Hence isn't it ironic that HHDL himself, like Aung San Suu Kyi with regards to the Rohingya issue, has not spoken out to stop Tibetans from self-immolation and has so far avoided the matter by saying it is political issue which he should not be involved in.
You brought up a fairly good point here AnneQ, but I am conflicted on this one.
On the one hand, the people who have self immolated were mostly monks and even if HHDL were to recuse himself from commenting on the grounds that HH does not wish to be involved in political issues (not that it stopped HH from commenting on issues arising out of politics in Myanmar), HHDL as the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism cannot avoid speaking up, either for or against actions done by monks in HH's own community. Neither can HHDL avoid the issue as a humanitarian because doesn't suicide create negative karma?
On the other hand, it was the very self sacrificial act of a Mahayana monk, Thic Quang Duc who burned himself alive in Saigon in 1963, that brought international pressure on the anti-Buddhist government of Ngo Ding Diem, to stop persecuting Buddhists in the country. Who can deny that the self immolations by the Tibetans were ultimate acts of selflessness, with the hope of stopping further atrocities being inflicted on Tibetans? Therefore if the motivation of the Tibetan self immolators were pure acts of compassion, is it for HHDL to stop them? To give up one's life for the benefit of many is a primary objective of every practitioner and would it be right for HHDL to intervene on the basis that such acts do not please the Chinese and may not augur well politically for HHDL? [See the Note 1 below extracted from Wikipedia about the relationship between self immolations/self sacrifice and Buddhism]
Much of what HHDL has done especially with his ban on the practice of Dorje Shugden remains a mystery but we have to take a position one way or the other - either HHDL is the emanation of Avalokisteshvara or HH is not and if HH is, then there is a higher reason for his actions and decisions. We can all continue in our Protector practice and push for the uplifting of the ban without condemning HHDL. After all, Avalokiteshvara and Manjushri have long worked hand in hand to spread the Dharma.
Note 1:
Self-immolation is tolerated by some elements of Mahayana Buddhism and Hinduism, and it has been practiced 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.
Two well-known Jataka tales, Buddhist myths about previous incarnations of the Buddha, concern self-immolation.
In the "Hungry Tigress" Jataka, Prince Sattva looked down from a cliff and saw a starving tigress that was going to eat her newborn cubs, and compassionately sacrificed his body in order to feed the tigers and spare their lives. In the "Sibi Jataka", King ?ibi or Shibi was renowned for unselfishness, and the Hindu gods ?akra and Vishvakarman tested him by transforming into a hawk and a dove. The dove fell on the king's lap while trying to escape the hawk, and sought refuge. Rather than surrender the dove, ?ibi offered his own flesh equivalent in weight to the dove, and the hawk agreed. They had rigged the balance scale, and King ?ibi continued cutting off his flesh until half his body was gone, when the gods revealed themselves, restored his body, and blessed him.
The Buddhist god of healing, the "Medicine King" or "Medicine Buddha" (Bhaisajyaguru) was associated with auto-cremation. The Lotus Sutra describes the Medicine King drinking scented oils, wrapping his body in an oil-soaked cloth, and burning himself as an offering to the Buddha. His body flamed for 1,200 years, he was reincarnated, burned off his forearms for 72,000 years, which enabled many to achieve enlightenment, and his arms were miraculously restored.
Self-immolation has a long history in Chinese Buddhism. The relevant Chinese terms are: wangshen ?? "lose the body" or ?? "forget the body", yishen ?? "abandon the body", and sheshen ?? "give up the body". James A. Benn explains the semantic range of Chinese Buddhist self-immolation.
But "abandoning the body" also covers a broad range of more extreme acts (not all of which necessarily result in death): feeding one's body to insects; slicing off one's flesh; burning one's fingers or arms; burning incense on the skin; starving, slicing, or drowning oneself; leaping from cliffs or trees; feeding one's body to wild animals; self-mummification (preparing for death so that the resulting corpse is impervious to decay); and of course, auto-cremation.
The monk Fayu ?? carried out the earliest recorded Chinese self-immolation. He first informed the "illegitimate" prince Yao Xu ?? – brother of Yao Chang who founded the non-Chinese Qiang state Later Qin (384-417) – that he intended to burn himself alive. Yao tried to dissuade Fayu, but he publically swallowed incense chips, wrapped his body in oiled cloth, and chanted while setting fire to himself. The religious and lay witnesses were described as being "full of grief and admiration."
Following Fayu's example, many Buddhist monks and nuns have used self-immolation for political purposes. Based upon analysis of Chinese historical records from the 4th to the 20th centuries, Benn discovered, "Although some monks did offer their bodies in periods of relative prosperity and peace, we have seen a marked coincidence between acts of self-immolation and times of crisis, especially when secular powers were hostile towards Buddhism."For example, Daoxuan's (c. 667) Xu gaoseng zhuan
? "Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks" records five monastics who self-immolated on the Zhongnan Mountains in response to the 574-577 persecution of Buddhism by Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou (known as the "Second Disaster of Wu").
While self-immolation practices in China were based upon Indian Buddhist traditions, they acquired some distinctively Chinese aspects. An "unburned tongue" (cf. Anthony of Padua), which supposedly remained pink and moist owing to self-immolation while chanting the Lotus Sutra, was based on the belief in ?ar?ra "Buddhist relics; purportedly from a master's remains after cremation". "Burning off fingers" was a kind of gradual self-immolation, often in commemoration of relics or textual recitations. The Tang Dynasty monk Wuran ?? (d. c. 840) had a spiritual vision in which Manjusri told him to support the Buddhist community on Mount Wutai. After organizing meals for one million monks, Wuran burned off a finger in sacrifice, and eventually after ten million meals, had burned off all his fingers. Xichen ?? (d. c. 937; with two fingers left) became a favorite of Emperor Gaozu of Later Jin for practicing finger burning to memorialize sutra recitions.
"Buddhist mummies" refers to monks and nuns who practiced self-mummification through extreme self-mortification, for instance, Daoxiu ?? (d. 629). "Spontaneous human combustion" was a rare form of self-immolation that Buddhists associated with sam?dhi "consciously leaving one's body at the time of enlightenment". The monk Ningyi ?? (d. 1583) stacked up firewood to burn himself, but, "As soon the torch was raised, his body started to burn 'like a rotten root' and was soon completely consumed. A wise person declared, 'He has entered the fiery sam?dhi."
James A. Benn concludes that, "for many monks and laypeople in Chinese history, self-immolation was a form of Buddhist practice that modeled and expressed a particular bodily or somatic path that led towards Buddhahood."[8]
Jan Yun-Hua explains the medieval Chinese Buddhist precedents for self-immolation.
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.
Jimmy Yu has shown that self-immolation cannot be interpreted based on Buddhist doctrine and beliefs alone but the practice must be understood in the larger context of the Chinese religious landscape. He examines many primary sources from the 16th and 17th century and demonstrates that bodily practices of self-inflicted violence, including self-immolation, was ritually performed not only by Buddhists but also by Daoists and literati officials who either exposed their naked body to the sun in a prolonged period of time as a form of self-sacrifice or burned themselves as a method of procuring rain. In other words, self-immolation was a sanctioned part of Chinese culture that was public, scripted, and intelligible both to the person doing the act and to those who viewed and interpreted it, regardless of their various religion affiliations.
