On Mar 7, 2011, at 10:21 PM, feste37 wrote:
Does anyone know why she would do such a thing? I had never heard
of her, but I just looked at her Facebook page. Self-immolation --
wtf?
There are a number of yogic traditions where once the bodily work is
completed, it can be discarded and they go, presumably to a heaven or
pure dimension, to complete their awakening. There are entire
graveyards in India where the yogis are sealed into an airtight tomb
underground, to die voluntarily. And their bodies are still there.
For some, it's a type of voluntary suicide.
Of course you'd have to rule out mental illness in any particular
case. Self immolation is more recently associated with the famous
yogi during the Vietnam war who self immolated himself while in
samadhi. In such a case it was a protest against war and a
demonstration of non-attachment to the body and total transcendence
of body. It was a turning point n the war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thích_Quảng_Đức
Self-immolation is tolerated by some elements of Mahayana Buddhism
and Hinduism, and it has been practised 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. An
article entitled History of Religions, written by Jan Yiin-Hua,
investigates the medieval Chinese Buddhist precedents for self-
immolation.[4]
Relying exclusively on authoritative Chinese Buddhist texts and,
through the use of these texts, interpreting such acts exclusively in
terms of doctrines and beliefs (e.g., self-immolation, much like an
extreme renunciant might abstain from food until dying, could be an
example of disdain for the body in favor of the life of the mind and
wisdom) 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.[4]
During the Great Schism of the Russian Church, entire villages of Old
Believers burned themselves to death in an act known as "fire
baptism".[5] Scattered instances of self-immolation have also been
recorded by the Jesuit priests of France in the early 17th century.
Their practice of this was not intended to be fatal, though. They
would burn certain parts of their bodies (limbs such as the forearm,
the thigh) to signify the pain Jesus endured while upon the cross.
