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…