Where Text Meets Flesh: Burning the Body as an Apocryphal

30 Pages·2008·0.72 MB·English

WhereTextMeetsFlesh:Burningthe BodyasanApocryphalPracticeinChinese
Buddhism
JamesA.Benn
HistoryofReligions,Vol.37,No.4.(May,1998),pp.295-322.
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JamesA. Benn WHERE TEXT
MEETS FLESH:
BURNING THE BODY
AS AN APOCRYPHAL
PRACTICE IN CHINESE
INTRODUCTION
At first glance, burning, branding, and other forms of what we might to-
day call "body modification" would appear to have little to do with Bud-
dhism, a religion whose avowed focus is on the mind. In fact, burning the
body is one of the most obvious and commonplace features of Sinitic
Buddhism, since all Chinese and Korean monks and nuns are burned at
ordination, or at least were until recently.' The scars of these burns are
highly visible in the Chinese case, since it is the head that is burned.
This article investigates the recommendation of burning the body (shao
shen) in two apocryphal texts that were well known and extremely influ-
ential in the Chinese Buddhist tradition-the Fanwang jing (The Book of
BrahmI's Net)2 and the Shouleng'yan jing (~iiram~ama-s~Trhae, Book
Parts of this article were presented to the China Workshop at the University of California,
Los Angeles, in May 1997 and at the Needham Research Institute, Cambridge, in Septem-
ber 1997. My thanks to the participants of both these seminars, and to Robert Buswell, Wil-
liam Bodiford, and T. H. Bmett, who commented on earlier drafts of the article. Unless
otherwise noted, all translations are my own.
'
In December 1983, the Chinese Buddhist Association (Zhongguo fojiao xiehui), which
is nominally in charge of the religion in the People's Republic, declared that burning the
head at ordination was "a ritual practice which was not of Buddhist origin, and since it
was damaging to the health was to be abolished forthwith" (Wang Jinglin, Zhongguo gudai
siyuan shenghuo [Xi'an: Xi'an xinhua yinshuchang, 1991]), p. 39. It remains to be seen
whether this has had any discernible influence on ordination practice in China.
See TaishG shinshn daizGkyG, ed. Takakusu JunjirG et al., 100 vols. (Tokyo: Taisho
IssaikyG KankGkai, 1924-32), 1484; cited as T hereafter, with volume, text, page number,
register, and line number given in that order. Chinese characters for texts, personal names,
and technical terms appear in a glossary in the appendix.
O 1998 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved
0018-2710/98/3704-OM)I$O2.00
296 Where Text Meets Flesh
of the Heroic-march ~bsorption)~-and demonstrates that these two texts,
used in combination, not only justified such extreme acts as autocre-
mation and the burning of fingers but were also used to establish burning
at ~rdinationF.~oc using on such practices not only adds to our knowl-
edge of Buddhism as a way of life in China, but it may also allow us to
identify some specific reasons for the creation of apocryphal texts. To
date, the study of Chinese Buddhist apocrypha has consisted, for the most
part, of identifying and analyzing the contents of such works. Scholars
have hardly begun to search for specific reasons for their ~reation.~
The use of passages from these two texts to justify self-immolation
(she shen) first came to my attention in a defense of self-immolation
written by the eminent and influential tenth-century Chinese monk Yong-
ming Yanshou (904-75).6 Upon further readings in the primary sources,
it became evident that the use of these two texts by Yanshou was no
accident: in no surviving Chinese scripture other than the Fanwang jing
and the Shouleng'yan jing do we find burning the body defined and en-
dorsed as a practice for Buddhist monks and nuns, as opposed to ad-
vanced mahdsattvas (great beings)
The term shao shen, while it may in some contexts indicate cremation
of the corpse-most notably, of course, that of the Buddha himself-also
covers a range of practices applied to the living bodies of Buddhist monks
and nuns in East Asia. These practices extend from the least common
and most spectacular-autocremation of the living body, through the
burning off or branding of limbs (usually the arms), and the burning off
of fingers-to the most common practice, the burning of incense or moxa
(i.e., Artemisia tinder) on the body (the crown of the head or the forearm)
at ordination. The primary source of information on autocremation is that
contained in collections of biographies of Chinese monks and nuns,
where self-immolators merited a biographical category all of their own,
and it is clear that the Lotus Sutra was by far the most common legiti-
mating text for this type of ritual ~uicide.H~o wever, although heroic
T.945.
The term "apocryphal text" and the translation of the titles of apocryphal texts ("The
Book of . . .") is consistent with that used throughout Robert E. Buswell, Jr., ed., Chinese
Buddhist Apocrypha (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990).
There are of course exceptions, and notable among them is Antonino Forte. See, e.g.,
his Political Propaganda and Ideology in China at the End of the Seventh Century: Inquiry
into the Nature, Authors and Function of the Tunhuang Document S. 6502, Followed by an
Annotated Translation (Napoli: Instituto Universitario Orientale, 1976).
See my "Is Self-Immolation a 'Good Practice'?: Yongming Yanshou's Endorsement of
Relinquishing the Body in His Wanshan tonggui ji" (paper delivered at the annual meeting
of the American Academy of Religion, San Francisco, November 25, 1997). For the passage
in question, see Wanshan tonggui ji (Treatise on the Common End of the Myriad Good
Practices), T48.2017.969b26-c19.
'
The biographical sources for self-immolators are many, but significant collections may
be found in the following: Gaoseng zhuan (Biographies of Eminent Monks), comp. Huijiao,
History of Religions 297
autocremation as an offering to the buddhas is extolled in this and other
texts of Indian origin and endorsed in Chinese commentaries on them,
a justifiable objection could be made that the practices described and
advocated therein are those of the mahdsattva rather than those of mo-
nastics bound by the Vinaya. This is precisely the argument made in
Buddhist circles by those monks who were critical of autocremation,
branding, and burning. The primary motivation for the creation of state-
ments made in the Fanwang jing and the Shouleng'yan jing should there-
fore be clear from the outset; no clear and unambiguous justification for
burning the body could be found in texts of non-Chinese origin, hence
texts (or parts of texts in this case) were created in order to provide one.
Burning the body is an "apocryphal practice" in a number of differ-
ent sense^.^ As I shall demonstrate, the practice existed in China long
before the composition of the Fanwang jing or the Shouleng'yan jing,
and indeed before the translation of the Lotus Sutra itself, in the forms
of (1) moxibustion and (2) ritual autocremation in praying for rain.9
Hence, burning the body can be considered an apocryphal practice in the
sense of an indigenous (non-Buddhist) practice. Passages in the Fanwang
jing and the Shouleng'yan jing were specifically created in order to en-
dorse the practice as it developed in a Buddhist context from the early
part of the fifth century. Having been created, these two apocryphal texts
were in turn productive of more practices, including burning of ordina-
tion, which was not an immediate effect but rather took some centuries to
ca. 531, T50.2059; Xu gaoseng zhuan (Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks), comp.
Daoxuan, preface dated 645, 250.2060; Song gaoseng zhuan (Song Dynasty Biographies
of Eminent Monks), comp. Zanning, 988,250.2061; Bu xu gaoseng zhuan (Supplementary
Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks), comp. Minghe, Xuzang jing (Continued Canon),
150 vols. (Taipei: Xinwen feng, 1968-78; reprint of Dai Nihor ZokuzGkyG, Kyoto: Zokya
shoin, 1905-12), 134.320b-326a, cited as "XZJ"hereafter; Xin xu naoseng zhuan (New
Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks), Dazang jing bubian (~uddhisCt anon: Supple-
mentary Section), (Taipei: Xinwen feng, 1984-86), vol. 27, cited as "Supplement" hereafter;
Biqiuni zhuan (Biographies of Nuns, ca. 501, 250.2063); Fayuan zhulin (A Grove of
Pearls in a Dharma Garden), comp. Daoshi, preface dated 668, 253.2122; Fozu tongji
(Comprehensive Account of the Buddhas and Patriarchs), comp. Zhipan (active 1258-69),
T49.2035; Siming zunzhe jiaoxing lu (Record of the Teachings and Practices of the Worthy
of Siming), comp. Zongxiao, 1151-ca. 1214, 246.1937; Fahua lingyan zhuan (Biogra-
phies which Attest the Miraculous Power of the Lotus), comp. Liaoyuan, no date for text or
compiler, but the title appears in a catalogue of 1094, XZJ.134.387-407; Fahua jing chiyan
ji (Accounts of Testimonies to the Lotus), re-edited by Zhou Kefu, 1644-61, XZJ.134.449-
95. See my forthcoming dissertation, "Burning for the Buddha: Self-Immolation in Chinese
Buddhism," for a discussion of these sources and a fuller account of the history of self-
immolation in Chinese Buddhism.
My term "apocryphal practice" is one that owes an obvious debt to the term "apocry-
phal word" coined by Lewis Lancaster. See his paper, "The Question of 'Apocryphal' Words
in Chinese Buddhist Texts" (delivered at the annual meeting of the American Academy of
Religion, Atlanta, November 24, 1986).
The date of the first complete translation was 286 c.E.; see Erik Ziircher, The Buddhist
Conquest of China (Leiden: Brill, 1959), pp. 69-70, although Buddhist autocremation ap-
pears not to be attested before the early fifth century.
298 Where Text Meets Flesh
evolve. These practices are thus "apocryphal" in the sense of being in-
spired and justified by apocryphal texts. Whether Buddhists burned their
bodies in India or not is a moot point, but what is clear is that some
textual justification was required in China, beyond that contained in the
Lotus Sutra.l0 Just as some apocryphal sutras were created in order to
endorse doctrinal innovation, so I would suggest that passages in these
two texts were created to endorse practices that were at times the subject
of controversy within the tradition and the subject of censure from with-
out. Moreover, although critics of self-immolation within the Buddhist
tradition were never entirely won over by these texts, burning at ordina-
tion at least emerged as a fully vindicated practice.
BURNING THE BODY IN THE FANWANG JING AND
SHOULENG'YAN JING
The apocryphal nature of these two texts is not in question, and it is not
my intention to repeat or revise arguments made elsewhere by more able
''
scholars. What this study aims to do is to examine one particular reason
for the creation of these texts and to encourage the application of the
findings to other apocryphal texts. It is worth beginning with the two pas-
sages in question, since, when considered in isolation, they appear rather
remarkable. First, let us examine the earlier of the two texts, the Fan-
wang jing, which appeared in China sometime between 440 and 480 c.E.,
in other words, not long after the first recorded cases of self-immolation
by fire, which occurred in the early fifth century.12 The Fanwang jing in
time became the major text used in China and Japan for ordination to
the bodhisattva precepts. The sixteenth of the forty-eight lesser precepts
given in this text is that known in the Tiantai tradition as weili daoshuo
jie (the precept on making inverted statements for [one's own] gain). I
lo There is some evidence that the practice was not unknown in India, but a fuller dis-
cussion of this must perforce be left to my colleagues in Indian Buddhism.
'I On the Fanwang jing, see Paul Groner, "The Fan-wang ching and Monastic Discipline
in Japanese Tendai: A Study of Annen's 'Futsu jubosatsukai kGshaku,'" in Buswell, ed.,
pp. 251-90, and the scholarship cited therein. On the Souleng'yan jing, see Paul Demit-
ville's masterly footnote in Le Concile de Lhasa: une controverse sur le quietisme entre
bouddhistes de l'lnde et de la Chine au VIIIe siPcle de l'2re chretienne (Paris: Collkge de
France, Institut des hautes ttudes chinoises, 1952), pp. 42-52; and Mochizuki ShinkG, Buk-
kya kyaten seiritsu shiron (Kyoto: Hozokan, 1946), pp. 493-509. Robert Buswell, in The
Formation of Ch'an Ideology in China and Korea: The Vajrasamidhi SUtra, a Buddhist
Apocryphon (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989). p. 114, n. 125, notes a dis-
sertation by Ronald Epstein that attempts to prove an Indian origin for the text. I have not
seen this, but I would say that the presence of a recommendation of burning the body spo-
ken by the Buddha would alone argue for the apocryphal nature of the text.
l2 On the date of the Fanwang jing, see Groner, p. 255. See Jacques Gernet, "Les suicides
par le feu chez les bouddhistes Chinois du Ve au Xe sikcle," in Melanges publies par
l'lnstitut des hautes etudes chinoises (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1960),
2:527-58. on this "first wave" of autocremation.
History of Religions 299
mention this fact in order to show that the precept was understood, for
the most part, as a commitment not to make misleading statements rather
than as a vow to bum one's own body. Many of the precepts contained in
the Fanwang jing can be clearly traced back to earlier Mahayha texts,
and Ono Hao, who has done the most extensive work on the subject, is
of the opinion that this precept derives from the Pusa dichi jing ("Bodhi-
sattvabhiimisiitra).13H e is probably correct as far as the sense of the pre-
cept goes, but the wording of the two texts is entirely different, and there
is no mention of burning the body in the earlier of the two. The inspira-
tion for this particular part of the precept is most likely drawn from the
Lotus Sutra, since the other potential culprit, the Yuedeng sanmei jing
(*SamBdhir3ja[candrapradipasiitra]), which also contains a story of a
bodhisattva who burned his arms, was not translated until 557.14Another
explanation might be that the precept directly reflected cultic practice
and is not explicitly modeled on a textual antecedent. Here is the Fan-
wang jing precept in its entirety:
If a son of the Buddha is to practice with a good mind, he should start by study-
ing the proper decorum, the scriptures and the regulations (lu) of the Mahaygna
so that he thoroughly understands their meaning and sense. Later he will meet
bodhisattvas who are new to this study and who have come a hundred or a thou-
sand li in search of the scriptures and regulations of the Mahaygna. In accor-
dance with the dharma he should explain to them all the ascetic practices, such
as setting fire to the body, setting fire to the arm, or setting fire to the finger. If
one does not set fire to the body, the ann or the finger as an offering to the Bud-
dhas, one is not a renunciant bodhisattva. Moreover, one should sacrifice the
feet, hands and flesh of the body as offerings to hungry tigers, wolves, and lions
and to all hungry ghosts.
Afterwards to each and every one of them one should preach the true dharma,
so that one causes the thought of liberation to appear in their minds. If one does
not behave in this way, then this is a lesser wrongdoing.15
Body burners and their exegetical champions (such as Yanshou) could
point to this text with some confidence and say that as "renunciant bo-
dhisattvas" they were merely doing as the Buddha had told them.
The Shouleng'yan jing, unlike the Fanwang jing, is a meditation sutra
rather than a precepts sutra, but the following extract appears in a section
l3 Z30.1581.916b. See Ono HWo, Daijfi kaikyfi no kenkyti (Tokyo: RisOsha, 1954). p. 271.
l4 Z 15.639.598a-599c. See Jean Filliozat, "La mort voluntaire par la feu et la tradition
bouddhique indienne," Journal Asiatique, 251, no. 1 (1963): 21-51. The passage from the
Lotus Sutra that was so inspirational is Miaofa lianhua jing, Z9.262.53b. trans. in Leon
Hurvitz, Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dhanna: Translated from the Chinese
of Kumarajiva (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), p. 295.
l5 T24.1484.1006a.
300 Where Text Meets Flesh
of the text that is certainly disciplinary in intent. The Buddha speaks to
Ananda about the Vinaya and explains to him those prohibitions against
lust, stealing, lying, and killing that he deemed particularly appropriate
during the period of the decline of the dharma (mofa).16 Right in the mid-
dle of the discussion of the prohibition against stealing, and (seemingly)
apropos of nothing in particular, we find the following passage:
The Buddha said to Ananda, 'After my NirvBna, if there is a bhiksu who gives
rise to a mental state wherein he is determined to cultivate samddhi, and he is
able to bum his body as a torch or to set fire to a finger joint before an image of
the Tathiigata, or even to bum a stick of incense on his body, then in a single
instant he will have repaid the debts of his previous existences since the begin-
ningless past. He will always avoid [being reborn] in the world and he will be
eternally free of all outflow (lou, Skt. Bsrava). Even if he has not yet understood
the supreme path of awakening, such a person has already focused his mind on
the dharma. But if he does not have this secret underlying cause for sacrificing
the body, then even if he attains the unconditioned he must be reborn again as a
human in order to repay the debts from his previous lives. Just as when I [had
to] eat horse-fodder.'"
The above passage provides an excellent example of the typically
reductive nature of Sinitic apocrypha in the positing of a single practice
that leads to enlightenment-described here in terms of being free from
rebirth and from the outflow^.'^ By extension, a body that is free from
outflows or "cankers" is the perfect body of a buddha. The scholar of
Chinese religions will see here immediate parallels with "deliverance
from the corpse" and "postmortem immortality" in Taoism, but I fear this
line of inquiry must await a fuller exploration elsewhere.I9
l6 1: 19.945.131~-132c.C ompare Charles Luk's translation, The ~iirari~arnSaii tra (Lon-
don: Rider, 1966), pp. 151-57.
"1:19.945.132b. Mamai (Sanskrit yava-tandula), literally, "horse-wheat." The reference
is to an incident when King Agnidatta invited the Buddha to spend the summer retreat in
VeraiijjB. There was a famine, and so the Buddha and 500 bhik~uss urvived on horse fodder
for three months. See Shanjianlu piposha (Samantapdsiidikd), T24.1462.706a-707a, trans.
in P. V. Bapat and A. Hirakawa, Shun-chien-p'i-p'o-sha; a Chinese version bjS anghabhadra
of Samantapdsadika (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1970), p. 128.
An excellent example of this would be the "single practice" of charity (ddna) recom-
mended in the Xiangfa jueyi jing (The Book of Resolving Doubts Concerning the Sem-
blance Dharma), a Chinese apocryphon particularly associated with the Three Stages sect.
See Mark Edward Lewis, "The Suppression of the Three Stages Sect: Apocrypha as a
Political Issue," in Buswell, ed. (n. 4 above), p. 217.
l9 This topic is given a fuller treatment in my forthcoming dissertation, but see, e.g..
Isabelle Robinet, "Metamorphosis and Deliverance from the Corpse in Taoism," Historj
of Religions 19 (1979): 37-70; and Anna Seidel, "Post-mortem Immortality; or, the Taoist
Resurrection of the Body." in Gilgul, ed. S. Shaked, D. Shulman, and G. G. Stroumsa
(Leiden: Brill. 1987).
History of Religions 301
It is evident from the above that even before we consult the commen-
tarial literature, these two passages explicitly permit or require the burn-
ing of the body by renunciates, be they renunciate bodhisattvas (chujia
pusa) or fully ordained monks (biqiu, bhiksu). It is tempting to leap
straight from what we know about ordination now-where "incense" (in
fact moxa as we shall see) is burned on the head or arm-back to a point
in time when these two texts first came together and to conclude that
ordination practice is based on the simple conjunction of these two texts,
that is, that burning incense on the body is equivalent to burning the
body and is symbolic of the ascetic practices of the bodhisattva. While
this may in fact be true, the story of how this came about is perhaps a
little more complicated than it might first appear.
BURNING AT ORDINATION
We must perforce begin with an account of burning at ordination as we
know it today. There may well exist earlier Chinese accounts of ordi-
nation that give the kind of procedural and ritual detail beloved of the
anthropologist, but if they do exist I have so far been unable to locate
them.20 However, for ordination as practiced from the late nineteenth
century onward we do have some very useful descriptions from outside
observers such as J. J. M. de Groot, Johannes Prip-M~llera, nd Holmes
Welch and for modern-day Korea, the unique insights of a participant-
observer, Robert Buswell, who was ordained and spent some years in a
Korean m~nastery.~C'h inese and Korean monks and nuns may also be
questioned on their own experiences of ordination. The consensus of
opinion of scholars and monastics alike is that there is some connection
between the sixteenth minor precept of the Fanwang jing and burning
at ordination. But what, precisely, is this connection? Where and when
was it first made? One particularly significant fact that emerges when
looking at East Asia as a whole is that monks and nuns in Japan are
ordained to precisely the same bodhisattva precepts of the Fanwang jing,
but they do not burn their arms or heads, and there is no evidence that
they ever did.22
20 A satirical view of a late Qing ordination scene may be seen illustrated in Dianshizhai
huabao, ser. 2 (Guangdong: Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 1983), 3:51b-52a. I am in-
debted to Meng Yue of the University of California, Los Angeles, for this reference.
J. J. M. de Groot, Le Code du Mahciycina en Chine, son Injuence sur la Vie Monacale
et sur le Monde Lafque (Amsterdam: J. Miiller, 1893); Johannes Prip-Moiler, Chinese Bud-
dhist Monasteries: Their Plan and Its Function as a Setting for Buddhist Monastic Life
(Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1937; reprint, 1967); Holmes Welch, The Prac-
tice of Chinese Buddhism 1900-1950 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967);
Robert Buswell, The Zen Monastic Experience: Buddhist Practice in Contemporary Korea
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1992).
22 Matsuo Kenji, cited in personal communication from Jacqueline Stone, March 11,
1997.
302 Where Text Meets Flesh
De Groot's chapter "Acceptation des Cornmandements des Bodhisat-
was" in his erudite and detailed study of the Fanwang jing is based on
the observations he made over a number of years at ordination ceremo-
nies conducted at Yongquan si on Gushan in Fuzhou. As he notes, this
particular ceremony was one that was first established there by Yuanxian
(1578-1657). Yuanxian in turn is said to have borrowed it from that in
use at Yunqi si in Hangzhou, the abbot and founder of which was the
eminent Ming monk Zhuhong (1532-1612).~D~ e Groot quotes the rele-
vant part of the sixteenth minor precept at the beginning of his discus-
sion of the burning of the head, which follows that part of the ceremony
that he terms "acte de pknitence et serment" (an act that is penance and
What exactly happens at this point in the proceedings, and how is it
described? According to de Groot, terms in use for burning the head at
ordination in this particular monastery at the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury were ranxiang (burning incense) and jiuxiang (calcination by in-
cense). As far as I have been able to ascertain, these terms are not attested
in the Taish6 edition of the Buddhist canon, and I have not seen them
attested in ordination manuals before the mid-seventeenth century. This
may indicate that there was an ordination vocabulary, which was not
drawn from canonical sources, and that terms and techniques for ordi-
nation might well have been transmitted orally from teacher to student.
The ordinands knelt in front of the masters of ceremonies, who marked
their heads with ink in the places where they were to be burned. De Groot
notes that the following numbers of burns were administered: three, nine,
twelve, and eighteen. Apparently these were all in use at Yongquan si,
the number being burned at the request of the ordinand; compare this
with Prip-Moiler's observation that nine was the usual number of burns
for monasteries around Chengdu in the 1920s and 1930s and the fact
that he saw only one monk with eighteen burns on his head.25 Nine burns
are clearly visible in the photographs of recently ordained monks in
Prip-Moiler's book.26 The significance of the number of burns was ex-
plained to de Groot as follows: three for the Three Jewels (sun bao, San-
skrit triratna); nine in the square of three, hence the power is redoubled;
no one could explain the significance of twelve; and finally, eighteen rep-
resented the eighteen arhats2' Again, this would seem to be an example
of oral ordination lore, since I have not seen the burns explained in any
way in a Chinese source.
23 De Groot, Le Code du Mahdycina, p. 210.

24 Section titled "Briilure du crane" in ibid., p. 217.

25 Prip-Meller, p. 318.

26 Ibid., p. 319.

27 De Groot, Le Code du Mahciycina, p. 218.
History of Religions 303
Having had their heads marked, the ordinands knelt in front of tables,
their heads were grasped from behind by an officiating monk, and a small
pastille of dried pulp (gui yuan) from the fruit nephelium longan (longyan,
"dragon's eye") was placed on each inked spot.28T hen, cones of moxa
were placed on top of the Each cone was then lit with a burning
stick of incense, and the cones were allowed to burn down into the skin.
As this was happening, the ordinand recited the name of AmitBbha,
while the monk holding the ordinand's head pressed on his temples in
order to lessen the pain.30 If we imagine this procedure divorced from its
context, it bears a remarkable similarity to a type of therapy that has
been practiced in China for centuries, moxibustion.
MOXIBUSTION
"Moxibustion" is the term used in the West for the Chinese practice of
burning moxa, that is, Artemisia tinder (ai), on or near the skin, for ther-
apeutic or prophylactic purposes.31 The traditional term in Chinese was
ai rong jiu. The character jiu is the same as that which we have seen used
by monks for burning at ordination, jiuxiang. There are three main meth-
ods of moxibustion, all of which are mirrored in ordination burning in
China or Korea.32I n the first technique, a small cone of moxa is allowed
to bum down to the skin, resulting in a blister and leaving a scar. In some
cases this was modified so that a layer of vegetable tissue was placed
between the cone and the skin. This is precisely the technique used at
ordination in China, which was described above and which is common in
Taiwan today. The third technique was to use a burning cylinder of moxa,
either to provide mild radiant heat or to administer a light bum. This last
technique mirrors that used in Korea to administer a light bum on the arm
to laypeople who receive the Fanwang jing precepts (Korean y6nbi).33
Why use moxa for ritual burning? Why not simply use incense (xiang),
which is what is specified in the Shouleng'yan jing? The answer seems to
be that the intention is not to cause pain, simply to leave a visible scar.
Moxibustion practitioners all claim that the pain of moxibustion is not
an unpleasant one but instead produces a deep glowing sensation (chang
kuai, kuai Ordained Chinese monks and nuns whom I questioned
28 Prip-Mgller, p. 318.
29 De Groot's account does not mention moxa specifically, but what he describes as being
placed on the head can only be moxa. It was clearly not incense.
30 De Groot, Le Code du Mahciyana, pp. 218-19.
31 See Lu Gwei-Djen, Celestial Lancets: A History and Rationale of Acupuncture and
Moxa (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 291-92, for the
etymology of the word "moxa."
32 An illustration may be found in Lu, p. 172.
33 Buswell, The Zen Monastic Experience (n. 21 above), p. 142.
34 Ibid., p. 171.