Ngo Dinh Diem is the president,
20 Ngo Dinh Nhu the
security chief,
Ngo Dinh Can warlord of Hué province,
Ngo Dinh Luyen an ambassador,
Ngo Dinh Thuc the archbishop of Hué,
French-educated, Catholic quislings,
last oligarchs of the ancien régime
at war with the Buddhist sects, having
banned
public displays of faith—flags or
marches.
But the monks of Hué, the scholars’
city,
Vietnam’s center of Buddhist learning,
30 defied the ban on Buddha’s
birthday that
the Ngo’s had not enforced days before
on the twenty-fifth anniversary
of Dinh
Thuc’s installation as bishop.
Armored army troops attacked the
faithful—
nine killed, two children, and
fourteen wounded.
Thousands marched in outrage. The
Buddhist sects
united around a manifesto
to the government of South Vietnam
demanding punishment, compensation,
40 equal treatment for
Buddhists, Catholics.
Diem considered compromising but
Tru Le Xuan, Nhu’s grasping wife,
ridiculed
the effort and he equivocated,
signed a communiqué but then added
a note calling the Buddhist sects
“damn fools.”
See Thich Quang Duc emerge from the
Austin.
He’s 73, practiced ascetic,
a rebuilder of temples, director
of rituals, monk at Hué’s Quan The Am
50 temple and prepared in his
saffron robe,
though weak now. He’s helped to the
street crossing
where he sits in the lotus position
how he has sat his whole life, whole
career,
looking to become a bodhisattva,
volunteer for a Buddhist martyr’s
death.
His life is
his to give away today.
His fellow monks pour the pink mix of
half
gasoline half diesel fuel they tested
for the hottest, longest possible
flame
60 onto Quang Duc’s
robes and head, as he stays
silent, meditating, holding the match.
Does he think of ancient Godhika high
on Black Rock, Isigili mountain, who’d
reached release six times in
meditation
only to fall back into samsāra?
The seventh time Godhika slit his
throat.
Buddha and his monks were traveling
then
to see him, but saw a dark cloud
instead,
raging across the whole sky. “That’s
Mara
70 the Wicked,”
Buddha said, “looking to see
where Godhika’s consciousness has been
hid.
But Godhika has achieved nirvana;
his consciousness is established
nowhere.”
Quang Duc says “nan mo amita Buddha,
nan mo amita
Buddha,” repeating,
saying
“return to eternal Buddha,”
strikes the
match and drops it on his wet robe.
Flame
becomes a force around him, billows
of orange
flames, black smoke separating
80 him from his
fellow monks and gray-robed nuns
consuming
him as he maintains perfect
posture, meditating through the flames
and
into death. The flames around him,
over
him,
reaching up to twice his sitting height.
Duc’s robe,
face blackening, eyes clenched in pain,
the
sickening smell of his burning flesh
affecting
the crowd. Halberstam notes how
“human
beings burn surprisingly quickly.”
Monks block
a fire truck from responding,
90 and unfurl a
sign for the western press:
“A Buddhist
priest burns for Buddhist demands.”
Quang Duc burns for ten
minutes—forever
in Browne’s photos, shaking America.
Nothing like
this in Christianity
where
suicides were assigned, by Dante,
as bleeding
stumps to hell’s seventh circle.
But
Christendom had witnessed in the past
suicides of
faith and of defiance.
The First
Crusade in 1095 began
100 with a little
Rhineland house cleaning
rampaging
knights killing Jewish neighbors
who refused to convert. And many Jews
chose to follow the example of the
defenders of
Masada—suicide
before
apostasy or agony.
Then again
during the Black Death, blamed on
Jews by the
Christian public, crowds attacked,
razed
throughout Europe five hundred Jewish
neighborhoods. Vienna’s Rabbi Jonah
110 gathered his
people in their synagogue
where they
killed themselves before being killed.
The synagogues of Worms, Krems,
Oppenheim,
and Frankfurt did the same.
The New
World too—defiant suicides—
Indians by
the thousands in Spanish
America
killed themselves instead of
submitting
to church, state, and slavery.
Quang Duc’s
body twists forward as the flames
diminish.
His compatriots gather
120 his rigid,
sitting corpse, which cannot fit
in the
coffin they brought. As they drive past,
Browne sees
a charred arm sticking out, smoking.
Tru Le Xuan, when
she hears the news, declares
Duc’s death a barbecue and offers free
gasoline and matches to other monks.
“Let them burn!” she said, “We shall
clap our hands.”
But the Kennedy Administration
wasn’t clapping, not with such a photo
on the front page. “How could this
have happened?”
130 asks, shouts
JFK, “Who are these people?
Why didn’t we know about them before?”
Then fiery August: Thich Nguyen Huong
burns
himself alone in Phanthiet, and
next
seventeen-year-old Thich Thanh Thuc in Hué,
then a
Buddhist nun, Dieu Quang, in Ninh Hoa,
and again in
Hué, elder Thich Tieu Dieu.
The
administration shifts its support
and signals
encouragement for a coup.
Secretary of
State Rusk, when asked why
140 by Ambassador
Nolting in Saigon,
says, “We
cannot stand any more burnings.”
But they
continue with monk Thich Quang Huong
in October
near the Saigon market—
Halberstam,
others alerted again—
Quang Huong
alone pours the gas, lights the match.
Police grab,
kick the watching journalists.
A hundred
more Buddhists prepare to die.
November, the Ngo’s are
overthrown,
Diem, Nhu,
and Can assassinated
150 by
American-minded generals,
Thuc, Luyen,
and Tru Le Xuan in exile.
Three weeks later Kennedy lies dead
too.
The U.S. now takes control of the war.
And the
other war continues between
the new
South Vietnamese Government
and the
sects. The Buddhist leaders engage
in
continued social protest trying
to define a Third Way, not that of the
Viet Cong nor that of the government.
160
Self-sacrificial burnings their main strength.
“Such grisly scenes have not been
witnessed since
Christian martyrs marched hand in hand
into
Roman arenas,” Senator Frank Church.
lamented to
his Senate Committee.
Nothing like this in Christianity.
Until Alice Herz, 82 year-old
pacifist,
Quaker, Unitarian
Universalist, on March the 16th
1965, utterly alone,
170 no monks, no
nuns, no priests standing with her,
covers
herself with cleaning fluid flames
on a downtown street corner in
Detroit.
“I did it to protest the arms race all
over the world,” she told a fireman
attending to her burns in the
ambulance,
“I wanted to burn myself like the
monks
in Vietnam
did.” Her note denounced the
“use of high office by our President,
in trying to wipe out small nations.
180 I want to call
attention to this problem
by choosing
the illuminating death of a Buddhist.”
Then exactly two years after the coup
against Diem, Norman Morrison acts
out the tale
of Abraham and Isaac
outside the
Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara’s office at the
Pentagon.
Secretary of the Friends
Meeting in
Baltimore, Morrison is
32, father
of three, including
190 one-year-old
Emily whom he carries
with his
accelerant to the very
steps of the Pentagon. He puts her
down
away from where he makes his own altar
and lays
himself upon it with fire.
“Unreasonable, unconventional
act of faith” he said once teaching
the tale,
and he
wrote to his wife, “Dearest Anne, Please
don’t
condemn me … For weeks, even months,
I have been
praying only that I be
200 shown what I
must do. This morning I was shown …
At least I
shall not plan to go without
my child, as
Abraham did. Know that I
love thee but must act for the
children …”
Outside the
United Nations one week
later, Roger
LaPorte, a 22
year-old Catholic Worker sits at dawn
and sets
himself on fire. U.N guards
put out the
flames, ask him why he did this.
“I am
against war, all wars,” he explains,
210 “I did this as
a religious action.”
As he’s
treated for his critical burns
New York goes dark—it is the great
blackout
of ‘65. LaPorte dies in two days.
Now in
Vietnam Thich Quang Duc becomes
a Buddhist
hero and bodhisattva.
The car that carried him will be
enshrined,
and the
tactic of self-immolation
is
celebrated in repetition
against the
government, against the war,
220 peaking in ’66
and ’67.
In May ’66
four young women burn
themselves to death and three more
burn in June.
A year later Nhat Chi Mai prepares a
poetry
banner that proclaims her wish:
“Kneeling down with my lotus-shaped
hands
I ask Virgin Mary and Bodhisattva
Avalokitesavara to help
me to have
my wish fulfilled. I offer
my body as a
torch to repel
230 darkness, to
awaken human beings,
to bring
peace to Vietnam,” before she
burns herself on Vesak, Buddha’s
birthday.
50,000 march in her funeral.
But in
America after LaPorte’s
suicide, the
Catholic Worker leaders
Dorothy Day and Tom Cornell, with
priest
Daniel Berrigan, all urge activists
not to
follow this path, question whether
self-immolation was true non-violence.
240 Their lives
aren’t theirs, but God’s to give away.
The movement
turns from this tactic, believes
there are
living sacrifices as strong
as dying
ones, remembers with regret
burning Buddhists—burning monks,
burning nuns—
burning Catholics, and burning
Quakers,
calling for peace with their flesh
through the flames.
