VOLUME 7 ISSUE 3

The International Journal of

Religion and Spirituality

in Society
_________________________________________________________________________

The Study of Buddhist Self-Immolation Beyond

Religious Tradition and Political Context
The Necessity of “Protogetical” Analysis

EASTEN LAW

religioninsociety.com
 EDITOR
Saša Nedeljković, University of Belgrade, Serbia

MANAGING EDITOR
McCall Macomber, Common Ground Research Networks, USA

ADVISORY BOARD
Desmond Cahill, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia
Catherine Caufield, University of Alberta, Canada
Recep Dogan, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, Australia
Tracy Fessenden, Arizona State University, USA
Corey Harris, Alvernia University, Reading, USA
Mohammad Khalil, Michigan State University, USA
Steve Knowles, University of Chester, UK
Saša Nedeljković, University of Belgrade, Serbia
Norbert Samuelson, Arizona State University, USA

REVIEWERS
Articles published in The International Journal of Religion and
Spirituality in Society are peer reviewed by scholars who are active
participants of the Religion in Society Research Network or a
thematically related Research Network. Reviewers are acknowledged
in the corresponding volume of the journal. For a full list of past and
current reviewers, please visit
www.religioninsociety.com/journal/editors.

ARTICLE SUBMISSION
The International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society
publishes quarterly (March, June, September, December).
To find out more about the submission process, please visit
www.religioninsociety.com/journal/call-for-papers.
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ABSTRACTING AND INDEXING
RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY IN SOCIETY For a full list of databases in which this journal is indexed, please visit
www.religioninsociety.com http://religioninsociety.com/journal.
ISSN: 2154-8633 (Print)
ISSN: 2154-8641 (Online) RESEARCH NETWORK MEMBERSHIP
doi:10.18848/2154-8633/CGP (Journal) Authors in The International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in
Society are members of the Religion in Society Research Network or a
First published by Common Ground Research Networks in 2017 thematically related Research Network. Members receive access to
University of Illinois Research Park journal content. To find out more, visit
2001 South First Street, Suite 202 www.religioninsociety.com/about/become-a-member.
Champaign, IL 61820 USA
Ph: +1-217-328-0405
SUBSCRIPTIONS
http://cgnetworks.org
The International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society
is available in electronic and print formats. Subscribe to gain access
The International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society
to content from the current year and the entire backlist.
is a peer-reviewed, scholarly journal.
Contact us at support@cgnetworks.org.
COPYRIGHT
ORDERING
© 2017 (individual papers), the author(s)
Single articles and issues are available from the journal bookstore at
© 2017 (selection and editorial matter),
https://cgscholar.com/bookstore.
Common Ground Research Networks

All rights reserved. Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of study,
HYBRID OPEN ACCESS
The International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society
research, criticism, or review, as permitted under the applicable
is Hybrid Open Access, meaning authors can choose to make their
copyright legislation, no part of this work may be reproduced by any
articles open access. This allows their work to reach an even wider
process without written permission from the publisher. For permissions
audience, broadening the dissemination of their research. To find out
and other inquiries, please contact support@cgnetworks.org.
more, please visit
www.religioninsociety.com/journal/hybrid-open-access.

Common Ground Research Networks, a member of Crossref
DISCLAIMER
The authors, editors, and publisher will not accept any legal
responsibility for any errors or omissions that may have been made in
this publication. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein.
 The Study of Buddhist Self-Immolation Beyond
Religious Tradition and Political Context:
The Necessity of “Protogetical” Analysis
Easten Law,1 Georgetown University, USA

Abstract: This article explores how scholarship on Buddhist self-immolation has changed between 1963 and 2013.
Attention is given to how academic orientations and methods have evolved from early tensions between traditional
exegesis of texts and sociopolitical analysis of context to recent literature utilizing interdisciplinary approaches that
attempt to reconcile such tensions. This methodological shift can be interpreted via Delores Williams’s three-fold
womanist hermeneutic. Early literature on Buddhist self-immolation generally falls within either the first or third
movements of Williams’s methodology: building continuity with tradition or relating faith to politics. Utilized
independently, these two movements are unable to provide a holistic understanding of self-immolation. Williams’s second
movement of “protogetical” analysis remedies this problem by placing the act of self-immolation in relationship with a
greater number of “cultural deposits,” non-traditional texts and mediums that speak to this practice across different
times and places. “Protogesis” thereby bridges traditional textual exegesis and social analysis. This interdisciplinary
turn to protogetical analysis is evidenced in recent studies on Buddhist self-immolation that expand the range of
materials studied. This article argues this shift in method and perspective ought to challenge researchers of religious
phenomenon to shift their attention toward more holistic cultural readings that acknowledge a plurality of meanings and
motivations.

Keywords: Buddhism, Self-Immolation, Methodology, Religion and Politics

Introduction

T he first recorded self-immolation in Tibetan society took place on April 27, 1998, in
Delhi, India. His name was Thubten Ngodrup.2 The first recorded self-immolation to take
place on Tibetan soil was February 27, 2009, by a young monk named Tapey. As of
September 4, 2015, 143 Tibetans have self-immolated.3 This wave of self-immolations by fire is
unprecedented in Tibetan culture and history, but not without precedence in Buddhist tradition.
The first modern case of Buddhist self-immolation took place on June 11, 1963 during the
Vietnam War. Thich Quang Duc, a well-respected Mahayana Buddhist monk, set himself on fire
on the bustling streets of Saigon. The act was captured on film and spread quickly via mass
media. The effects of the act rippled through the sociopolitical context of South Vietnam and the
world. According to Michael Biggs, the number of recorded self-immolations between 1963 and
2008 numbers nearly 3,000 persons globally. 4 Incidents have cut across both religious and
cultural lines including self-immolators of Catholic and Quaker traditions in the United States.5
These modern acts of self-immolation are preceded by a long history of religious self-
immolations dating as far back to fifth century medieval China.6 Recent Tibetan acts are thus part
of both a deeply historical and increasingly contemporary phenomenon.

1
Corresponding Author: Easten Law, 3700 O Street NW, Theology Department, Georgetown University, Washington,
DC, 20057, USA. email: egl31@georgetown.edu
2
“Self-Immolations by Tibetans,” International Campaign for Tibet, last modified on September 15, 2015, http://www
.savetibet.org/resources/fact-sheets/self-immolations-by-tibetans.
3 Ibid.
4
Michael Biggs, “Dying for a Cause—Alone,” Contexts 7, no. 1 (2008).
5
See Daniel Berrigan and Thich Nhat Hanh, The Raft is Not the Shore: Conversations toward a Buddhist/Christian
Awareness (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1975); Sallie B. King, “They Who Burned Themselves for Peace: Quaker and
Buddhist Self-Immolators during the Vietnam War,” Buddhist Christian Studies 20 (2000).
6
James Benn, Burning for the Buddha: Self-Immolation in Chinese Buddhism (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i
Press, 2007).

The International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society

Volume 7, Issue 3, 2017, www.religioninsociety.com
© Common Ground Research Networks, Easten Law, All Rights Reserved
Permissions: support@cgnetworks.org
ISSN: 2154-8633 (Print), ISSN: 2154-8641 (Online)
http://doi.org/doi:10.18848/2154-8633/CGP/v07i03/25-41 (Article)
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY IN SOCIETY

These acts of self-immolation demand its witnesses take seriously the actor’s intentions. But
what exactly are self-immolators saying when taking such extreme actions? As the number of
self-immolations increases, scholars have asked difficult questions about the sources,
motivations, and goals of such a practice; the ethical dimensions of the act based upon various
religio-cultural traditions; and how such acts impact sociopolitical dimensions of local, national,
and global life. Early literature on Buddhist self-immolation from the seventies and eighties
reveals two dominant standpoints from which these questions have been answered: studies which
build continuity between the act and its historical religio-cultural tradition through analysis of
religious texts or political studies focused on the act’s meaning within the power dynamics of its
contemporary sociopolitical context. For scholars of the first orientation, acts of self-immolation
ought to be interpreted first on grounds of religious convictions reflected in Buddhist teachings
and doctrines toward realizing enlightenment and acting as a bodhisattva. For scholars of the
second orientation, acts of self-immolations should be read as primarily political performances
grounded in addressing sociopolitical conflicts. The former speaks to transcendent concerns
while the latter to earthly realities. Are these two interpretations at odds with one another? If so,
which ought to be the correct or primary interpretation? If these two interpretations can be
simultaneously held as true, what is the nature of relationship between them?
While early literature was divided between methods of traditional exegesis of texts and
sociopolitical analysis of context, recent literature evidences a shift toward interdisciplinary
methods capable of reconciling this divide. This article utilizes theologian Delores Williams’s
three-fold womanist hermeneutic as a framework through which these developments can be
understood and applied to other controversial religious practices that are dualistically perceived
as either exclusively religious or political. This article argues Williams’s conception of
“protogesis” is an important methodological movement for connecting religious tradition with
sociopolitical realities in a way that helps dissolve the perceived conflict between the two.
Instead of viewing Buddhist self-immolation as a dichotomy between religious and societal
concerns, protogetical analysis provides a means for understanding the act as both religious and
social by identifying the diversity of ways the transcendent and earthy concerns are expressed in
history through multiple texts and mediums.
This article argues for the importance of protogetical analysis as a bridge-building method
for reconciling religio-cultural and socio-political readings of Buddhist self-immolation by
surveying three phases of academic literature as evidence. By identifying how protogetical
analysis of Buddhist self-immolation has emerged over the past fifty plus years, this article
argues that Delores Williams’s three-fold hermeneutic is an important interdisciplinary tool for
framing and assessing the evolving meaning of other controversial religious acts. This framework
encourages the use of a wider range of methods and mediums in order to identify how both
religious and social motivations are integrated, expressed, and changed in a variety of embodied
acts, texts, and other media.

Literature, Method, and Intentions—Appropriating a Womanist Hermeneutic for the

Study of Buddhist Self-Immolation:

Delores Williams is well known for her womanist hermeneutic as expressed in Sisters in the
Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God Talk. This text interprets the Biblical narrative of
Hagar from the early chapters of the book of Genesis through the lens of an African American
woman’s experience, assigning new meanings that speak to and reflect the challenges of
exclusion and marginality. Williams articulates some of the methodological basis for this work in
her essay, “Hagar in African American Biblical Appropriation,” delineating three movements by
which she came to re-appropriate the Biblical narrative of Hagar to the African American
woman’s experience:

26
 LAW: THE STUDY OF BUDDHIST SELF-IMMOLATION

First, the Hagar appropriation establishes a continuity of tradition about God significant
for the African American Christian community’s understanding of its faith. Second, for
the explication of its meaning in the deposits of African American culture, the Hagar
appropriation spawns a new methodological level of interpretation complementary to
(but different from) traditional exegetical methods employed in the interpretation of
biblical texts. By traditional methods I mean those historical critical ways of extracting
meaning from a biblical text through analysis of language and the use of methods that
give attention to the origin and form of the text as well as to redactional problems. The
third area of theological import associated with the African American appropriation of
Hagar is the connection of faith and politics.7

In Williams’s three-fold hermeneutic, the first movement, continuity with tradition, is often
rendered through the exegetical analysis of religious texts with the goal of identifying the
doctrinal and religious sources that sanction and encourage a religious practice or interpretation.
The third movement, faith and politics, is chiefly concerned with understanding the sociopolitical
context of religious practices or beliefs, particularly regarding dynamics of power, oppression,
and protest. The first phase of academic literature on Buddhist self-immolation reviewed in this
article reflects a “religio-cultural” orientation of study associated with strengthening continuity
with tradition. Much of this work connects contemporary self-immolation with similar acts in
Chinese Buddhist sutras and medieval biographies of prominent monks. A second phase of
academic literature on Buddhist self-immolation critiques these earlier studies through a
“sociopolitical” orientation of study associated with faith and politics. These studies focus on the
sociopolitical context of the Vietnam War and nationalist liberation movements as the primary
motivating factor. What is missing in these two phases of study, however, is Williams’s second
interpretive movement, which she calls “protogesis.”
For Williams, protogesis is a “new methodological level of interpretation” defined by
analysis of “deposits of culture” within a community.8 She identifies this second movement as a
“way of leading the community into cultural self-study.”9 This method draws explicitly from the
field of cultural studies with its interdisciplinary concern for the production of cultural identities
and their role within larger power structures. For Williams, protogesis is a reflexive process that
teases out the multiple expressions of a concept among multiple “cultural deposits,” which can be
defined as the diversity of related media a cultural community might produce such as poetry,
paintings, dance, and folk narratives. In Williams’s work on the biblical narrative of Hagar in the
book of Genesis, examples of such cultural media/deposits include Toni Morrison’s fiction and
E. Franklin Frazier’s sociological investigations. While one genre is literature and the other is
social science, both contain references to Hagar and utilize the image to communicate their
meanings and findings. “The point here is that a protogetical analysis of all these cultural
deposits, using the methodological strategies appropriate to the genre of the deposit, will unearth
issues and questions from African American culture about religion and gender.”10 In the case of
Buddhist self-immolation, the words “African American” and “gender” could easily be replaced
with “Buddhist” and “self-immolation.” In other words, a protogetical analysis of the many
Buddhist cultural deposits that reference self-immolation, using the methodological strategies
appropriate to the genre of the deposit, can unearth new discoveries and questions regarding
Buddhist religious culture and violence.
By requiring a wider recognition and investigation of cultural deposits that go before and
alongside traditional exegesis of primary texts such as sacred scriptures, protogesis takes

7
Delores Williams, “Hagar in the African American Biblical Appropriation,” in Hagar, Sarah, and Their Children:
Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives, eds. Phyllis Trible and Letty M. Russell (Lousiville, KY: Westminster John
Knox Press, 2006), 174.
8
Ibid., 178.
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid., 180.

27
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY IN SOCIETY

seriously the ways diverse media appropriate religious concepts to shape a community’s beliefs
and practice beyond texts’ explicit teachings. Protogetical analysis thus repositions traditional
exegesis of texts and sociopolitical analysis of context in relationship with other forms of cultural
expression embedded in their particular times and places, revealing how communities of faith
appropriate traditional means in multiple ways to inform identity and engage sociopolitical
structures.
The first phase of literature reviewed in this study includes the early work of Yun Hua Jan
and Charles Ozerch representing scholarship oriented toward building continuity with tradition
via textual exegesis. The second phase of literature reviewed in this study examines Russell
McCutcheon’s rejection of Jan’s and Ozerch’s orientation, emphasizing the sociopolitical nature
of self-immolations as the primary motivations for such acts. The more socio-politically oriented
work of Thich Nhat Hanh’s account of Buddhist activism and Robert Topmiller’s study of the
Buddhist peace movement during the Vietnam War represent a reading oriented by faith and
politics. The third phase of literature identified begins with two historical studies on Buddhist
self-immolation by James Benn and Jimmy Yu. This study argues Benn and Yu find ways to
reconcile religio-cultural and sociopolitical tensions by adopting elements of protogetical
analysis to uncover a greater plurality of interpretations among a variety of cultural deposits in
Chinese history including poetry, letters, relics, and mythologies. The recent string of self-
immolations in Tibet has elicited another series of studies that further evidence Williams’s
protogetical orientation by including interdisciplinary analysis of cultural deposits outside of
what has traditionally been examined in religious studies including internet media, song, and
physical space. By making explicit the protogetical orientation at work in the current research on
Buddhist self-immolation, this review seeks to encourage greater application of this
interdisciplinary method in the study of controversial religious acts and their impacts on tradition
and society.

Phase One: Building Continuity with Tradition via Texts and Theory
This section explores two early scholarly interpretations of Buddhist self-immolation prompted
by Thich Quang Duc’s 1963 act, the work of Yun Hua Jan and Charles Ozerch. I argue their
basis of study aligns with Williams’s conception of “building continuity with tradition” by
attempting to discern the true meaning of Thich Quang Doc’s self-immolation with similar acts
documented in important Buddhist and Hindu literature.
From the standpoint of a historian of religion, Yun Hua Jan published the first significant
work on the religious roots of Buddhist self-immolation in 1965, just two years after Thich
Quang Duc’s self-immolation in Vietnam. Reviewing several prominent medieval Chinese
biographical texts of eminent monks who self-immolated, Jan identifies key passages within the
Lotus Sutra and Bodhisattva narratives as primary sources of inspiration.11 According to Jan,
these monks self-immolated as acts of devotion, emulating enlightened Bodhisattvas who were
willing to sacrifice themselves to help others attain enlightenment.12 Other motivations include
cases where monks professed a dislike for the body and life, others self-immolated to fulfill a
promise or unfilled duty, and some self-immolated as martyrs in the face of state persecution.13
As to why self-immolation emerged as a devotional act within the distinct context of Chinese
Buddhism versus that of the Indian traditions, Jan notes inter-religious and intercultural
influences in Chinese society including Confucian virtues of loyalty and filial piety as well as a
concern for practice over ideals. The pluralistic culture of Chinese religion made intersecting
motivations and practices common. In this way Confucian values praising self-inflicted violence
as expressions of honor and loyalty parallel Mahayana Buddhist motivations of compassionate

11
Yun Hua Jan, “Buddhist Self-Immolation in Medieval China,” History of Religions 4, no. 2 (1965).
12
Ibid., 249.
13
Ibid.

28
 LAW: THE STUDY OF BUDDHIST SELF-IMMOLATION

giving.14 Jan notes that the historians who recorded the lives of monks who self-immolated
become increasingly positive over time from non-committal reports in early writings to
overwhelming support in later works.15
In 1994, Charles Ozerch expands understandings of Vietnamese self-immolations by
applying the meta-theory of Rene Girard.16 Ozerch applies Girard’s theory of “mimetic desire” to
the context of Buddhism’s confessed commitment to nonviolence. “Noninjury” is the first of the
Five Precepts governing Buddhist life, traceable to the doctrine of Karma and its reciprocal
nature.17 For Ozerch, Buddhist methods for overcoming karma are closely related to overcoming
the violent seed of mimetic desire: “Buddhism’s analysis and rejection of what Girard terms
‘mimetic desire’ has been a central pillar of the Buddhist tradition. As an antidote to mimetic
desire, Buddhism encourages an alternative mimesis based on humble and selfless behavior. The
use of this mimesis results in a transformation of violent competition and victimage into positive
emulation and identification with the victim.”18
As such, Ozerch argues Buddhism and Girardian thought share a common goal of ridding
one’s self of desire to overcome violence for the purpose of transcendence. But how can a
commitment to nonviolent mimesis be fulfilled in so violent a manner as self-immolation? In
response, Ozerch highlights the sacrificial violence within Hindu Vedic traditions as a source of
Buddhist self-immolation, particularly sacrifices by fire like that of “Agni’s Robe.”19 Ozerch
argues this link to Hindu tradition goes against common perceptions of contradiction regarding
Buddhist commitments to nonviolence: “While Buddhism rejected the practice of Vedic sacrifice
employing animal substitutes, it nonetheless adopted the underlying logic of sacrifice… As a
result Buddhism, like Christianity, presents the believer with two contrasting models of behavior.
The first model operates according to the laws of the ‘violent sacred,’ while the other model
invites emulation of a nonviolent, anti-sacred kind.”20 In other words, while the Buddhist
worldview rejects violence, it does not do away with conceptions of sacrifice. As such, in certain
streams of Buddhist thought, self-sacrifice becomes an acceptable, even noble, means of ridding
suffering. Relying heavily on Jan’s textual analysis, Ozerch concludes the self-immolation as
consistent with 3,000 years of sacrificial myth and ritual structure from Vedic times to the
present.21 Despite the positive intentions behind self-immolation, Ozerch believes a Girardian
lens would ultimately view the practice quite negatively, labeling it as an act still bound within
the sacred violence of sacrificial systems. 22
Jan and Ozerch present two models of early attempts in scholarship to connect Thich Quang
Duc’s 1963 self-immolation within the line of Buddhist tradition. Jan builds this connection via
historical-critical analysis of medieval Chinese biographies of prominent monks who self-
immolated, drawing conclusions about sources of inspiration and circumstances that lead to such
an act. Ozerch, relying on Jan’s research, extends his reading of continuity to Vedic sacrificial
rituals of India. Both rely heavily on ancient texts and narratives to make sense of a
contemporary situation.

14
Ibid.
15
Ibid.
16
Charles Orzech, “‘Provoked Suicide’ and the Victim’s Behavior: The Case of the Vietnamese Self-Immolators,” in
Curing Violence: Essays on Rene Girard, eds. M. I. Wallace and T. H. Smith (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press 1994).
17
Ibid., 141.
18
Ibid., 144.
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid., 145.
21
Ibid.
22
Ibid.

29
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY IN SOCIETY

Phase Two: Working Out Faith and Politics in Social Context

This section examines a second phase of literature on Buddhist self-immolation prompted by
critiques of earlier studies like those mentioned above. For Russell McCutcheon, studies focused
on building continuity with tradition are misguided. Instead, McCutcheon argues contemporary
sociopolitical analysis emphasizing the religious act’s relationship to political realities represents
their true motivation and meaning. This posture of study reflects Williams’s articulation of a
“faith and politics” orientation toward religious acts. The works of Thich Nhat Hahn and Robert
Topmiller are presented as examples of this orientation.
Both Jan and Ozerch’s methodological basis for analyzing Vietnamese Buddhist acts of self-
immolation come under intense scrutiny in McCutcheon’s overarching critique of religious
studies in his 1997 text, Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the
Politics of Nostalgia. For McCutcheon, both Jan and Ozerch’s studies are inadequate because
they privilege either historical texts and tradition or an overarching meta-theory as hermeneutical
keys for interpretation, neglecting the concrete realities of the immediate sociopolitical context as
well as the confessions of persons most closely associated with the event.23 At best, McCutcheon
views such analysis as somewhat irrelevant to modern realities. At worst, such analysis
reinforces a certain colonial dynamic of orientalizing the other for the purposes of one’s own
academic interests.
McCutcheon’s critique of Jan and Ozerch is overstated in many ways as both do consider
sociopolitical realties as fundamental to a full understanding of the phenomenon. Jan notes
protest and martyrdom as a key motivator of medieval Chinese Buddhist self-immolators and
Ozerch certainly considers the political circumstances of Quang Duc’s self-immolation in his
Girardian analysis. However, McCutheon’s critique is accurate insofar as both authors’
investigations privilege history and theory over Quang Duc’s own context: the Vietnam War.
While Quang Duc shares the Mahayana tradition of medieval Chinese Buddhism, their contexts
are separated by centuries. What do medieval Chinese monks, Vedic sacrificial ritual, or
Girardian meta-theory really have to do with the concrete experiences of a Buddhist monk
wrestling with a twentieth century war of modern ideologies in Vietnam? McCutcheon argues
such connections are useless if they are delinked with the sociopolitical context of its actors.
One key feature of McCutcheon’s discontent with traditional exegetical studies of religious
texts as means for understanding self-immolation is the manner in which such methods appear to
ignore the voices of those most directly involved in the circumstance at hand. For example, Thich
Quang Duc’s last written statement before enacting his self-immolation is explicit in its political
aims: “Before closing my eyes and moving towards the vision of the Buddha, I respectfully plead
to President Ngo Dinh Diem to take a mind of compassion towards the people of the nation and
implement religious equality to maintain the strength of the homeland eternally. I call the
venerables, reverends, members of the sangha and the lay Buddhists to organize in solidarity to
make sacrifices to protect Buddhism.”24 Only the first sentence can be read to reflect
transcendent aims, the remainder of the statement communicates terms more in line with
traditional conceptions of political protest. Does such a statement undermine conclusions of Jan’s
textual exegesis?
When seeking to privilege the voice of Vietnamese monks involved in the struggle, many
turn to the words of the venerable Thich Nhat Hanh. Thich Nhat Hanh, one of the world’s
foremost representatives of what has come to be called “Socially Engaged Buddhism,” was a

23
Russell T. McCutcheon, Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
24
Senaka Weeraratna, “50th Anniversary of the Self-Immolation of Vietnamese Buddhist Monk Thich Quang Duc,” The
Buddhist Channel, last modified June 6, 2013, http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=70,11491,0,0,1,0#
.VmHfJuMrJPM.

30
 LAW: THE STUDY OF BUDDHIST SELF-IMMOLATION

relentless apologist for the Buddhist Peace Movement during the Vietnam War. Of particular
interest to this study is his 1967 text, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire. Published for a wide
readership shortly after Jan’s 1965 academic exposition, Thich Nhat Hanh’s work aims to
provide outsiders a historical context for understanding Vietnamese Buddhism’s role in the war.
What was the impetus of this work? Based on Thich Nhat Hanh’s foreword, it is an attempt to
clarify the motivations and meaning of Buddhist social action in light of Thich Quang Duc’s self-
immolation:

On my trip from New York to Stockholm, I met an American woman doctor on the
plane… Although she agreed with the motives behind the movement to end the Vietnam
war, she was quite unable to accept the Venerable Thich Quang-Duc’s self-immolation,
which seemed to her the act of an abnormal person. She saw self-burning as an act of
savagery, violence, and fanaticism, requiring a condition of mental unbalance… Since
then, the world has nurtured many doubts and invented a great many hypotheses about
Buddhists in Vietnam. Most Westerners have very little knowledge of what seems to
them a strange unorthodox religion. They tend to accept the stereotype of “monks” as
uneducated, superstitious indigents who shave their heads, forgo meat, and recite
prayers for salvation from rebirth.25

What is especially interesting about Thich Nhat Hanh’s text is its exclusion of what many would
call the transcendent aims of religion. By mapping Buddhism’s role in nationalism and resistance
to colonialism across Southeast Asian history, Thich Nhat Hanh’s presentation reads more like a
political tract than religious treatise. It recasts Buddhist action presently and historically in social
and political terms and concepts Western audiences can understand.
For Thich Nhat Hanh, the transcendental element of self-immolation seems to be an
ambivalent subject. In an interreligious conversation on self-immolation with Daniel Berrigan,
Thich Nhat Hanh’s comments are subdued when it comes to understandings of the act as a
vehicle to Buddhahood. He does not cite the Lotus Sutra or explain the act’s relation to
bodhisattvas or karma. Instead, he emphasizes the act’s grounds in compassion for others:

Nhat Chi Mai and Thich Quang Duc immolated themselves for others. Because of life.
Because they saw their lives in the lives of others. And in a moment of perception of
that deep, deep, truth, they lost all fear and gave themselves. I wouldn’t want to describe
these acts as suicide or even as sacrifice. Maybe they didn’t think of it as a sacrifice.
Maybe they did. They may have thought of their act as a very natural thing to do, like
breathing. The problem is to understand the situation and the context in which they
acted.26

Thich Nhat Hanh’s explanation of Quang Duc’s self-immolation in a letter to Martin Luther King
Jr. runs in a similar vein: “To express will by burning oneself, therefore, is not to commit an act
of destruction but to perform an act of construction, that is, to suffer and to die for the sake of
one’s people… the monk who burns himself has not lost courage nor hope; on the contrary, he is
very courageous and hopeful and aspires for something good in the future. He does not think that
he is destroying himself he believes in the good fruition of his act of self-sacrifice for the sake of
others.”27 To reinforce the above point, Thich Nhat Hanh continues by citing a Buddhist Jataka
tale where the Buddha, in a former life, sacrifices himself to a hungry tigress that was about to
devour her own cubs. However, the illustration is not used to highlight the act’s relationship to
Buddhist doctrines of enlightenment, only to re-emphasize the motivation of compassion. What
Thich Nhat Hanh says of self-immolation is certainly true in so far as compassion is regularly
25
Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire, vii.
26
Berrigan and Thich, The Raft is Not the Shore, 61.
27
Thich, Vietnam, 106–07.

31
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY IN SOCIETY

lifted up as the hallmark of Mahayana Buddhism. But why is Thich Nhat Hanh silent on the act’s
supernatural connotations as presented in medieval Chinese Buddhist texts? Does his silence
signal disbelief or a kind of skillful adaptation that provides Westerners a way of understanding a
complex act that does not conflict with their enlightenment sensitivities?
Building on Thich Nhat Hanh’s sociopolitical narrative, Robert Topmiller provides an
extended geopolitical reading of the Vietnamese Buddhist peace movement in his 2002 work,
The Lotus Unleashed: The Buddhist Peace Movement in South Vietnam, 1964–1966. The text
identifies Ngo Dinh Diem’s structural oppression of Buddhists and Thich Quang Duc’s 1963
self-immolation as the beginning of the Buddhist Peace Movement. In this reading, Thich Quang
Duc’s act of sacrifice is understood in political terms, a response first motivated by oppression
rather than enlightenment. According to Topmiller, what began as protest for religious freedom
for majority Buddhists under a Catholic regime evolved into a broader political goal centered on
ending the war in favor of a democratically ruled Vietnam free of US influence: “To Buddhist
leaders, nothing less than the state of Vietnam and their centuries old relationship with the people
remained at stake. They believed they had to save their country from a war driven by foreign
ideologies that had swept aside traditional Buddhist attitudes of love and brotherhood.”28
Of Vietnamese Buddhism’s historic role in political struggle, Topmiller writes, “Buddhists
had traditionally participated in battles against foreign invaders, Pagodas had served as supply
depots and centers of resistance during the struggle with the French, and Vietnamese monks had
historically taken an active role in political affairs, particularly in the campaign to expel the
Chinese. Thus, they sense no contradiction in upholding the rights of the people against an
oppressive government and foreign invader.”29 In addition, “Buddhist clerics have often opposed
the government but always retained close ties to the people. Thus, they remained very shrewd in
understanding their relationship with their fellow Vietnamese. Buddhist prelates depended on the
Sangha for their daily necessities, while the laity looked to the clergy for leadership and moral
guidance. Out of this symbiotic relationship grew the interdependence that represents the essence
of Vietnamese Buddhism.”30 Topmiller’s readings display a purely political and functional
interpretation of Buddhist actions and relations with society largely void of Buddhist principles
of religiosity.
Yet even Topmiller’s analysis is not without reference to the important religious
commitments of Buddhist faith and tradition. “Political action evolved from their commitment to
two of the fundamental tenets of Buddhism: compassion and nonviolence.”31 Elsewhere,
Topmiller writes, “Nonviolence, however, constitutes more than a strategy to win expanded civil
rights or other political goals. It is a way of life that respects the rights of every living creature…
Buddhist efforts to bring democracy to the country resulted from more than a political strategy to
end the war. Buddhism is inherently egalitarian, and most monks and nuns had grown
accustomed to working in a system where the majority rules.”32 Based on these excerpts,
Topmiller’s treatment of religious motivations reads sincere but also simplistic, distilling
religious concepts in generalized forms that do nothing more than reinforce political motivations.
In these readings of Buddhist social action there are no traces of enlightenment’s transcendent
aims.
Topmiller’s articulation of Buddhist motivations for activism run parallel to Thich Nhat
Hanh’s work in that both affirm commitments to compassion, non-violence, and the well-being
of the Vietnamese people within the sociopolitical context of the Vietnam War. Their analysis
help explain Buddhist self-immolation in the particular case of Thich Quang Duc as an act of
political protest rooted in religious values more easily understood by Western audiences. Their
28
Robert J Topmiller, The Lotus Unleashed: The Buddhist Peace Movement in South Vietnam 1964-1966 (Lexington,
KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2002), 5.
29
Ibid.
30
Ibid., 14.
31
Ibid., 11.
32
Ibid.

32
 LAW: THE STUDY OF BUDDHIST SELF-IMMOLATION

readings of the act are, however, largely silent regarding the religio-cultural traditions that
ground the practice in history.

Phase Three: Reconciling Tensions and the Beginnings of Protogetical Analysis

The early literature reviewed thus far highlights the inherent tensions of studying self-immolation
from either a religio-cultural or sociopolitical perspective alone, but a complete picture of any
phenomenon requires a “both/and” mentality. Acts of Buddhist self-immolation are both rooted
in Buddhist religious tradition and motivated by sociopolitical realities. Resolving the perceived
tension between these two poles, however, is not simply a matter of content but also of method.
How does one conduct both critical historical exegesis of religious texts and
sociological/political analysis of context without privileging one over the other? How does one
present self-immolation as both continuous with religious tradition and embedded in political
action?
This section examines two recent historical studies that present just such a potential: James
Benn’s Burning for the Buddha and Jimmy Yu’s Sanctity and Self-Inflicted Violence in Chinese
Religions. While both build their cases on analysis of historical texts, their studies adopt unique
scopes that connect multiple religio-cultural resources with historical sociopolitical realities.
Their methods parallel the principles of Williams’s method of protogesis: a process committed to
examining a greater range of cultural deposits to enrich both the exegetical tasks and socio-
political understanding. In the same way Williams looked to multiple cultural expressions of the
Hagar narrative within African American culture to discern the connections between religious
tradition and political action, Benn’s and Yu’s works lays the foundations for a similar method in
the study of Buddhist self-immolation. Benn’s study highlights the ways Buddhist accounts of
self-immolation have changed throughout Chinese history in relation to changing sociopolitical
dynamics, highlighting the multiple meanings that have become attached to the act over time.
Yu’s study compliments Benn’s by putting Buddhist self-immolation into the larger context of
Chinese self-inflicted violence from multiple religious traditions, showing how self-immolation
is motivated and interpreted outside Buddhist frameworks.
James Benn’s 2007 work, Burning for the Buddha: Self-Immolation in Chinese Buddhism, is
widely regarded as the most comprehensive text on Buddhist self-immolation to date. Like Jan
and Ozerch, Benn’s research attempts to work out the seemingly contradictory relation between
sacred texts that compile and praise self-immolating Buddhist monks as exemplary monastics
and the monastic regulations that condemn suicide. Like Jan, Benn works with textual analysis of
The Lotus Sutra and the Jataka tales as sources of inspiration and the early compilations of
biographies that highlight the lives of eminent monks as case studies. However, Benn goes
beyond Jan’s works in two significant ways. First, Benn maps practices of and commentary on
Buddhist self-immolation from its earliest recordings in fifth century China all the way to
modern cases in the twentieth. Secondly, Benn’s work includes analyses of both texts of diverse
genres (from narratives to ethical treatises) as well as sociopolitical analysis of their contexts. By
investigating practices of and texts on self-immolation in their respective contexts across
centuries, Benn provides a complex picture of self-immolation in both its continuity and its
changes from both religio-cultural and sociopolitical perspectives. A number of Benn’s key
conclusions are worth reiterating here as examples of the breadth of his research, its synthesis of
religio-cultural and sociopolitical perspective, and its recognition of the necessity of protogetical
analysis in future studies.
First, Benn’s analysis establishes the Lotus Sutra, particularly the narrative of the Medicine
King, as the foundational and quintessential source of inspiration within early Chinese practices
of Buddhist self-immolation. “The Lotus Sutra provided much of the material for the repertoire
of images, concepts, and ideals upon which auto-cremators, their audiences, and biographers

33
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY IN SOCIETY

drew… Although the Lotus was but a part of the literature of self-immolation, it was an essential
element that provided both legitimation and script for medieval auto-cremators.”33 As such the
Lotus Sutra’s portrayal of self-immolation by auto-cremation for the purposes of attaining
enlightenment becomes a seed for not only the actual practice of self-immolation, but also
numerous other cultural deposits such as relics, biographies, letters, art, ethical treatises, and
means for their veneration: “The power of self-immolators in the sixth and seventh centuries
found expression not only in relics and miracles but in the writings they left behind. From
Dazhi’s seventy-page vow to Zheng Ting’s death poem and Zuanlan’s hidden farewell message,
self-immolators increasingly left written justifications and commemorations of their actions. We
know from the case of Dazhi that such a text could be as much an object of emotional devotion
as a body relic. Self-immolation in China was beginning to acquire a certain aesthetic.”34 In a
similar way to Williams’s understanding of the Hagar narrative’s influence on multiple cultural
deposits of African American experience, these cultural deposits of Buddhist self-immolation
expand over the centuries alongside practice, each taking on their own respective aesthetic life in
the perception of devout followers.
Second, Benn’s descriptive analysis of the sociopolitical contexts of self-immolation over
the centuries provide evidence for understanding how the act oscillates between spiritual
concerns like attaining enlightenment and its utilization as a tool of political resistance. One
example highlights the Buddhist persecution of Emporer Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty in
574 CE. Buddhist biographer, Daoxuan, recorded a number of acts of self-immolation in
opposition to such oppression. Based on his analysis of Daoxuan’s seventh century biographies,
Benn concludes:

…we can see how the imitation of scriptural models from the Lotus and the jatakas
mingled with pragmatic and sometimes desperate attempts to defend the dharma against
the depredations of the state… The shape of the self-immolation section of the Xu
gaoseng zhuan as we have it in the received text has somewhat obscured the implicit
message of Daoxuan’s original composition which, I believe, had a certain polemical
intent. His aim was to remind his readers of those who had fought to maintain the
integrity, indeed the very survival, of the samgha under the previous regimes. More
specifically, he may well have wanted Taizong to take notice of the fact that Buddhist
monks had the means to oppose tyrants and usher in just rule by their physical acts.
Thus the political dimensions of self-immolation… took on a significantly new cast.
The powers of self-immolation could now be harnessed to protect the samgha as well as
generate merit.35

Throughout the text, Benn’s review of biographical compilations on self-immolations is always

interpreted in relation to shifts in sociopolitical contexts. The Late Tang/Five Dynasties period
(late ninth to early tenth century) were unstable times ravaged by war and uncertainty wrought by
the decentralization of authority. In such a context, Buddhist self-immolation took on a new
ethos, emphasizing the local influence of such acts in bringing immediate and miraculous
benefits to villages instead of being used as attempts at influencing larger political dynamics. 36 In
this context, the values of compassion that drove self-immolation yield miraculous rain in times
of drought instead of principled defense of the Buddhist Sangha. As new schools of Buddhism
emerged such as Chan, so did the nature of self-immolation.37 In short, Benn is mindful of
tempering every textual transmission of self-immolation with sociopolitical context:

33
James Benn, Burning for the Buddha, 77.
34
Ibid., 102.
35
Ibid., 201–202.
36
Ibid.
37
Ibid.

34
 LAW: THE STUDY OF BUDDHIST SELF-IMMOLATION

This study has stressed the importance of understanding self-immolation as a construct

that was continually being remade by historical actors who were themselves shaped by
social, political, and geographical forces. As we have seen, self-immolation was
invested with a variety of meanings depending on how, when, and where it occurred.
The compilers of biographical collections selected biographies and used them for their
own polemical purposes whether subtle or overt. This rule holds true not just for self-
immolation but for other monastic specializations, although this fact has not yet been
sufficiently appreciated by scholars. We still use the Gaoseng Zhuan collections as if
they were neutral databases rather than the highly structured and rhetorically charged
documents they are. Until we learn to stop looking only at individual biographies and
instead attempt to understand the collective nature of the sources, much of the overall
shape of Chinese Buddhism will continue to remain obscure to us.38

Benn’s concluding statement displays a shift from scholarly certainty founded on exegetical
privilege to epistemological humility grounded in the complexities of the ever-changing
relationship between religious practice and social-historical realities of power. Even as his
analysis relies primarily on historical texts, it is contextually critical. In doing so, Benn is able to
arrive at a fuller understanding of Buddhist self-immolation as both religio-cultural and
sociopolitical. Though Benn’s text makes no explicit reference of modern self-immolations like
those which emerged during the Vietnam War, the plurality of conclusions contained in Benn’s
historical survey affirms both religio-cultural and sociopolitical trends in the early research
reviewed in this article. Benn’s work affirms Vietnamese self-immolations as a clear part of the
larger Buddhist tradition both in its concern for transcendence and compassion and in its political
agency:

… I have been at pains to stress the variety of meanings of self-immolation. It could be

a heroic act that saved humans or other beings or one predicated on an imitation and
emulation of the bodhisattvas known from canonical literature. Sometimes a successful
act of self-immolation was viewed as equivalent to the attainment of the highest
enlightenment; at other times and places it led to rebirth in a Pure Land or in the
Heavens. A few self-immolators can be considered almost messianic figures; others
defended the sangha against depredations of the state or protected the state against
internal disorder or foreign invasion. Some monks who gave up their bodies called forth
responses that were more local and provided immediate relief from the threats of flood,
famine, disease, and drought. Like the teachings of Buddhism themselves, self-
immolation was an extremely flexible and adaptable form of expedient means (upaya).39

What is more, Benn’s conclusions bring its readers to beginnings of a protogetical project. Self-
immolation is a particular act inspired by particular doctrine and sacred texts, but like any other
significant religious phenomenon, its effects echo through numerous cultural deposits within the
community’s greater tradition. In his closing statements Benn notes, “If a new history of
medieval Chinese Buddhism is to be written it must take into account not only great men and
great ideas, but the ways in which these ideas affected the bodies, attitudes, devotions, and
practices of believers as well as the very material objects (stupas, stele, and images) and places
(sacred mountains and holy sites) among which these people lived.”40 Here Benn explicitly
advocates for research that engages new mediums of religious meaning in order to build a more
holistic understanding of Buddhist self-immolation.

38
Ibid., 199.
39
Ibid., 201.
40
Ibid.

35
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY IN SOCIETY

A work of similar methodological impact is Jimmy Yu’s 2012 work, Sanctity and Self-
Inflicted Violence in Chinese Religions, 1500–1700. In contrast to Benn’s work, which follows
self-immolation by fire within Chinese Buddhist tradition across several centuries, Yu changes
his frame by analyzing a larger range of self-inflicted acts of violence across Chinese cultural
traditions within a more limited chronological scope:

Sinologists have long recognized the syncretic nature of the “three religions” of
Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism in later China. Yet the rhetoric of what scholars
would consider syncretism is never so simple… when we historicize these traditions as
discrete “isms” with a discrete text-based system of beliefs and doctrines—in other
words, symbolic forms—that somehow govern bodily action and ritual, we fail to
appreciate the rich, variegated forms of Chinese religious life… I want to shift our gaze
to very specific cases of extreme bodily practices carried out by Buddhist clerics,
educated writers, Daoist practitioners, local village shamans, chaste widows, scholar
officials, and children. Their stories reveal the central thesis of this book: self-inflicted
violence in the form of socially sanctioned and routinized bodily mutilations was a
widespread and highly visible part of the sixteenth and seventeenth century cultural life
that transcended religious boundaries.41

Yu’s methodology breaks from typical studies of religious phenomenon that follow a particular
practice or ritual within the meanings of a single tradition, expanding to encompass a multiplicity
of practices sharing a common cultural fabric not bound to any single religious tradition. In doing
so, patterns of practice and ritual based on self-inflicted violence can be assessed in ways that are
initially free of specific religious motivations, bearing fruits that cut across both academic
disciplines to shed new light on acts traditionally associated with one religious tradition.
While the specific practices and conclusions of Yu’s work lay outside the scope of this
article, his articulation of assumptions and methodology are of utmost importance for
understanding how protogetical analysis might be conducted in future research on Buddhist self-
immolation:

…One of the things that readers will quickly realize is that routinized and sanctioned
self-inflicted violent practices were intelligible to observers and performers, for it was
only by such identifiability and intelligibility that people transmitted, copied, replicated,
and repeatedly talked about them as cultural topoi… I contend that the complexity of
these practices will evade any scholar who examines them through the lens of a single
academic discipline or by concentrating on only one genre of primary materials. My
methodological approach is a combination of ritual studies and discourse analysis of
different genres of texts, including miracle tales, official history, popular novels, literary
essays, local gazetteers, and exemplary narrative. These texts are closely related
historically, as are their production and circulation. I see them as active agents that
reveal the dynamics of cultural value, not as ahistorical static entities but as practice. An
examination of different sorts of texts provides us with a better understanding of how
they actively affected people’s lives, specifically their practice of self-inflicted violence.
I use various sources to examine the subject of my study from different angles. Each
kind of text is generative of certain sensibilities that contribute to larger cultural
discourses through which people think about their actions, bodies, environment, and
events in their lives. In a sense, texts are mediums that orchestrate, encode, aestheticize,
provide parameters for discursively mapping and strategizing people’s actions, and

41
Jimmy Yu, Sanctity and Self-Inflicted Violence in Chinese Religions 1500-1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press:
2012), 2–3.

36
 LAW: THE STUDY OF BUDDHIST SELF-IMMOLATION

create a plot around these actions. They are ways of “disciplining the senses.” In this
sense, it is very difficult to see texts as separate from action; they inhibit it.42

This extended excerpt displays Yu’s protogetical methodology in its full range, both in the
variety of textual genres it undertakes to analyze and their role as “active agents that reveal the
dynamics of cultural value.” Yu’s treatment of texts as “cultural topoi” is synonymous with
Williams’s conception of cultural deposits; by refusing to interpret texts as pure documents that
somehow carry an authentic essence for understanding self-inflicted violence, they are instead
treated as active agents that fulfill a variety of purposes in the construction of a community’s
cultural context. Yu’s understanding of the relationship between texts, practice, history, and
culture display all the required assumptions of good protogetical analysis. By working with his
texts under such a rubric, the fruits of Yu’s study reinforce similar conclusions made by Benn
regarding the multi-faceted role self-inflicted religious violence plays in the larger cultural
landscape of sixteenth and seventeenth century China:

The history of self-inflicted violence is systematic, rule governed, and replete with
meaning for both the performer and the audience. It was quite productive in challenging
imperial authority, negotiating social relations, and questioning social customs and
patterns of authority. If we free “violence” from our modern presumption that it is
limited to external aggression and conflict, we can appreciate the important role that
self-inflicted violent practices played within the enduring elements of Chinese cultural
life, mythologies, rituals cosmologies, family dynamics, and religious sanctity. The
practices examined in this book were highly structured, socially recognizable, and
intelligible phenomena. They validated and negotiated accepted values such as filial
piety, religious sanctity, loyalty, political authority, and chastity. 43

By mapping the influence of self-inflicted violence within multiple religious traditions among a
diversity of textual genres, a clearer picture of self-inflicted violence’s role in the formation of
sixteenth and seventeenth century China’s cultural habitus emerges. Yu’s conclusions mirror
Benn’s in their transcending of the religio-cultural/sociopolitical dualism that framed previous
studies.
Benn’s and Yu’s work are synthesizing and interdisciplinary studies that deepen
understandings of Buddhist self-immolation by virtue of their methodological choices. Their
works strike common notes with Delores Williams’s conception of protogesis: a methodology
focused on analyzing cultural deposits that carry the seed of self-immolation practice across
social, historical, and disciplinary boundaries in order to piece together a fuller understanding of
the act’s impact beyond the actor. Doing so provides both a broader and deeper view of self-
immolation within its larger cultural framework.

Recent Developments: Tibetan Self-Immolation and the Expanding Range

of Cultural Deposits Studied in Protogetical Analysis
Since 2009, a new wave of self-immolations in Tibet has captured the world’s attention. This
final section considers work from two academic journal issues dedicated to assessing the
phenomenon of Tibetan self-immolations during the height of the phenomenon in 2012.
Published in the same year as Yu’s historical study of self-inflicted violence, Cultural
Anthropology published a collection of works in April 2012, under the theme, “Self-Immolation
as Protest in Tibet.” Shortly thereafter, Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines published a December 2012,
issue entitled, “Tibet is Burning—Self-Immolation: Ritual or Political Protest.” While many of

42
Ibid., 17.
43
Ibid., 144.

37
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY IN SOCIETY

the authors struggle with the same dualistic tension between religio-cultural and sociopolitical
readings evidenced in early works, several also transcend them by employing a pluralistic and
protogetical mindset that takes seriously multiple meanings within varied traditions, disciplines,
and texts.
Because Benn’s and Yu’s works are historical in nature, their work necessarily focuses on
written texts, even as their protogetical sensibilities shift assumptions and expands the range of
genres examined. In contrast, the context of Tibetan self-immolation in these two journals is
immediate, increasing the number of cultural deposits available for protogetical analysis to
connect religious tradition with political protest. This section highlights a few of the ways
authors have expanded the range of “texts” studied in their quest to understand Buddhist self-
immolation in Tibet. Three particular themes are worth highlighting: the study of space/place, the
study of texts, images, and music in the context of digital mass media, and comparative study of
self-immolation in traditions outside of Buddhism.
Both issues provide a number of articles dedicated to analyzing the role of space and place in
Tibetan Buddhist self-immolation. For some, like Andrew Fischer and Emily Yeh, geo-political
dynamics of increased Chinese presence in Tibetan lands and perceptions of personal and
territorial sovereignty guide their analysis. 44 For others, like Daniel Berounský, special attention
is given to the history of the Ngawa region and Kirti Monastery where a critical number of self-
immolations have taken place.45 These articles examine sociopolitical and religio-cultural context
together in forms of concrete space and the ways they contribute to community identity, whether
Chinese, Tibetan in Tibet, or Tibetan diaspora. Study of place explores how one’s physical
location, along with the material resources inhabiting that space, shape community perceptions of
identity and action including that of self-immolation.
Both issues also promote analysis of different texts in the context of global mass media and
their role as cultural agent in community understandings of Tibetan self-immolation. Coupled
with the unique political circumstances of Chinese governance, the convergence of authoritarian
control and global media networks make any study of Tibetan society incredibly complex.
Charlene Mackley references the ways in which images and video of self-immolated dead bodies
are utilized in the narrative constructions of both Chinese and Tibetan media.46 Chung Tsering
analyzes online articles on self-immolation authored by members of the Tibetan diaspora,
uncovering how Tibetans in exile negotiate the meaning of self-immolation from afar.47
Publically disseminated poetry and music also become subjects of study in the larger cultural
discourse on the meaning of self-immolation. For example, Noyontsang Lhamokyab examines
pieces of social media from the Tibetan diaspora featuring poetry and songs about self-
immolations from 2011–12, ranging from praise to prayers.48 Mindful of context, Françoise
Robin studies the poetry of Tibetans living in China, where words and images must be coded
when published on public websites. 49
Lastly, Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines expands their study of Tibetan self-immolation by
adopting a comparative approach. Half of the articles featured in the volume involve scholars

44
Andrew Fischer, “The Geopolitics of Politico-Religious Protest in Eastern Tibet,” Cultural Anthropology Online, April
8, 2012. http://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/100-the-geopolitics-of-politico-religious-protest-in-eastern-tibet; Emily Yeh,
“On ‘Terrorism’ and the Politics of Naming,” Anthropology Online, April 8, 2012, http://www.culanth.org/fieldsights
/102-on-terrorism-and-the-politics-of-naming.
45
Daniel Berounský, “Kīrti Monastery of Ngawa: Its History and Recent Situation,” Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines 25,
(2012).
46
Charlene Mackley, “The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Tibetan Self-Immolation Protest as Mass Media,” Cultural
Anthropology 30, no. 3 (2015).
47
Chung Tsering, “Online Articles by Tibetans in Exile on Self-immolation (A Brief Analysis),” Revue d’Etudes
Tibétaines 25 (2012).
48
Noyontsang Lhamokyab, “The Flames of Poetry Spreading from the Fire of Heroes,” Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines 25,
(2012).
49
Françoise Robin, “Fire, Flames and Ashes. How Tibetan Poets Talk about Self-Immolations without Talking about
Them,” Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines 25 (2012).

38
 LAW: THE STUDY OF BUDDHIST SELF-IMMOLATION

analyzing self-immolation in other religio-cultural and socio-political contexts including that of

the Middle East/North Africa (in light of the powerful effects of Mohamed Bouazizi’s, self-
immolation during the beginnings of the Arab Spring), South Asia, and other parts of China. In
adopting a comparative approach across geographical and cultural traditions, common themes are
sought for understanding both the universality and distinctiveness of self-immolation in the
Tibetan context.
Together, the sample of articles cited here from Cultural Anthropology and Revue d’Etudes
Tibétaines exhibit a maturing and normalizing of interdisciplinary perspectives and protogetical
methods in the study of self-immolation as both particular and universal. The immediacy and
complexity of Tibetan self-immolation has reinvigorated desires to make sense of the act from
multiple standpoints. With an ever-increasing number of diverse cultural deposits available for
analysis and a growing sophistication for how multiple perceptions can shape and re-shape
meaning, scholars are moving beyond simplistic interpretations based upon either spiritual or
political motivations. Utilizing the protogetical frame’s interest in cultural formation, identity,
and power, acts of self-immolation and the cultural deposits they inspire are now evaluated for
their role in shaping meaning on both levels without unnecessarily prioritizing one over the other.

Conclusion: Multiple Meanings, Multiple Liberations

Buddhist self-immolation has taken up new place in the global imagination in recent years due to
the increasing number of incidents taking place in Chinese-governed Tibet. Regardless of
interpretation, nearly all persons will confess some sense of awe at the radicalness of such an
action. Ever since Thich Quang Duc’s initial 1963 act of self-immolation, scholars of religion are
increasingly interested in discerning the sources of motivation and desired effects of Buddhist
self-immolators, especially in light of Buddhism’s explicitly non-violent teachings. Over the past
five decades, methods of study and interpretation have also become increasingly
interdisciplinary, yielding new questions and perspectives toward understanding this
phenomenon, especially in the context of Tibet.
This article has surveyed some of these methodological shifts in the academic study of
Buddhist self-immolation via the frame of Delores Williams’s three-fold womanist hermeneutic.
While the pairing of Williams’s model with Buddhist self-immolation might seem strange at
first, the two share important commonalities. Womanist critique and Buddhist self-immolation
share a common end toward realizing liberation understood in diverse ways. Womanist theology
emerges from an intersectional standpoint between feminist and black liberation theology to
understand how African American women shaped their theological resources for liberation in
ways particular to their unique identity and circumstances. In the same way, Buddhist self-
immolation can be understood as a skillful mean (upaya) containing a plurality of liberations
discernable in multiple cultural deposits, each with their own unique circumstances.
Based on the literature reviewed here, this study argues early analysis of Buddhist self-
immolation privileged the first and third movements of Williams’s three-fold hermeneutic
(continuity with tradition/faith and politics) to the exclusion of the second (protogesis), fostering
a false dichotomy between religio-cultural sources and socio-political context. Without a
protogetical movement, spiritual motivations appeared disconnected with modern political intent.
Original inspirations for self-immolation found in texts like the Lotus Sutra did not seem relevant
to the political contexts of twentieth-century conflicts. Under these conditions, interpretations of
Buddhist self-immolation from religio-cultural sources and sociopolitical contexts appeared to be
in conflict.
The groundbreaking work of James Benn and Jimmy Yu, however, provide the beginnings
for linking religious and sociopolitical motivations by expanding the range of cultural
deposits/textual genres studied alongside new methods for assessing them. This article has
argued that Benn’s and Yu’s methodological foundations parallel Williams’s definition of
protogesis. Their work with multiple cultural deposits of self-immolation in complex historical

39
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY IN SOCIETY

contexts of China signals an important shift in perspective and methods. This trend toward an
interdisciplinary protogetical analysis of cultural deposits is even more pronounced in current
research of Buddhist self-immolation in Tibet as evidenced in recent articles in Cultural
Anthropology and Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines.
The first academic article to engage contemporary Buddhist self-immolation was published
by Yun Hua Jan in 1965, just two years after Thich Quong Duc’s self-immolation in 1963. The
work relied heavily on historical religious texts and interpretations. Contrast this with recent
work in the 2012 special edition of Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, published three years after the
first incident of Tibetan self-immolation on Tibetan soil in 2009. The articles featured examine a
much wider range of analyses and perspectives. The differences exhibit the evolution in method
and perspective that has taken place in the study of self-immolation. In an age of global media
and intersecting identities, the number of cultural deposits informed by the images and words of
self-immolators will continue to multiply, expand, and form new understandings of the act from
an ever-growing diversity of community standpoints. In the face of such increasing complexity,
protogetical analysis becomes all the more important for making sense of the meaning and
effects of self-immolation in any number of religio-cultural traditions and sociopolitical contexts.
Such work will continue to require collaborations across disciplines to make sense of the many
forms of cultural deposits influenced by self-immolation. As such work advances, it may also
give communities greater awareness and care for the factors that might influence future acts of
self-immolation.
Protogetical analysis provides a basis for linking historical tradition with contemporary
political dynamics. This more holistic reading of self-immolation shows the many ways
Buddhists have interpreted the act of self-immolation as a liberating act in both spiritual and
sociopolitical ways. It dissolves the false dichotomy between the religious and the sociopolitical.
For scholars of religion and society, this method of engagement is of utmost importance. When
studying public religious acts of political consequence, scholars should keep Williams’s three-
fold hermeneutic in mind as a method of engagement to avoid this false dichotomy. In addition to
building continuity with religious traditions and analyzing sociopolitical contexts, scholars
should expand the range of materials they are studying to make sense of the ways the spiritual
and political are so often interwoven.

REFERENCES
Benn, James. Burning for the Buddha: Self-Immolation in Chinese Buddhism. Honolulu, HI:
University of Hawai’i Press, 2007.
Berounský, Daniel. “Kīrti Monastery of Ngawa: Its History and Recent Situation.” Revue
d’Etudes Tibétaines 25 (2012): 65–80.
Berrigan, Daniel, and Thich Nhat Hanh. The Raft Is Not the Shore: Conversations toward a
Buddhist/Christian Awareness. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1975.
Biggs, Michael Biggs. “Dying for a Cause—Alone.” Contexts 7, no. 1 (2008): 22–27.
Fisher, Andrew. “The Geopolitics of Politico-Religious Protest in Eastern Tibet.” Cultural
Anthropology Online, April 8, 2012. http://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/100-the
-geopolitics-of-politico-religious-protest-in-eastern-tibet.
Jan, Yun Hua. “Buddhist Self-Immolation in Medieval China.” History of Religions 4, no. 2
(1965): 243–65.
King, Sallie B. Socially Engaged Buddhism. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009.
———. “They Who Burned Themselves for Peace: Quaker and Buddhist Self-immolators during
the Vietnam War.” Buddhist Christian Studies 20 (2000): 127–50.
———. “Buddhism, Nonviolence, and Power.” Journal of Buddhist Ethics 16 (2009): 103–35.

40
 LAW: THE STUDY OF BUDDHIST SELF-IMMOLATION

Kovan, Martin. “Thresholds of Transcendence: Buddhist Self-Immolation and Mahayanist

Absolute Altruism—Part One.” Journal of Buddhist Ethics 20 (2013): 775–812.
———. “Thresholds of Transcendence: Buddhist Self-Immolation and Mahayanist Absolute
Altruism—Part Two.” Journal of Buddhist Ethics 21 (2013): 385–430.
Lhamokyab, Noyontsang. “The Flames of Poetry Spreading from the Fire of Heroes.” Revue
d’Etudes Tibétaines 25 (2012): 113–22.
Mackley, Charlene. “The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Tibetan Self-Immolation Protest as
Mass Media.” Cultural Anthropology 30, no. 3 (2015): 448–76.
McCutcheon, Russell T. Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the
Politics of Nostalgia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Orzech, Charles. “‘Provoked Suicide’ and the Victim’s Behavior: The Case of the Vietnamese
Self-immolators.” In Curing Violence: Essays on Rene Girard, edited by M. I. Wallace
and T. H. Smith, 137–60. Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press, 1994.
Robin, Françoise. “Fire, Flames and Ashes. How Tibetan Poets Talk about Self-Immolations
without Talking about Them.” Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines 25 (2012): 123–31.
“Self-Immolations by Tibetans.” International Campaign for Tibet. Last modified on September
15, 2015. http://www.savetibet.org/resources/fact-sheets/self-immolations-by-tibetans.
Senaka Weeraratna, “50th Anniversary of the Self-Immolation of Vietnamese Buddhist Monk
Thich Quang Duc.” The Buddhist Channel. Last modified June 6, 2013,
http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=70,11491,0,0,1,0#.VmHfJuMrJPM.
Thich, Nhat Hanh. Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire. New York: Hill and Wang, 1967.
Topmiller, Robert J. The Lotus Unleashed: The Buddhist Peace Movement in South Vietnam,
1964–1966. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2002.
Tsering, Chung. “Online Articles by Tibetans in Exile on Self-Immolation (A Brief Analysis).”
Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines 25 (2012): 99–104.
Williams, Delores. “Hagar in the African American Biblical Appropriation.” In Hagar, Sarah,
and Their Children: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives, edited by Phyllis
Trible and Letty M. Russell, 171–84. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press,
2006.
Yeh, Emily. “On ‘Terrorism’ and the Politics of Naming.” Cultural Anthropology Online, April
8, 2012. http://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/102-on-terrorism-and-the-politics-of
-naming.
Yu, Jimmy. Sanctity and Self-inflicted Violence in Chinese Religions 1500–1700. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2012.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Easten Law: PhD Candidate, Theology Department, Georgetown University, Washington, DC,
USA

41
The International Journal of Religion and Articles published in the journal range from the
Spirituality in Society aims to create an intellectual expansive and philosophical to finely grained analysis
frame of reference for the academic study of religion and based on deep familiarity and understanding of a
spirituality and to create an interdisciplinary conversation particular area of religious knowledge. They bring into
on the role of religion and spirituality in society. It is dialogue philosophers, theologians, policymakers,
intended as a place for critical engagement, and educators, to name a few of the stakeholders in
examination, and experimentation of ideas that connect this conversation.
religious philosophies to their contexts throughout
history in the world, places of worship, on the streets, The International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in
and in communities. The journal addresses the need for Society is a peer-reviewed, scholarly journal.
critical discussion on religious issues—specifically as
they are situated in the present-day contexts of ethics,
warfare, politics, anthropology, sociology, education,
leadership, artistic engagement, and the dissonance
or resonance between religious tradition and modern
trends.

ISSN 2154-8633