SPEAKING FREELY Making sense of self-immolation
By Dhundup Gyalpo
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No lie is too big or small for the paid posters of Chinese propaganda,
especially when it comes to attacking His Holiness the Dalai Lama and
discrediting the peaceful nature of Tibetan freedom movement. This is perhaps
the only logical explanation for the Op-Ed piece published by China Daily on 25
November, which claimed that, following the recent spate of self-immolation in
Tibet and outside, His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan
people in exile have responded by ''publishing on-the-scene photos and a list
of cash compensation available in the event of a death or injury through
self-immolation.'' [1] The article does not find it necessary to offer even a
modicum of evidence or facts to substantiate those serious allegations.
Needless to say, these allegations are an outright lie that serves only to add
insult to the injury of Tibetan persecution. Like the proverbial case of a
thief reprimanding the police (ulta chor kothwal ko daten), it is the
Chinese authorities themselves who are openly trying to purchase ''social
stability'' by greasing the palms of Tibetan monks and nuns. In a latest
example, the Chinese Communist Party in Tibet has dangled juicy carrots like a
monthly retirement pay of 120 yuan (US$19) for elderly monks and nuns, in
addition to promising an annual maximum of 50,000 yuan for medical expenses.
(It boggles my mind when I think about how or when a monk can ever retire from
monkhood in the proper sense of the word. These cash enticements also expose
the utter lack of Chinese sensitivity toward addressing the real causes behind
the popular unrest in Tibet.)
The aforesaid article signed by Huazi, editor-in-chief of the China Tibetology
Publishing House, had gone ballistic in condemning the recent series of
self-immolations as ''extreme acts of violence'' and ''religious extremism''
that are, it claimed, bound to have detrimental effects on ''the reputation of
Tibetan Buddhism and its future''. If self-immolation is in Huazi's opinion an
''extreme act of violence'' then, I wonder how a suicidal attack will be gauged
in his comparative scale of violence.
The modern lineage of self-immolation, particularly as a form of political
protest, is generally traced back to 11 June 1963, when the Vietnamese Buddhist
monk Thich Quang Duc, burned himself to death as ''a donation to the struggle''
against the persecution of Buddhists in South Vietnam. It is therefore
pertinent to reflect upon how the world renowned Vietnamese Buddhist monk and
peace activist, Thich Nahn Hanh, had at that time presented monks' perspectives
on the phenomenon of ''using their bodies like a lamp for help''.
Hanh began his interpretation by drawing a clear distinction between
self-sacrifice and self-destruction. According to Hanh, ''Suicide is an act of
self-destruction, having as causes the following: lack of courage to live and
to cope with difficulties; defeat by life and loss of all hope; desire for
nonexistence (abhaya).'' However, the Vietnamese monks who burned themselves
did not embody this definition of suicide. In fact, the self-immolations during
the Vietnam War were examples of the Buddhist concepts of selflessness. [2]
To
burn oneself by fire is to prove that what one is saying is of the utmost
importance. There is nothing more painful than burning oneself. To say
something while experiencing this kind of pain is to say it with the utmost of
courage, frankness, determination and sincerity.
The Vietnamese monk, by burning himself, say with all his strengh [sic] and
determination that he can endure the greatest of sufferings to protect his
people. But why does he have to burn himself to death? The difference between
burning oneself and burning oneself to death is only a difference in degree,
not in nature. A man who burns himself too much must die. The importance is not
to take one's life, but to burn. What he really aims at is the expression of
his will and determination, not death. In the Buddhist belief, life is not
confined to a period of 60 or 80 or 100 years: life is eternal. Life is not
confined to this body: life is universal. To express will by burning oneself,
therefore, is not to commit an act of destruction but to perform an act of
construction, ie, to suffer and to die for the sake of one's people.
Like the Buddha in one of his former lives - as told in a story of Jataka - who
gave himself to a hungry lion which was about to devour her own cubs, the monk
believes he is practicing the doctrine of highest compassion by sacrificing
himself in order to call the attention of, and to seek help from, the people of
the world. [3]
Similarly, the popular Tibetan interpretation
also maintains that these seemingly drastic acts of violence may not
necessarily yield bad karma if they had been motivated by altruistic
intentions. Everything depends on the purity of the motivation of the concerned
individual. When the ulterior motivation is not benevolent then, let alone an
act of self-immolation, even the seemingly generous act of doling out
''retirement pensions'' and ''medical expenses'' may not necessarily yield good
karma.
Lest I stand accused of glorifying self-immolation, I must point out that as
far as His Holiness the Dalai Lama is concerned he has always stood against
''self-immolation''. In a recent interview with BBC, His Holiness the Dalai
Lama not only said that he doesn't encourage Tibetans to set themselves on
fire, but also strongly questioned the effectiveness of self-immolation as a
form of protest against China. [4] Leave aside the issue of self-immolation,
His Holiness is against even hunger strikes as he views them as ''violence
against self''. Not only that, His Holiness terms even corruption as another
form of violence and constantly speaks about the need for eliminating this
social evil. [5]
It is therefore interesting to note that the definition of the Tibetan phrase
for violence, tshe ba, includes not merely physical harm, but a whole
host of others, including speech and thought aimed at hurting others. Thus,
even ''sweet words'' can be violent when they intend harm, while ''harsh and
tough action'' can be non-violent when it aims at the wellbeing of others.
In the aforesaid Op-Ed piece, although Huazi acknowledges that ''It is sad that
these young men and women should feel compelled to take their lives in such a
horrific way'', he shies away from revealing the underlying causes behind their
compulsions. On the contrary, he takes the easy way out by heaping the blame on
a political conspiracy hatched by those ''who have long cherished the illusion
of Tibetan independence". He is also extremely condescending in downplaying the
recent series of self-immolations as an absurdity of a bunch of
''unsophisticated young people'', ''who are in their twenties and have never
travelled far from their families and monasteries''.
Regarding the question whether self-immolation can be engineered by an
organization, Micheal Biggs' paper entitled Dying Without Killing:
Self-Immolations, 1963-2002, [6] offers a welter of insightful facts and
conclusions. After analyzing a database of 533 individual acts of
self-immolation-including attempts which did not prove fatal-in the last four
decades, Biggs' analysis reveals that self-immolation is most frequent in
countries with Buddhist or Hindu religious traditions and that ''the clustering
of self-immolation in waves reveals how one individual's action tends to
inspire others to imitate it.''
According to Biggs, the orchestration of self-immolation, unlike suicidal
attacks, is inherently individualistic and does not usually involve
organization and that it is not induced by organizational indoctrination or
heavenly rewards.
Many scholars who study suicide attacks emphasize the supreme importance of
organization. By implication, self-sacrifice is only conceivable after an
individual has been subjected to ideological indoctrination and social
pressure. In the vast majority of cases of self-immolation, however,
individuals acted alone.
Biggs also finds out that while in some cases the decision to commit
self-immolation was a product of a lengthy consideration, a great many others
took the decision on the spur of the moment, just minutes before they acted.
This further corroborates the fact that self-immolation requires no
organization.
Most important of all, unlike a suicidal attack, an act of self-immolation is
not intended to cause physical harm to anyone else or to inflict material
damage. A great majority of non-violent forms of protest like ''strikes,
boycotts and sit-inns are effective in large measure because they inflict an
economic cost on the opponent.'' Self-immolation, however, exacts no apparent
cost on anyone but the individual.
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