Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Burning for the Buddha: Self-Immolation in Chinese Buddhism
ISBN: 9780824861735
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / University of Hawai''i Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Self-immolation -- Religious aspects -- Buddhism; Self-immolation -- China; Buddhism -- China -- Customs and practices;

Burning for the Buddha is the first book-length study of the theory and practice of "abandoning the body"(self-immolation) in Chinese Buddhism. It examines the hagiographical accounts of all those who made offerings of their own bodies and places them in historical, social, cultural, and doctrinal context. Rather than privilege the doctrinal and exegetical interpretations of the tradition, which assume the central importance of the mind and its cultivation, James Benn focuses on the ways in which the heroic ideals of the bodhisattva present in scriptural materials such as the Lotus Sutra played out in the realm of religious practice on the ground.

James A. Benn is professor of Buddhism and East Asian religions at McMaster University.