In
October 2013 Denise and I visited the Thien Mu Pagoda in Hue,
Vietnam.
After
walking through the orderly, peaceful temple grounds we
came upon an Austin A 95 Westminster I think it was, set into a recess. The
plaque stated that this was the car that had taken the venerable
Thich Quang Duc to a crossroads in central Saigon in 1963. The holy
monk had then sacrificed his life by self immolation for the Buddhist
cause which was at the time threatened by harsh government discrimination and persecution. The Diem government, initially supported by the US,
were pro Catholic and anti Buddhist, despite Buddhism being practised
by 86.5% of the population. The Catholic Archbishop of Hue was the
brother of President Diem. The de facto First Lady Madame Nhu was the
sister in law of the President, she was also Catholic and described
by US Defense Secretary MacNamara as 'bright, forceful and beautiful, but also diabolical and scheming - a true sorceress'.
I
wrote this poem in awe of the holy monk's sacrifice, and also in awe
of Madame Nhu. The place where Quang Duc died is now commemorated by
the Vietnamese Government. His heart did not burn – refer
information below the poem - despite repeated attempts to turn it to
ash, and it was stolen by Diem government forces in a raid on the Xa Loi Pagoda. Some
biblical allusion is used in the poem, in fact Madame Nhu used the
Judas analogy to bitterly denounce the USA's support of the
assassination of Diem and his brother, Nhu her husband in 1963.
Madness
On the eleventh day of June nineteen
sixty three
the holiest of monks Thich Quang Duc
sat
in a lotus position at a Saigon
crossroads
and struck the match which exploded his
being,
all that he had, into flame. The
passion
of the fire was immense as it consumed
his gasoline doused body, becoming
sated in five minutes. But the fire
within,
the Samadhi fire, which guided his
vision
towards the Buddha of Infinite Light
was the greater. The holy monk uttered
no sound.
There was no sound but the chanting and
sobbing
of the Buddhist monks and nuns. In the
gardens
of his soul perhaps he heard a bright
bird
softly singing its freedom, perhaps
there was
the sweetest tinkling of a bell in his
own tiered pagoda where the symmetry
of order in structure and grounds and
surrounds,
the essential balance, was settling,
becoming restored.
His sacred heart, fired within fire,
remains forever.
Madame Nhu, the First Lady, applauded
and called for more Buddhist barbecues.
She was mad? Did this betray her
compassion?
Sometimes madness must be kissed by
madness.
Before
closing my eyes and moving towards the vision of the Buddha, I
respectfully plead to President Ngo
Dinh Diem to
take a mind of compassion towards the people of the nation and
implement religious equality to maintain the strength of the homeland
eternally. I call the venerables, reverends, members of
the sangha and
the lay Buddhists to organise in solidarity to make sacrifices to
protect Buddhism.[6]
In
the evening of the 16th of June, a young monk came back from the
crematory to report that the heart did not burn. We – the leaders
at the time – instruct him to continue the cremation process for
another 6 hours. The next morning the same young monk returned to Xa
Loi temple with the brownish harder-than-rock heart of Quang Duc
Bodhisattva, with tear on his solemn face. He reported that not only
6 hours but they tried for 10 more hours, and the heart was still
intact. In my mind, I thought maybe the heart was made up of
musculatory tissue which could be harder to burn – so much anatomy
that I knew.”
“But
then four days later, another reverend master in the Tharavada
tradition passed away, I witnessed his cremation, and there was
nothing left but ash particles. It was only then that I remembered
the joking question I asked Thich Quang Duc, and his serious promise
to leave his heart behind, on the day he offered to sacrifice himself
for protesting the persecution of Buddhists by the then-government
regime. And this is the explanation I came up with for myself: While
HT Quang Duc meditated when the fire started, he had used the Samadhi
fire (v. Lửa Tam Muội) – the undaunted inner-strength fire –
to consume his own heart – so that ordinary fire cannot burn his
already-turned-to-quartz heart. This Samadhi fire converts the heart
of Bodhisattva Quang Duc into Indestructible Diamond.”
