Thích Quang Duc and the Violence of Spirituality

I knew the picture as the front cover of Rage Against the Machine’s first album years before I knew the story. A monk sits in the classic legs-crossed meditation pose half-consumed by flames while a busy street of fellow Buddhists look on at him.

Thích Quang Duc was a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk. A day before his self-immolation, in 1963, journalists were tipped off with the location and told to come see an important event but weren’t told what would happen. On the day, Thích arrived by car with two other monks. He sat on the road while one doused him in petrol and lit him on fire. Not as many showed up that day as was hoped but Malcom Browne’s photograph — which won him a Pulitzer Prize — meant the image of the burning monk was seen around the world.

This was not a one-off event in ’60s Vietnam. Some would later burn themselves in protest of American occupation, others — like Thích — did so in protest of prime minister Ngô Đình Diệm’s persecution of Buddhists, who despite making up the majority of the Vietnamese population came to be dominated by Diệm’s ‘Catholic minority’.

But it’s not the picture I want to write about, or the politics of Vietnam. Actually, this is another one of those thought-pieces about meditation, mindfulness, finding zen in daily life, that the internet is full of. But as well as…