September 20, 2004

• Another Inexplicable Dream
  …and perhaps some even less explicable subsequent meanderings
  
  
  In the dream, Greyfox and I are cleaning up a big yard.  I’m 
  raking leaves and debris, and he is throwing them on a trash
  fire.  As we work, we are talking about taking “the bird”
  *somewhere*.  I get the sense that we plan to take it somewhere to
  get rid of it.

  Then a big bird, the size of a big hawk or small raven, but brown and
  without any distinguishing markings, flies into our trash fire. 
  I’m probably about fifty meters away, across the field we’re
  clearing.  I see the bird fly down, and see a continuing
  disturbance in the smoke, see cinders, ash and debris thrown into the
  air for perhaps half a minute, then it flops out of the fire and flies
  away.

  Then I woke, and as I thought of the dream I began to think about
  self-immolation, ritual suicide by fire.  I got up and googled it,
  and found a photo I remember seeing in the news forty years ago, of the
  self-immolation of Thich Quang Duc at a busy intersection in Saigon.

  

  On the same page, I found a discussion of the act of self-immolation
  that went way beyond what I had been looking for, but which engaged my
  attention and sent me looking for more.

  In terms of the dominance of the discourse on sui generis religion,
  this article [by Jan Yiin-Hua (1965)] constitutes a fine example of how
  an interpretive framework can effectively manage and control an event.
  Relying exclusively on authoritative Chinese Buddhist texts and,
  through the use of these texts, interpreting such acts exclusively in
  terms of doctrines and beliefs (e.g., self-immolation, much like an
  extreme renunciant might abstain from food until dying, could be an
  example of disdain for the body in favor of the life of the mind and
  wisdom) rather than in terms of their socio-political and historical
  context, the article allows its readers to interpret these deaths as
  acts that refer only to a distinct set of beliefs that happen to be
  foreign to the non-Buddhist. And when politics is acknowledged to be a
  factor, it is portrayed as essentially oppressive to a self-evidently
  pure realm of religious motivation and action. In other words, religion
  is the victim of politics, because the former is a priori known to be
  pure. And precisely because the action and belief systems were foreign
  and exotic to the vast majority of Americans, these actions needed to
  be mediated by trained textual specialists who could utilize the
  authoritative texts of elite devotees to interpret such actions. The
  message of such an article, then, is that this act on the part of a
  monk can be fully understood only if it is placed within the context of
  ancient Buddhist documents and precedents rather than in the context of
  contemporary geopolitical debates. (And further, that the ancient
  occurrences of such deaths can themselves be fully understood only from
  the point of view of the intellectual devotees [i.e., Buddhist
  historians].) That the changing geopolitical landscape of South Asia in
  the early 1960s might assist in this interpretation is not entertained.
  It is but another instance of the general proscription against
  reductionism.

  http://www.buddhistinformation.com/self_immolation.htm

  I’d never thought of it in that light.  Ver-ry interesting….

  …and completely diverting me from my original direction.

  Back to Google, and on to more recent events:

  About a month ago, Pebam Chittaranjan set himself on fire as a
  political protest in Manipur, India.   This news source calls it “attempted
  self-immolation” although he later died of his injuries.  I wonder
  who put him out, and whether his act was done with the transcendent
  serenity of Thich Quang Duc.  I want more information.

  Back to Google, and onto a different track altogether:

  In Afghanistan, women are setting themselves afire.  Gurcharan
  Virdee works with Medica Mondiale, a German-based international
  organization supporting women in war and crisis situations.  Her
  sister self-immolated.  She said, “Before she committed suicide,
  my sister always said she hoped she would never return to Afghanistan
  and experience the closed atmosphere of Herat.”

  A government delegation that traveled to Herat last week said at least
  52 women in the province have killed themselves in recent months
  through self-immolation.

  A Herat regional hospital last year recorded 160 cases of attempted
  suicide among girls and women between the ages of 12 and 50. But Virdee
  says the real number is probably much higher.

  “The official statistics which the hospitals have are for the women who
  have actually come to the hospital, who can receive treatment. There
  are many other cases of women burning themselves in the villages, in
  the city, in some of the provinces. But these are women we can’t give
  any estimates on, partly because they never reach the hospital or
  because they die in their villages or city. These are the cases that
  never come to the attention of any public authorities,” Virdee said.

  Afghan officials say poverty, forced marriages, and lack of access to
  education are the main reasons for suicide among women in Herat.
  Domestic violence is also widespread.

  “A lot of women are saying that their husbands don’t allow them to go
  and visit their families. There are severe restrictions on their
  movement, and also there is violence towards them — both physical and
  psychological — and intimidation and isolation,” Virdee said.

  During the five-year rule of the Taliban militia, women were not
  allowed to work or study. They could not leave their homes without a
  male escort and were forced to wear the all-encompassing burqa.

  Since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, women have once again been
  given the right to study and work. But activists say women in many
  parts of Afghanistan — including Herat, which is ruled with an iron
  fist by provincial governor and warlord Ismail Khan — still face
  repression and harassment.

  Virdee says the continued crackdown on women’s rights is contributing to the rise in self-immolation cases.

  “The institutional repression of the women’s movement is also a big
  factor because women are not allowed to go on their own in taxi cars,
  they are sort of socially policed if they are talking to other men,
  they have to be in the burqa, they have restriction on freedom to work.
  Just recently in Herat a women’s shop which was employing a lot of
  women was closed. The driving school for women was also closed,” Virdee
  said.

  The full story is here.

  Again, I wonder about the partial immolations, the motivations, and the
  preparations of those who perform these acts.  I wonder….

  This may become a two-blog day for me.  I’ve had one on hold for a
  few days, a story about child abuse here in the Susitna Valley that I’d
  like to shove in Margery Glickman’s face to show her there are more
  important things to do than criticize mushers for running their
  dogs.  But first, now that I’ve had breakfast (or half of
  it:  a muffin and half of a cup of tea that’s now gone cold) 
  I’ll get up and nuke another muffin, fill my teacup and get to
  work.  Maybe I’ll make some visible progress in that back room I’m
  trying to prepare to receive Greyfox’s knives, rocks, clothing, etc.,
  when he moves back in for the winter.  The weather is wet and
  cool.  He didn’t open his stand yesterday and he plans to come up
  the valley today and take me out for lunch as a belated birthday
  celebration.  I have to decide where to go.  Always makes me
  do the hard part….
  

  • 11:57 am
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