Burning for the Buddha: Self-Immolation in Chinese Buddhism

The introduction opens with the case of the monk Daodu, whose self-immolation in 527 CE was surrounded by miraculous signs and later remembered as an act of deep religious significance. From this example, Benn frames self-immolation as a practice rooted in Buddhist ideals of bodily offering, sympathetic resonance, ritual efficacy, and Mahāyāna devotion, rather than as an isolated act of despair. The chapters proceed historically and thematically: early medieval self-immolation; the Lotus Sūtra, auto-cremation, and the “indestructible tongue”; the relationship between Saṅgha and state; Yongming Yanshou’s evaluation of relinquishing the body; self-immolation in the late Tang and Five Dynasties; and the long history of the practice over more than a thousand years. The appendices provide collections of biographies of self-immolators and critical evaluations of major Chinese Buddhist biographical sources.