Bitter Medicine: Abhinavagupta’s Defense of Sacrifice

2003

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1876 edition. Excerpt: ... he can perceive nothing in it inconsistent or unworthy of belief. The rescue, of course, is due to the intervention of Visvamitra, as supposed by Wilson, and not to the efficacy of the hymns, but that was not intended to form the most salient point of the story. Exception has been taken to the theory of the sacrifice having been originally intended to be real on the ground of a story in the Aitareya Brahmana which narrates that "the gods once killed a man for their sacrifice, but that part in him which was fit for being made an offering, went out and entered a horse"; then the horse being killed, it went to an ox; and the ox being killed, it went to a sheep; and the sheep being killed, it went to a goat; and the goat being killed, it went to the earth; and the gods, guarding the earth, seized the rice, the produce thereof, which, made into cakes, formed the best offering, and all the animals from which the sacrificial part had gone, became unfit for being sacrificed, and no one should eat them. This story, I quote the entire passage from Haug's translation to enable the reader to judge for himself: "The gods killed a man for their sacrifice. But that part in him which was fit for being made an offering, went out and entered a horse. Thence the horse became an animal fit for being sacrificed. The gods then dismissed that man after that part which was only fit for being offered had gone from him, whereupon he became deformed. "The gods killed the horse; but the part fit for being sacrificed (the medha) went out of it, and entered an ox; thence the ox became an animal fit for being sacrificed. The gods then dismissed (this horse) after the sacrificial part had gone from it, whereupon it turned to a white deer. "The gods killed the ox; but...

In most general terms, hathayoga involves the internalisation and embodied literalisation of the Vedic fire sacrifice. Reflecting on the place of sacrifice in anthropological theory, and on the way in which sacrifice structures the relationship between humans and gods in terms of gift obligations, this paper explores the theoretical implications of hathayoga's embodied literalisation of a profoundly symbolic act. Although similar to various forms of ascetic renunciation, hathayoga is unique, it will be argued, in being structured as the physiological antithesis of religious ritual. Self-realisation based on the internalised yajna sacrifice undermines the binary structure of the sacred and the profane and makes god irrelevant. This raises theoretical questions concerning the social significance of a ritual that is anti-social on a number of different levels.

by Michon M. Mathiesen in JTS

Journal of Indian Philosophy, 2024

This paper focuses on Sāṁkhya-Yoga and Buddhist Abhidharma ontologies and their engagement. A close reading of two hitherto uncompared passages from Pātañjalayogaśāstra 2.13 and Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakośabhāṣya 4.94 suggests that they are intertextual or interdiscursive. A mirrored argument form in the texts explains ethical causality (karma) in relation to rebirth (punarjanman). The arguments in both texts are similar in form, sequence, and even conclusion, although not in terms of the doctrinal basis of reasoning. On first examination, both arguments analyse how action (karma) sustains patterns of moral repercussion across life and beyond death in terms of singular and plural causes and effects. But a close reading shows that the level of conceptual engagement on this issue is more nuanced - centred on 'projecting' and 'completing' mechanisms of karmic retribution (ākṣepaka karman and paripūraka karman) as well as determinate or indeterminate (niyata and aniyata) maturation of karmic effects. The paper suggests that the function of Patañjali's passage was to serve as a structured engagement with Buddhist Sarvāstivāda karma theory.

Published in Martyrdom, Self-Sacrifice, and Self-Immolation: Religious Perspectives on Suicide, ed. Margo Kitts (Oxford University Press, 2018), 241-263.

When considering Indian Buddhist attitudes toward elective death, it is essential to distinguish between several different forms. Ordinary suicide, or the act of voluntarily and intentionally taking one's own life, is largely condemned in Indian Buddhist literature as a manifestation of both desire (P. taṇhā) 1 and delusion (P. moha)-desire because the "desire for non-existence" (P. vibhava-taṇhā) is one of the three types of desire that characterize an unawakened person, and delusion because the person who commits suicide is profoundly mistaken if he or she believes that suicide will solve his or her problems: In fact, in a universe characterized by karma and rebirth, suicide will only result in the person being reborn into another existence in which he or she will have to suffer the negative karmic fruition of the act of suicide itself-an inherently immoral act, since it violates the most important Buddhist moral precept, which is to abstain from taking life. 2 We can see the negative judgment cast upon ordinary suicide in a famous story from the Pali Canon (of the Theravāda school) in which the Buddha teaches his monks the meditative practice known as "cultivation of the foul" (P. asubhabhāvanā), which involves contemplating rotting corpses in the charnel ground in order to foster detachment with regard to one's own body. The monks, however, soon become so disgusted with their bodies that they begin killing themselves and each other en masse-clearly not what the Buddha intended. He quickly puts a stop to the situation (replacing "cultivation of the foul" with a focus upon the breath) and makes abetment to suicide an offense entailing expulsion from the Sangha-the most serious category of monastic offense. 3 Although there are some examples in early Buddhist literature of monks who commit suicide and are not condemned for doing so,

In India, the practice of self-immolation by fire as a form of protest has developed to the extent that it now appears to be standard practice in the political realm. Though its present form is new, relying on the presence of the media, self-immolation is also part of a wider cultural heritage related to sacrifice. I will first explore the latter, and highlight the logic behind self-sacrifice and sacrifice, and their interrelations as parallel, complementary or conflicting paths, by basing my reflection on widely known myths. 1 I will then compare this material with modern practices in order to address the question at the origin of this special issue of Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines as to whether self-immolation is of a religious or political nature?