/lit/ - Literature

The perhaps most famous textual instance of auto-cremation occurs in the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra, where a bodhisattva sets himself on fire as an offer- ing to the Buddha. Unlike the texts surveyed so far, the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra episode was taken literally in subsequent times as a script to be acted out, thus generations of Chinese Buddhists actually undertook self-cremation, reciting or
invoking precisely this passage.32 The presumably earliest reported case of self-cremation in China involves a fourth century monk who had the constant aspira-tion to follow the example of the Medicine King and burn his body as an offering.33
Such re-enacting of the scriptural model provided in the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra forms a continuum with practices in China that predate the introduction of Buddhism and which,34 needless to say, have continued up to present times.

Chinese buddhist are giga brainlets.