Yàoxíng shěshēn jīng 要行捨身經
Sūtra on the Essential Practice of Body-Abandonment Anonymous Chinese composition.
About the work
A short apocryphal scripture promoting shěshēn 捨身 — the religious practice of body-relinquishment, ranging from finger-and-arm burning to self-immolation — as an “essential practice” (要行) of the Mahāyāna way. Set with Mahākāśyapa as the leading disciple amid 1250 bhikṣus, an array of pratyekabuddhas led by “Flying-Ascending Pratyekabuddha” (飛騰辟支), and 8000 great bodhisattvas led by Kṣitigarbha (the same configuration that opens many late-Táng cult-sūtras). The Buddha emits a great light that illuminates the śmaśāna (charnel ground), then re-enters his mouth — a recurring narrative trope used to authorise the body-abandonment teaching that follows.
Abstract
T85n2895 is one of the most controversial of the Dūnhuáng apocrypha because of its endorsement of bodily self-mortification, including self-immolation. The text has been cited in modern scholarship on the medieval Chinese practice of shěshēn, including the famous self-immolations recorded in the Gāosēng zhuàn and Xù gāosēng zhuàn and the body-abandonment cliffside-sites at the Putuoshan and Wǔtáishan complexes. James Benn’s Burning for the Buddha (2007) is the comprehensive modern study; Benn places the Yàoxíng shěshēn jīng in the Táng-dynasty milieu of pro-self-immolation rhetoric and shows that it functioned as scriptural authority for a practice that orthodox Vinaya consistently rejected. The text is registered as 偽妄 in catalogues from the Suí period onward.
Translations and research
- James A. Benn, Burning for the Buddha: Self-Immolation in Chinese Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007) — definitive modern study; treats this text in detail.
- Jacques Gernet, Les aspects économiques du bouddhisme dans la société chinoise du Ve au Xe siècle (Saigon: École française d’Extrême-Orient, 1956) — context on body-abandonment as economic-religious gift.
- Makita Tairyō 牧田諦亮, Gikyō kenkyū 疑經研究 (Kyōto: Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūsho, 1976).
Other points of interest
Note the catalog meta gives the title as 要行捨身經, while CANWWW reads 惡行捨身經 (“Evil-Practice Body-Abandonment Sūtra”) — the variant 惡行 is a CANWWW transcription slip; the Tàishō standard reading is 要行 (Essential-Practice). The variant misreading is significant because reversing 要 to 惡 inverts the text’s normative valence.