Martin Kovan
\nUniversity of Melbourne<\/p>\n
In China and Tibet, and under the gaze of the global media, the four-year period from February 2009 to February 2013 saw the self-immolations of at least 110 Tibetan Buddhist monks, nuns and lay-people. Underlying the phenomenon of Buddhist self-immolation is a real and interpretive ambiguity between personal, religious, altruistic and political suicide, and political suicide within the Buddhist sa\u1e45gha specifically, itself reflected in the varying historical assessments of the practice and currently given by global Buddhist leaders such as His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and the Vietnamese monk and activist Th\u00edch Nh\u1ea5t H\u1ea1nh.<\/p>\n
Part One of this essay surveys the textual and theoretical background to the canonical record and commentarial reception of suicide in P\u0101li Buddhist texts, and the background to self-immolation in the Mah\u0101y\u0101na, and considers how the current Tibetan Buddhist self-immolations relate ethically to that textual tradition. This forms the basis for, in Part Two, understanding them as altruistic-political acts in the global repertoire of contention. <\/p>\n
Read article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ISSN 1076-9005 Volume 20, 2013 Thresholds of Transcendence: Buddhist Self-immolation and Mah\u0101y\u0101nist Absolute Altruism, Part One Martin Kovan University of Melbourne In China and Tibet, and under the gaze of the global media, the four-year period from February 2009 to February 2013 saw the self-immolations of at least 110 Tibetan Buddhist monks, nuns and lay-people. … Continue reading Buddhist Self-immolation and Mah\u0101y\u0101nist Absolute Altruism<\/span>