of Damascus in Antioch around 13 AD and burnt
himself to death in Athens shortly thereafter.
Self-immolation has a long history in Chinese Buddhism.
The relevant terms are: wangshen Chinese: 亡身 "lose the body" or Chinese: 忘身
"forget the body", yishen Chinese: 遺身 "abandon the body", and sheshen Chinese: 捨身
"give up the body".
James A. Benn explains the semantic range of Chinese Buddhist self-immolation.
But "abandoning the body" also covers a broad range of more extreme acts: feeding one's
body to insects; slicing off one's flesh; burning one's fingers or arms; burning incense
on the skin; starving, slicing, or drowning oneself; leaping from cliffs or trees; feeding
one's body to wild animals; self-mummification; and of course, auto-cremation.
The monk Fayu 法羽 carried out the earliest recorded Chinese self-immolation.
He first informed the "illegitimate" prince Yao Xu 姚緒 – brother of Yao Chang who
founded the non-Chinese Qiang state Later Qin – that he intended to burn himself alive.
Yao tried to dissuade Fayu, but he publicly swallowed incense chips, wrapped his body
in oiled cloth, and chanted while setting fire to himself.
The religious and lay witnesses were described as being "full of grief and admiration."
Following Fayu's example, many Buddhist monks and nuns have used self-immolation for political
purposes.
Based upon analysis of Chinese historical records from the 4th to the 20th centuries,
Benn discovered, "Although some monks did offer their bodies in periods of relative
prosperity and peace, we have seen a marked coincidence between acts of self-immolation
and times of crisis, especially when secular powers were hostile towards Buddhism."
For example, Daoxuan's Xu gaoseng zhuan 續高僧傳 "Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks" records
five monastics who self-immolated on the Zhongnan Mountains in response to the 574-577 persecution
of Buddhism by Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou.
While self-immolation practices in China were based upon Indian Buddhist traditions, they
acquired some distinctively Chinese aspects.
An "unburned tongue", which supposedly remained pink and moist owing to self-immolation while
chanting the Lotus Sutra, was based on the belief in Śarīra "Buddhist relics; purportedly
from a master's remains after cremation".
"Burning off fingers" was a kind of gradual self-immolation, often in commemoration of
relics or textual recitations.
The Tang Dynasty monk Wuran 無染 had a spiritual vision in which Manjusri told him to support
the Buddhist community on Mount Wutai.
After organizing meals for one million monks, Wuran burned off a finger in sacrifice, and
eventually after ten million meals, had burned off all his fingers.
Xichen 息塵 became a favorite of Emperor Gaozu of Later Jin for practicing finger burning
to memorialize sutra recitions.
"Buddhist mummies" refers to monks and nuns who practiced self-mummification through extreme
self-mortification, for instance, Daoxiu 道休.
"Spontaneous human combustion" was a rare form of self-immolation that Buddhists associated
with samādhi "consciously leaving one's body at the time of enlightenment".
The monk Ningyi 寧義 stacked up firewood to burn himself, but, "As soon the torch was
raised, his body started to burn 'like a rotten root' and was soon completely consumed.
A wise person declared, 'He has entered the fiery samādhi."
James A. Benn concludes that, "for many monks and laypeople in Chinese history, self-immolation
was a form of Buddhist practice that modeled and expressed a particular bodily or somatic
path that led towards Buddhahood."
Jan Yun-Hua explains the medieval Chinese Buddhist precedents for self-immolation.
Relying exclusively on authoritative Chinese Buddhist texts and, through the use of these
texts, interpreting such acts exclusively in terms of doctrines and beliefs rather than
in terms of their socio-political and historical context, the article allows its readers to
interpret these deaths as acts that refer only to a distinct set of beliefs that happen
to be foreign to the non-Buddhist.
Jimmy Yu has shown that self-immolation cannot be interpreted based on Buddhist doctrine
and beliefs alone but the practice must be understood in the larger context of the Chinese
religious landscape.
He examines many primary sources from the 16th and 17th century and demonstrates that
bodily practices of self-inflicted violence, including self-immolation, was ritually performed
not only by Buddhists but also by Daoists and literati officials who either exposed
their naked body to the sun in a prolonged period of time as a form of self-sacrifice
or burned themselves as a method of procuring rain In other words, self-immolation was a
sanctioned part of Chinese culture that was public, scripted, and intelligible both to
the person doing the act and to those who viewed and interpreted it, regardless of their
various religion affiliations.
During the Great Schism of the Russian Church, entire villages of Old Believers burned themselves
to death in an act known as "fire baptism".
Scattered instances of self-immolation have also been recorded by the Jesuit priests of
France in the early 17th century.
However, their practice of this was not intended to be fatal: they would burn certain parts
of their bodies to symbolise the pain Jesus endured while upon the cross.
A 1973 study by a prison doctor suggested that people who choose self-immolation as
a form of suicide are more likely to be in a "disturbed state of consciousness", such
as epilepsy.
In her article "Can the Subaltern Speak?", philosopher Gayatri Spivak discusses how self-immolation
is a way Hindu law regulated women in pre-colonial India.
According to Spivak, the necessity to commit self-immolation imprisons women in a double
bind in colonial and postcolonial India.
In Spivak's postcolonial framework, the woman who commits self-immolation takes the form
of the subaltern.
Political protest
A number of Buddhist monks immolated themselves by burning in protest of the discriminatory
treatment endured by Buddhists under the administration of President Ngô Đình Diệm in South Vietnam
— even though violence against oneself is prohibited by most interpretations of Buddhist
doctrine.
The twenty-third chapter of the Lotus Sutra recounts the life story of the Bodhisattva
Medicine King, which served as the main inspiration for the monks and nuns who self-immolated.
In the Sutra, the Medicine King demonstrates his insight into the selfless nature of his
body by ritualistically setting his body aflame, spreading the "light of the Dharma" for twelve
hundred years.
Thich Nhat Hanh adds: "The bodhisattva shone his light about him so that everyone could
see as he could see, giving them the opportunity to see the deathless nature of the ultimate."
The widespread coverage of the self-immolations of the Buddhist monks in western media established
the practice as a type of a political protest.
Self-immolations are often public, dramatic, political, and thus newsworthy.
They can be seen as a type of altruistic suicides for the collective cause.
Unlike suicide attacks, self-immolations are not intended to inflict physical harm or material
damage.
They attract attention and become glorified as martyrdom, because of the perception of
great pain, but they do not guarantee death for the burned.
While the burning of vital tissue can be very painful during self-immolation, shock or asphyxiation
quickly make the event painless, as do the onset of third-degree burns which destroy
the nerve endings.
Suicides by self-immolation have led to numerous copycat suicides: researchers have counted
almost 100 self-immolations covered by the New York Times and The Times between 1963
and 1971.
Most of these suicides occurred in Asia and in the United States during protests opposing
the Vietnam War.
In 1968 the practice spread to the Soviet bloc with self-immolation of Polish accountant
and Armia Krajowa veteran Ryszard Siwiec, as well as that of Czech student Jan Palach
in protest against the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.
As a protest against a Soviet rule in Lithuania, 19-year-old Romas Kalanta set himself on fire
in Kaunas.
Non-political suicides by fire also became more prevalent.
The practice continues with India leading – as many as 1,451 and 1,584 self-immolations
have been reported in 2000 and 2001, respectively.
A particularly high wave of self-immolations in India has been recorded in 1990 protesting
the Reservation in India.
Tamil Nadu has the highest number of self-immolations in India till date.
It is considered to be the capital of Self-immolation in India.
Since 2009, at least 120 Tibetans have self-immolated, more than 40 have died.
The Dalai Lama has said he does not encourage the protests, but he has praised the courage
of those who engage in self-immolation.
However, the Chinese government claims that he and the Tibetan exiled government are inciting
these acts.
In 2013, the Dalai Lama questioned the effectiveness of this tactic.
He has also stated that the Tibetans are acting of their own will and he is powerless to influence
them to stop carrying out immolation suicides.
A wave of self-immolation protests occurred in conjunction with the Arab Spring protests
in the Middle East and North Africa, with at least 14 recorded incidents.
These actions helped inspire the Arab Spring, including the 2010–2011 Tunisian revolution,
the main catalyst of which was the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, the 2011 Algerian protests,
and the 2011 Egyptian revolution.
There have also been self-immolation protests in Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, and Syria.
During the United States federal government shutdown of 2013, a man poured gasoline over
his body and set himself on fire on the National Mall in Washington DC.
He died in the hospital shortly afterward.
In June 2014, Reverend Charles Moore poured gasoline over his body and set himself on
fire in a strip mall parking lot near Dallas to racism and discrimination.
He died upon arrival at a hospital in Dallas.
See also 2013 Bulgarian self-immolations
Buddhist views on suicide List of self-immolations in Telangana
Self-immolations in Tunisia Self-immolation protests by Tibetans in China
References
External links "The Self Immolators".
A chronological list containing the biographies and last statements of all known self immolators
since Thich Quang Duc in 1967