WE ARE HUMAN (Self-Immolation in Tibet)

zombiegirl

Robert Thurman posted this video on his facebook recently along with this paragraph (which I assume he wrote):

"It is a tragic and yet heroic thing that so many young and older Tibetan monks and nuns are offering their bodies to the flames to appeal to the world's heart to have compassion for the plight of the spiritual people of Tibet, under the harsh boots of the Chinese dictatorship. No one tells them to do it - in fact their mentors tell them not to even think of it, since they should bear whatever suffering inflicted on them with patience and use their precious human lives to develop their wisdom and compassion and attain buddhahood for the sake of all living beings. Yet their is a tradition within the spiritual heroes and heroines of Buddhism to offer the body out of altruism, love, and the joy of freedom, never motivated by hatred or anger. They do believe that dying in that positively motivated way leads to a better rebirth where they can continue to serve all beings, so they grit their teeth and bear the agony to teach others that material possessions and dominance and force are not the be all and end all. Their act is the absolute opposite of the suicide bomber who self-destructs with the agenda of hatred in order to kill others. These give away their body out of love, not to harm, to offer others, even if the message is subliminal to those obsessed with power, a vision of freedom from bondage to anything. If you watch this, be reverent and open your heart and pray that all oppressors everywhere are moved to relent and relax their grip - let free and be free themselves!"

WARNING! VERY GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING IMAGES!


What do you guys think? I watched the video and cried for a while. I'm sure everyone is familiar with Thich Quang Duc, which is the first time I had ever heard of self-immolation. I suppose I was just shocked to see that this is happening in Tibet, and apparently not as isolated incidents. Very sad, but I'm not sure how to feel about it.

person

I'm with their mentors. I feel it is violence against oneself. I can't bring myself to watch the video. I also wonder if it really accomplishes anything practical. Though if I were in the Tibetan's shoes I don't know that I wouldn't feel differently about it.

SattvaPaul

At 4:30 it looks like a Tibetan woman is throwing a white offering scarf at the burning person.

Sile

Tibet is plunging into a new holocaust, it seems; five more Tibetans reported shot to death in Serthar in the last 24 hours alone. Yesterday reported another six shot dead in Dronggo.

So little information gets out now from the new "modernized" Tibet that it's hard for us to realize just how bad things have become.

I believe the self-immolations are a sign of sheer desperation; I'm not saying they aren't also deliberate acts to force the world to pay attention and bring help, but I believe they are being deliberately done out of this desperation rather than cool "political motivation" as the Chinese government would have us believe.

Suicide is generally not supported by any religion; and yet many (I believe) have an easier time understanding the desperate suicide of, say, someone in a 1944 concentration camp who just can't take it anymore, or of someone sacrificing themselves to save others.

I believe in this case the monks and nuns are sacrificing themselves to save others; I think when the new horror stories come out, it will be apparent that those who self-immolated believed there was no other way to draw attention to the new holocaust and to save the lives of the many by sacrificing the lives of the few. It will still be hard to justify it from a Buddhist perspective, but probably not as hard as we find it at the moment.

But this is a terribly difficult question, over all.

Sile

Also you have to look at the sheer number of monks and nuns who have self-immolated recently; if it were only one, you could say with greater certainty that this person was misguided and did something no monastic would do, but with so many doing it, I think that becomes less plausible, and you really have to wonder why so many--who by their own beliefs, have the most to lose--are doing it. 17 Tibetans have self-immolated since 2009, 16 of those in the last ten months.

Cinorjer

Sad, and Thurman heaped entirely too much praise on the practice, in my opinion. The world doesn't need more corpses and this is a tragic misapplication of Buddhist practice. It's not even effective as a protest. The world is already well aware of the Tibetan situation, thanks to the efforts of the Dali Lama and Western Buddhists.

Sile

I don't think any of us are fully aware of the incredible deterioration in Tibet in the past year.

vinlyn

I remember when this kind of thing was happening in Vietnam to protest the war. It accomplished nothing.

Sile

A Chinese netizen had this to say:

@yanghengjun: They [the Tibetans] burned themselves to give light to the darkness. However, we have lived in the darkness for too long and turned into part of the darkness.

More, thought-provoking discussion from Chinese and Tibetans have been translated by Global Voices Online:

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/01/24/china-tibet-burns-but-where-are-the-chinese-public-intellectuals/

zombiegirl

Sad, and Thurman heaped entirely too much praise on the practice, in my opinion. The world doesn't need more corpses and this is a tragic misapplication of Buddhist practice.

I agree with this. I remember that we had a discussion on Thich Quang Duc on this board a while ago, and I don't think anyone spoke with such confidence and obvious praise regarding self-immolation. That was part of what shocked me so much, thus the reason I quoted it as well.

But then again, I have to say, of course I have heard about the plight of Tibet, but this video did disconcert me as a result of the self-immolation. It makes you wonder... what would it take to make a person do that? So perhaps it was a mission accomplished? I don't know... it certainly got my attention.