Burning Monk - The Self-Immolation

Burning Monk - The Self-Immolation June 11, 1963 Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk from the Linh-Mu Pagoda in Hue, Vietnam, burned himself to death at a busy intersection in downtown Saigon, Vietnam.. Eye witness accounts state that Thich Quang Duc and at least two fellow monks arrived at the intersection by car, Thich Quang Duc got out of the car, assumed the traditional lotus position and the accompanying monks helped him pour gasoline over himself. He ignited the gasoline by lighting a match and burned to death in a matter of minutes. David Halberstam, a reporter for the New York Times covering the war in Vietnam, gave the following account: I was to see that sight again, but once was enough. Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning human flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly. Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think…. As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.

A Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc, from the Linh-Mu Pagoda in Hue, Vietnam, set himself on fire in downtown Saigon, on June 11, 1963. Thich Quang Duc's self-immolation did not receive much attention from religious scholars, because apparently the act was "exclusively conceptualized as a trans historical, purely religious agent, virtually homologous with his specifically religious forebears and ancestors." So now it is know as "religious suicide" and can be justified by Chinese Buddhist texts written between the fifth and tenth centuries C.E.

Thich Quang Duc was born in 1897 he was 67 when he set himself ablaze in 1963. From the time he we seven years old he lived in a Buddhist monastic community. Quang Duc was ordained as a full Buddhist monk or Bhikku by the time he was twenty. Thich Quang Duc had practiced extreme ascetic purification for several years, he became was a teacher, and spent many years rebuilding Buddhist temples in Vietnam prior to 1943. He was a member of the Quan the Am temple and Director of rituals for the United Vietnamese Buddhist Congregation. Thich Quang Duc is now considered to be a bodhisattva, "an enlightened being - one on the path to awakening who vows to forgo complete enlightenment until he or she helps all other beings attain enlightenment."

Thich Quang Duc's self-immolation has accelerated the spread of "engaged Buddhism" which had already begun in Vietnam in the 1930's. This of course led to the overthrow of the Diem regime in South Vietnam in November of 1963, and helped to change the public opinion of the American backed South Vietnamese government and its war against the communist supported Viet Cong.

The social and political impact of Thich Quang Duc's self-immolation has been far reaching. It was reported in the New York Times News paper the day after the immolation. A copy of Quang Duc's document, written in 1963, encouraged the self-immolation of several monks and by the continued activism of the "rebellious monks of Hue" against the communist government in Vietnam for more than three decades.

It has been considered by both Thich Nhat Hnah and Russell McCutcheon that when contextualizing the event in 1963 Vietnam, the self-immolation is seen as a "political act" with the purpose of calling attention to many injustices being perpetrated against the South Vietnamese people by the government of Euro-American imperialism. Thich Nhat Hnah goes on to speak about this particular act of self-immolation as follows: The press spoke then of suicide, but in the essence, it is not. It is not even a protest. What the monks said in the letters they left before burning themselves aimed only at alarming, at moving the hearts of the oppressors, and at calling the attention of the world to the suffering endured then by the Vietnamese. To burn oneself by fire is to prove that what one is saying is of the utmost importance…. The Vietnamese monk, by burning himself, says with all his strength and determination that he can endure the greatest of sufferings to protect his people…. To express will by burning oneself, therefore, is not to commit an act of destruction but to perform an act of construction, that is, to suffer and to die for the sake of one's people. This is not suicide.

Quang Duc

Thich Quang Duc was the first of the Buddhist martyrs in the Vietnamese-American war, and he is still the most revered. In fact, most people in the West are not even aware that many others followed his example and self-immolated in protest at the senselessness of that long and damaging war. Thich Quang Duc was a humble country monk who had been resident for sometime at an unremarkable temple in the suburbs of Ho Chi Minh City. His incredible act of self-sacrifice, which caused shockwaves throughout the world, elevated him instantly to that realm of extraordinary religious figures willing to die for what they believe in. He is known today in Vietnam as a Bodhisattva, i..e. a being who renounces enlightenment in order to help and serve suffering humanity.
The spot on the corner of CMT8 and Nguyen Dinh Chieu, where he poured petrol over his body and set himself alight while reciting the Buddhist sutras, has had a monument to the monk for many years.
I visited it this morning to pay my respects to this great and brave man.
The government is building a much more elaborate monument and memorial park just across the street, and it should be quite beautiful when it's finished. I will miss the simple old one, though - in keeping, as it is, with Buddhist notions of humility.