釋氏要覽 2.137

2.137

十住斷結經云。佛言。過去無數劫。有一大國。名裴扇闍。有一女人名提謂。夫喪守寡。家富無子。有婆羅門謂曰。今身之厄。由汝前世罪故。若不修福滅罪。後墮地獄。悔無所及。提謂問作何福得罪滅耶。婆羅門曰。莫非積薪自燒身。提謂依教積薪次。有一道人。名鉢底婆（漢言辯才）問曰。辦具薪火。而欲何為女人答曰。欲自燒身滅罪。辯才告曰。先身罪業。隨逐精神。不與身合。徒自燒身。安能滅罪。何於苦惱求善報耶。於理不通。譬如牛厭車。欲使車壞。前車若壞。續得後車。假使燒壞百千萬身。罪業因緣。相續不滅○勸人捨身者。律犯波羅夷罪。

The Sūtra on the Ten Stages and the Severing of Fetters says: The Buddha said, 'Countless kalpas ago, in the past, there was a great country named Pei-shan-zhe. There was a woman named Tiwei, a widow whose husband had died; her household was rich, but she had no son. A brāhmaṇa said to her, "The distress of your present life is due to the sins of your past lives. If you do not cultivate merit to extinguish your sins, you will later fall into hell, and repentance will be of no avail." Tiwei asked, "What merit may I make so that my sins are extinguished?" The brāhmaṇa said, "Nothing is better than piling up firewood and burning your own body." As Tiwei was piling up firewood according to his teaching, there was a man of the Way named Pratibhāna (translated into Chinese as Eloquence), who asked, "Having prepared firewood and fire, what do you wish to do?" The woman replied, "I wish to burn my own body to extinguish my sins." Pratibhāna said to her, "The sinful karma of past lives follows one's consciousness; it is not joined with the physical body. In vain do you burn your own body—how could that extinguish sin? Why seek a good retribution through suffering and affliction? This makes no sense. It is like an ox weary of its cart and wishing to break it; if the former cart breaks, it just gets the next cart. Even if you burn and destroy hundreds, thousands, or tens of millions of bodies, the causes and conditions of sinful karma will continue unbroken without perishing."' Encouraging someone to abandon the body constitutes a pārājika offence according to the vinaya.