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Poll: Chopping off a hand for religious reasons?

would you chop off a hand for spiritual/religious reasons?


  • Total voters
    33
  • Poll closed .

Eddi

Agnostic
Premium Member
Here is a link to a newspaper story about a Buddhist Monk who chopped off one of his hands for spiritual reasons. Apparently so that he'd be reincarnated as something cool after he dies:

Buddhist monk chops off his own head with a guillotine to please Buddha | Daily Mail Online

Poll: would you cut off one of your hands for spiritual reasons? For instance, to get closer to God?

For me: No. No I wouldn't. I don't believe doing so would please God.

Look at it this way: the more hands I have, the more I can please God.
 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Here is a link to a newspaper story about a Buddhist Monk who chopped off one of his hands for spiritual reasons. Apparently so that he'd be reincarnated as something cool after he dies:

Buddhist monk chops off his own head with a guillotine to please Buddha | Daily Mail Online

Poll: would you cut off one of your hands for spiritual reasons? For instance, to get closer to God?

For me: No. No I wouldn't. I don't believe doing so would please God.

Look at it this way: the more hands I have, the more I can please God.
I'd probably rather chop off my hand than my head. *yikes*

Personally I'd be partial for keeping all members intact.
 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
I think decapitating yourself to procure karmic merit is deranged. So, I voted no.
I agree. It was a pretty stupid thing to do. Not to mention I would think a precept not to harm was discounted.

It seems the guy got greedy for something better then what he had and well. If being a decapitated corpse is better...

Whatever floats the boat I suppose.
 

Secret Chief

nirvana is samsara
He misread the instructions, he was only supposed to chop off an arm.

"Legend has it that Bodhidharma initially refused to teach Huike. Huike stood in the snow outside Bodhidharma's cave all night, until the snow reached his waist. In the morning Bodhidharma asked him why he was there. Huike replied that he wanted a teacher to "open the gate of the elixir of universal compassion to liberate all beings."
Bodhidharma refused, saying, "how can you hope for true religion with little virtue, little wisdom, a shallow heart, and an arrogant mind? It would just be a waste of effort."
Finally, to prove his resolve, Huike cut off his left arm and presented it to the First Patriarch as a token of his sincerity. Bodhidharma then accepted him as a student, and changed his name from Shenguang to Huike, which means "Wisdom and Capacity." "

- Dazu Huike - Wikipedia

As referenced by @Twilight Hue it goes again the precept of killing. Personally I wouldn't chop my own head off, unless the only alternative was being made to read the Daily Mail in which case I'd happily do it with a rusty old fruit knife.
 

Thief

Rogue Theologian
and the Carpenter said....
If your hand offends you.....cut it off
If your eye offends you...gouge it out
better to enter paradise maimed
than to burn in gehenna whole

I do see this as a metaphor
it points to what you do
and how you see things
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I recall watching a special about people who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and survived. Everyone who managed to not die, all said that as they cleared the railing and were out in open space about to drop to their deaths, they instantly knew this was the biggest mistake they had ever made in their lives and wished they could take it back. Killing yourself for a spiritual gain I would think would reveal that choice to be a horrible error as well.

Maybe he just couldn't bring himself to let go of his ego the normal way to find Enlightenment? Shortcut to Nirvana? I'm pretty sure this didn't help him on that path for the next reincarnation. He'll still need to learn how to do that, without killing the body next time around if he hopes to find Awakening. :shrug:
 

Samael_Khan

Goosebender
I’m not chopping anything off. Reluctant to even get a post Lockdown haircut tbh.

Funnily enough, many people get their's or their children's foreskin chopped off for spiritual reasons. In Africa, even today, people get theirs chopped off in the bush. And they get that done as a coming of age ceremony, so like when the are 16 or older.
 

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
Oh no, I misread it :oops:

Thanks for pointing that out

That's even worse!

How would one even go about doing that!

If someone told me to cut off my own head I wouldn't know where to begin
Yes, the Lord High Executioner, Koko, in Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Mikado had a similar problem:

KoKo: I can't execute myself.

Pooh-Bah. Why not?

Ko-Ko. Why not? Because, in the first place, self decapitation is an extremely difficult, not to say dangerous, thing to attempt; and, in the second, it's suicide, and suicide is a capital offence.
 

Heyo

Veteran Member
Jim Jones, Heaven's Gate, The early Christians, 9/11 Terrorists... committing suicide for spirituality is pretty normal.
Between suicide and celibacy one would expect that religiosity would have gotten a Darwin Award already. But for every suicide there is a couple breeding like bunnies.
 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member
I think a boy at our primary school managed that (decapitated himself, or his mate did) - by the use of presumably a hydraulic scissor platform used to service street lights. He apparently had his head where it shouldn't have been when a button was pressed - to release the pressure and collapse the platform possibly. Not sure about the details - just that he had died in relation to such equipment and told to us all at assembly. Might have been a case of Nearly Headless Nick rather than fully off though. :oops:
 
Last edited:

Saint Frankenstein

Wanderer From Afar
Premium Member
Here is a link to a newspaper story about a Buddhist Monk who chopped off one of his hands for spiritual reasons. Apparently so that he'd be reincarnated as something cool after he dies:

Buddhist monk chops off his own head with a guillotine to please Buddha | Daily Mail Online

Poll: would you cut off one of your hands for spiritual reasons? For instance, to get closer to God?

For me: No. No I wouldn't. I don't believe doing so would please God.

Look at it this way: the more hands I have, the more I can please God.
No, that's insane and sick. If your religion is leading you to harm or kill yourself (or does nothing to prevent you from doing those things), either you've misunderstood the religion or the religion is batty and you should run from it.
 
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