Does faith in the Lotus Sutra require burning a finger or a toe? After all, Chapter 23, which describes the previous life of Medicine-King Bodhisattva as Gladly-Seen-By-All-Beings Bodhisattva, states:
“Anyone who aspires for, and wishes to attain Anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi, should offer a light to the stupa of the Buddha by burning a finger or a toe. Then he will be given more merits than the person who offers not only countries, cities, wives and children, but also the mountains, forests, rivers and ponds of the one thousand million Sumeru-worlds, and various kinds of treasures.”
Gene Reeves in The Stories of the Lotus Sutra openly admits that this is his least favorite chapter for this reason. The Introduction to the Lotus Sutra felt compelled to point out:
Introduction to the Lotus Sutra“The offering of burning the body, which plays such a prominent part of this chapter, should not be taken literally.”
I was 11 in 1963 when Thich Quang Duc, a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk, set himself ablaze in a busy Saigon intersection on June 11. Thich Quang Duc was protesting the Catholic leaders of the South Vietnamese government. Over the months more Buddhist monks immolated themselves until a US-backed coup overthrew the regime in November of that year. In the years of anti-war protests that followed in the late 1960s, the example of these Vietnamese Buddhist monks was a beacon.
Thich Nhat Hanh knew Thich Quang Duc personally and had practiced with him in Vietnam. In Peaceful Action, Open Heart, Thich Nhat Hanh stressed that Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation was no more a suicide than Jesus’ death on the cross. It was an act of compassion:
Peaceful Action, Open Heart, p160“Because of his great compassion, he was able to sit very still as the flames engulfed him, in perfect samadhi, perfect concentration.”
In The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, Reeves offered a historical perspective on burning body parts as demonstrations of faith:
The Stories of the Lotus Sutra, p243-244“A great many Chinese monks right down to the middle of the twentieth century followed the practice of burning off one or more of their fingers as a sign of dedication and devotion. Until very recently, virtually all Chinese monks and nuns, and I believe those in Vietnam as well, when receiving final ordination, used moxa, a kind of herb used in traditional Chinese medicine, to burn small places on their scalps, where the scars usually remained for life. This ritual burning was taken to be a sign of complete devotion to the three treasures – the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.
“While deeply sympathetic with those who show such great devotion by sacrificing their bodies by fire, it is not a practice I can recommend to anyone. It is much better, I believe, to sacrifice our bodies through dedicated work, in a sense burning our bodies much more slowly.”
As the Introduction to the Lotus Sura stresses, the story Gladly-Seen-By-All-Beings Bodhisattva is meant to symbolize “the spirit of giving one’s whole self, believing wholeheartedly, embracing the Most-Venerable-One, and offering to serve the truth with all one’s body and soul.”
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