Access to Luminosity through sacrifice, fire, blood and gore

Ten vignettes of Shaiva ascetics performing penance, detail (British Museum)

Fire is with air, one of the higher and nobler elements. It is used for its purifying, refining and dematerialising virtues in sacrifices. In Vedic (1500BCE) hymns of Praise to Agni, we learn how offerings are purified, undone of their more material aspects, before they can reach the gods, so that the cosmic order is held up. Fire was also used as a “means of transport” for elites (warriors, heroes, kings, priests etc.), or those with the necessary means to pay for the ceremonies, wood etc., to have their bodies incinerated, so that their souls could be welcomed by the gods or they would have access to celestial realms. Sometimes their wives, servants, etc. would “travel” together with them. Following the “law” of universal sympathy, the fire and the fiery aspect of one’s being correspond to each other. One’s digestive fire, mental and emotional energy, one luminous spiritual energy or radiance. The higher part of the soul, destined to travel upwards (“homing”).

Death and apotheosis of Hercules (Heracles)
From " Mythologie de la jeunesse " by Pierre Blanchard 1803 (private collection)

Anything sacrificed to a fire can be sent up to the gods if one follows the proper ritual, techniques and methods. Living beings including humans can be sent up. Humans can also self-immolate following the prescriptions in the hope to end up with the gods or in their vicinity. Heracles decided to self-immolate on a funeral pyre on Mount Oeta. Not for this specific act but because of his heroic life, he was taken up by the gods and deified. Heaven has always welcomed warriors and heroes. Heaven loves virility. Spiritual heroes, self-sacrificing ascetics, are also welcome. Again the means of transport is fire (tapas). Fire, exposure to fire or heat, will separate the higher soul (ātman) from the body and prepare it for the ascension. Fasting is another way to burn away physical and spiritual impurities.

Pratyekas entering the element of fire, Borobodur (wikimedia)

Tejas ( "luminosity", "brightness", "fiery energy" or "radiance" ) is the name for the “spiritual fire” that burns away mental and emotional impurities. The future Buddha, like many Jains, practiced tapas until he discovered his own method of the middle way, although according to Mahāyāna and esoteric Buddhism this was all staged. The "Play in Full" Lalitavistara Sūtra (3rd century), illustrated in the Borobudur reliefs, explains that 500 Pratyeka Buddhas left the earth before the birth of the Buddha, because their mission was accomplished. Since they were spiritual heroes they knew how to produce their own fire, and how to auto-combust through “entering the element of fire” (tejadhātu), attaining parinirvāṇa at the same occasion. Did they travel upwards? To the gods? We seemed to have lost all trace of them.

One of the Buddha’s oldest students, Dabba Mallaputta, arhat at the age of seven, had developed the same power (iddhi). The Buddha said so himself:

“While venerable Dabba Mallaputta, monks—after going up into the sky, and sitting in cross-legged posture in the air, in the firmament, entering the fire-element, and emerging—was attaining Complete Emancipation, his body burning and being consumed, there was no charcoal and no ash evident. Just as while ghee or oil is burning and being consumed there is no charcoal and no ash evident, so also while venerable Dabba Mallaputta—after going up into the sky, and sitting in cross-legged posture in the air, in the firmament, entering the fire-element, and emerging—was attaining Complete Emancipation, his body burning and being consumed, there was no charcoal and no ash evident." (Dutiyadabbasutta—Bhikkhu Ānandajoti)

Another arhat, Sagata (“the dragonslayer”), was an exemplary monk, but was set up by other monks to become the drunk through whom the vow against intoxicants was pronounced in the Vinaya. Thanks to this, we know the following:

"Then Ven. Sagata went to the hermitage of the coiled-hair ascetic of Ambatittha, and on arrival — having entered the fire building and arranged a grass mat — sat down cross-legged with his body erect and mindfulness to the fore. The naga (living in the fire building) saw that Ven. Sagata had entered and, on seeing him, was upset, disgruntled, and emitted smoke. Ven. Sagata emitted smoke. The naga, unable to bear his rage, blazed up. Ven. Sagata, entering the fire element, blazed up. Then Ven. Sagata, having consumed the naga's fire with his own fire, left for Bhaddavatika." LB Horner

Sagata (Sāgata Mahāthera) attained arhatship, and was praised by the Buddha as being his most preeminent disciple in the mastery of the fire element (tejodhātukusalānaṃ) (AN 1.188 à 1.267 Etadagga Vagga).

Among the śramaṇa and in Pāli sources the body was considered a foul and impure vessel, that kept one in saṃsāra and was a cause for attachment to sensual pleasures. Therefore the Buddha taught the great benefits of meditating on repulsiveness (asubha bhāvanā), and went in retreat immediately thereafter, causing a bit of a Jim Jones drama

“Then those mendicants thought, “The Buddha spoke in many ways about the meditation on ugliness. He praised the meditation on ugliness and its development.” They committed themselves to developing the many different facets of the meditation on ugliness. Becoming horrified, repelled, and disgusted with this body, they looked for someone to slit their wrists. Each day ten, twenty, or thirty mendicants slit their wrists.

Then after a fortnight had passed, the Buddha came out of retreat and addressed Ānanda, “Ānanda, why does the mendicant Saṅgha seem so diminished?”

Ānanda told the Buddha all that had happened, and said, “Sir, please explain another way for the mendicant Saṅgha to get enlightened.”

“Well then, Ānanda, gather all the mendicants staying in the vicinity of Vesālī together in the assembly hall.” (Vesālīsutta—Bhikkhu Sujato)

“Well then…”, and the Buddha quickly taught the mindfulness of breathing.

The fascination with fire, self-purification, self-sacrifice, self-combustion, self-immolation, self-mummification remained a constant with Buddhism as it went abroad, e.g. in China, including and perhaps specifically in Mahāyāna Buddhism, with bodhisattvas sacrificing not only their wives and children, but also their own eyes, body parts and their lives. Based on the Lotus Sūtra (Saddharma Puṇḍarīka Sūtra) and other bodhisattva materials, the idea of paying homage to the Buddhas through sacrificing one’s body parts or body became widespread in China.

In the Lotus Sūtra, the bodhisattva Medicine King (Yao Wang 藥王 ; Skt. Bhaiṣajyagururāja) “set fire to his own body as an act of homage to the buddhas”[1]. A Chinese monk with the name Daodu 道 度 (462–527) was one of the first to walk the path of self-immolation in Buddhist China.

“The body is like a poisonous plant; it would really be right to burn it and extinguish its life. I have been weary of this physical frame for many a long day. I vow to worship the buddhas, just like Xijian 喜見 (Seen with Joy [Bhaiṣajyagururāja]).”

The Birds, Hitchcock (moving picture)

He started with a fast. Soon five-colored rays of light and multicolored vapor emanated from his body. Then “a purple glow” started “radiating from a niche within it”. On the day of his sacrifice, a flock of five or six hundred birds came to the monastery, “perched together on a single tree before simultaneously taking off and flying together towards the west”.

“In the early hours of that night the whole monastery complex was illuminated by vivid displays of light that lit up the buildings for several hours.Around midnight, from the summit of the mountain came the sound of a stone chime being struck and someone reciting verses on impermanence.

The monks heard the crackling sound of wood starting to burn. Scrambling up the mountain to investigate, they discovered their comrade Daodu seated calmly with his palms together facing the west. His whole body was engulfed in flames.” (Burning for the Buddha)

He set an example of “heroic practice” and those who resorted to the ultimate gift (dāna) became the object of a cult[2], their remains being kept in stūpas. The Da zhidu lun 大智度論 (Great Perfection of Wisdom Treatise) attributed to Nāgārjuna confirms:

“What is to be understood by the fulfillment of the perfection of generosity appertaining to the body which is born from the bonds and karma? Without gaining the dharmakāya (dharma body) and without destroying the fetters the bodhisattva is able to give away without reservation all his precious possessions, his head, his eyes, his marrow, his skin, his kingdom, his wealth, his wife, his children and his possessions both inner and outer; all this without experiencing any emotions.”

The body, although foul, impure and repulsive, became an asset, an afterlife capital for those without capital. It opened up the possibility of sacrifices like the “Body Lamp Ritual”, “Burning off fingers as lamps”, etc. These were degenerated times where it had become difficult to self-immolate the entire body.

“[Someone might say,] “Speaking of those who abandon the body, they ought to give up the whole body, like Prince [Mahā]sattva [who offered his body to a tigress], should they not? Now these people just use a finger as a lamp, lighting the forearm as a burning wick. How can you use these examples [in the self-immolation section]? Is this not too fortunate for them?”
I answer that burning off the fingers and chopping off the forearm are subsidiary practices (jiaxing 加行 ) of abandoning the body. In the time of the semblance dharma and the end of the dharma (xiangmo 像末 ), these acts have become even more difficult [to perform]. So [they are included here] just as those who were able to maintain, even to a lesser extent, [the principles of] honesty and uprightness are entered in the biographies of the worthy officials[3].” (Burning for the Buddha)

Incidentally, Zanning, the 10th century author of these lines also quotes a sūtra that refers to the “samādhi of the fire realm”. The title of that sūtra is Chutai jing 處胎經 (Sûtra [Spoken while] in the Womb [or Bodhisattva Womb Sutra]). Zanning also explains the superiority of bodhisattvas to arhats regarding the gift of life.

“The ability to carry out the act depends on being able to see the body as empty like a bubble. Because of this ability, he says, bodhisattvas are able to give away their bodies lifetime after lifetime, unlike arhats who preserve the body for a single life until they reach extinction or Taoists who see the body as either a husk or dust and ashes.”

“The teachings of Confucius and Zhuangzi do not discuss karma, and it is karma that enables self-immolators to exchange a weaker body in one life for a stronger one in the future, growing ever more powerful and magnificent as they continue on the bodhisattva path. They gouge out human eyes but acquire the eyes of a buddha; they slice up a body of flesh and thus build a golden body.” (Burning for the Buddha)

Those who live miserably and poorly can use their body as an asset to accumulate positive karma through sacrificing, in order to progressively acquire a better body and better conditions at every lifetime, like in the movie Groundhog Day. "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"

Whether it is deification, buddhification, angelification etc., these goals seem to share the idea that the earthly body is a mere vessel and that more worthy immortal vessels are available for those repulsed by this body and this life and ready to make the necessary sacrifices at their own level. Fire can be of help in this project. Fire is our friend because it already has some of the "luminosity", "brightness", "fiery energy" or "radiance" of our future celestial vessels, and will burn away the remaining impurities.

Even Catholicism and its Purgatory, midway between heaven and hell, recognises that very quality of fire. It helps us to burn away remaining impurities and prepare us for a glorious future.

“14. If what he has built survives, he will receive a reward. 15. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss. He himself will be saved, but only as if through the flames. 16. Do you not know that you yourselves are God’s temple, and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” 1 Corinthians 3:14-16 Berean Standard Bible

Liu Benzun cutting off his arm, Pilu Cave (photo Ifeng.com)

I will end with the "Ten Austerities of Liu Benzun"

"Burning the Index Finger, Burning the Ankle, Cutting the Ear, Burning the Top of the Head, Burning the Genitalia, Burning the Knees, Cutting the Arm, Burning the Chest, Gouging the Eye, and Meditating in the Snow."

Liu Benzun gouging out eye (middle) and sitting in snow (right),
Pilu cave (Tripadvisor)

These austerities are still practiced nowadays judging by photos posted on Facebook by adepts. The Second Patriarch of Zen, Dazu Huike, seemed to have been a practitioner too, judging by Mumonkan Case 41.

"Case 41 Bodhidharma's Mind-Pacifying
Bodhidharma sat facing the wall.
The Second Patriarch stood [sat?] in the snow.
He cut off his arm and presented it to Bodhidharma, crying, "My mind has no peace as yet! I beg you, master, please pacify my mind!"
"Bring your mind here and I will pacify it for you," replied Bodhidharma.
"I have searched for my mind, and I cannot find it," said the Second Patriarch.
"Now your mind is pacified," said Bodhidharma."

***

[1] James A. Benn, Burning for the Buddha, Self-Immolation in Chinese Buddhism, Studies in East Asian Buddhism (2007)

[2] “ The cults of self-immolators were both local—celebrated in particular places by shrines, stûpas, images, and steles—and made universal through accounts in collections of monastic biographies and in more popular works that celebrated acts of devotion to particular texts such as the Lotus Sūtra.” Burning for the Buddha

[3] Zanning 贊寧 (919?–1001?), compiler of the Song Gaoseng zhuan, Biographies of eminent monks.