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Buddhism, Death, And Resistance: What Self-Immolation In Tibet Has Borne

ABSTRACT Since 2009, 155 Tibetans inside Tibet have positioned themselves in public places and burned themselves alive, in what most understand to be a protest for Tibetan freedom and the return of the Dalai Lama. This article explores how Buddhism is used to disavow the self-immolators through descriptions of the protest as an act in violation of the Buddhist tenet to not destroy life. By examining Tibetan Buddhist conceptualizations of death and the theological precedents for acts of sacrifice, the analysis argues that the act of self-immolation resides in a gray area—neither implicitly sanctioned, nor prohibited. Like many actions in Buddhism, the ethical reading of it rests on the motivation with which the act is undertaken. This article also analyzes interviews undertaken by the author with exile teachers of Tibetan Buddhism to understand the act’s violation of, or coherence with, Buddhism. The author demonstrates that conceptualizations of self-immolation are negotiated in the context of the political exigency in exile to make the act coherent with Buddhism. The article ends with a discussion of the global phenomena of martyrdom, and explores the discreet acts of resistance that the self-immolations have inspired inside Tibet.