For those of us of a certain age, we may not know his name, but we know what he did on this day.
Thich is a title, an honorific, used by all Vietnamese monks and nuns, meaning that they are part of the Shakya (Shakyamuni Buddha) clan. Today most associate it with another Buddhist Monk, Thich Nhat Hanh.
There is video of what happened this day in 1963 at a busy crossroads in Saigon. I will neither embed nor link to it.
On this day Thich Quang Duc sat quietly as a fellow monk poured gasoline over him, as a crowd held back by a ring of Buddhist clergy, and although there were police present, they could not intervene He set himself on fire and sat calmly as he was immolated. If you see the video, you will see one policeman, himself a Buddhist, prostrate himself before the fireball that was consuming Thich Quang Duc.
Later his body was re-cremated, but his heart remained intact. To devout Buddhists this was a sign that he was a bodhisattva, an enlightened being who remains to help others reach enlightenment. This by itself represented a huge threat to the Diem regime then governing South Vietnam. The President - himself a Catholic in a predominantly Buddhist nation - promised reforms, but they were slow in coming and unrest began to spread. It accelerated when special forces under his brother (who headed the secret police) raided pagodas and seized the sacred heart. It also did not help when the president's sister in law, the infamous Madame Nhu (commonly referred to as the Dragon Lady) called what he did was that "they have barbecued one of their monks." The raid led to other self-immolations, and eventually the coup in December that overthrew the regime and killed President, his brother and his sister-in-law.
There is a larger lesson.
Most here know that I am now a Quaker. Another Quaker, a generation older than am I, named Norman Morrison, decided in 1965 to emulate Thich Quang Duc. He went to the Pentagon parking lot with his daughter Emily, whom he passed on to others before dousing himself with gasoline and setting himself on fire. It was November 2. Many people know about Morrison.
Yet his was not the first act in the US in sympathy with Thich Quang Duc. In Detroit, on March 16, 1865, Alice Herz, a pacifist in her 80s, set herself on fire in protest of the killing in Vietnam. A passerby intervened and put out the fire, but she died of her injuries within two weeks.
Nor was Morrison the last. 7 days later 22 year old Roger Allen LaPorte set himself on fire in front of the Dag Hammarskjold Library at the United Nations in New York, dying the next day of 2nd and 3rd degree burns. A former seminarian, he was a participant in the Catholic Worker Movement, which was led at the time by one of America's greatest saints, Dorothy Day.
In 1965 I was not a Quaker. I did not hear of Alice Herz in real time. I did of Norman Morrison, because by November I was a Marine, stationed at Quantico, less than a hour South of the Pentagon. I read about it the Washington papers, and there was some quiet discussion in our barracks. Some quiet discussion, but also some comments not unlike those of Madame Nhu towards Thich Quang Duc.
For many, what these people did was inconceivable. To me it is not. Do not we honor, often with our highest decorations for valor, those who in combat give up their lives to save their compatriots, perhaps throwing themselves on a grenade, or to use an example contemporaneous with these, calling down airstrikes upon his own position to stop a Viet Cong advance. Carpenter, a West Point grad, had been an All-American as Army's "Lonely End" who never came into the huddle, but received the play by foot signals.
We honor those who risk their lives to save others. It is why we honor firemen in general, it is part of the horror of September 11, 2001 when we lost so many, including Father Michael Judge.
It is why we honor those like the teacher at Columbine, the professor at Virginia Tech, the coach at the Olympic Village in Munich in 1972, who give up their lives on behalf of others.
Some find themselves called to give up their lives as a means of attempting to stop greater death. We may not acknowledge it in the same way, perhaps because it makes us uncomfortable. After all, this is a nation that in the late 1950s was largely not embarrassed by the idea that one might "kill a Commie for Christ" as some labeled the thrust of the Moral Rearmament, a movement of some appeal in more conservative Christian circles.
Yet Christianity has always honored those who were martyred for their faith. That martyrdom could be simply as a result of refusing to deny their Christianity even under torture. In Russian Orthodoxy there is great honoring of the princes and brothers Boris and Gleb who refused to use force to defend themselves against the killers who came after them, in part because it might have risked the lives of others, but also because they took seriously a biblical injunction to resist not evil. We might not agree, but within mainstream Christian thinking such actions are not incomprehensible.
Herz had been a pacifist and an activist. She made clear that she had tried all the conventional methods - marching, protesting, writing articles, letters.
Morrison had studied theology. but firmly believed that he had to act, a position his wife later supported, telling people that we had to stop killing people.
Thich Quang Duc called upon his president to offer compassion, acting as he did to protect Buddhism against the repression it was undergoing at the hands of the regime. While he burned, he never flinched.
We are horrified by the image of suicide bombers. We try to understand why they would blow themselves up, even as sometimes there are prerecorded video statements. Somehow because these suicides involve killing others, we find no nobility in it, even as we simultaneously might well honor an American soldier who does something similar to protect his fellows, as we honored Bill Carpenter for the risks he took in calling in that air strike.
Taking risks that cause death or injury to immediately save others we grasp, we honor.
In theory we also honor those who lead lives of diminished economic possibility in service to others. They might be clergy of various kinds - remember the idea that the parsonage is a poorhouse? They could be teachers, or social workers. We honor them with the occasional words, yet somehow often do not honor by our other actions.
What of those who feel called upon to sacrifice themselves in the hope of stopping something much more horrible, that they can perhaps foresee even if we do not? That's harder.
We might question why one still takes to the streets, after all, protests are so old, and if the media does not cover them, what difference does it make?
A person who as an act of integrity risks one's vocation or career might be challenged by others: what difference does your action make?
And yet, as a teacher, I cannot help but remember the words of Henry Adams in his famous The Education of Henry Adams, to wit: A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell, where his influence stops. Today I am very mindful of this as I go through the final projects of my students this year. Some of the things I have said or done have made deep impressions upon the students, perhaps the most powerful one being when I shared clips of "Race to Nowhere" and we had a very deep discussion. I know that whatever I say or do has an impact, even for those students who may strongly dislike me or disagree with me.
So I return to Thich Quang Duc, to Alice Herz, to Norman Morrison, to Roger Allen LaPorte. What could motivate someone to publicly set themselves on fire? What was different about America that we as a nation were not moved the way the Buddhists of South Vietnam were moved?
Obviously there are clear cultural differences. One of major importance is our willingness to glorify violence. It is not just that we honor our military. Think of our approach to sports, especially football, but also what we see in hockey, even in basketball.
There are clear differences in religious influence.
Yet at least in principle we accept the idea of self-sacrifice.
Some might say I am not a good Quaker. After all, I supported the intervention to stop the imminent slaughter of people in Benghazi by forces under the control of the dictator of Libya. It was an evil, but at that moment it was to me a lesser evil.
I made a decision a long time ago that while I might choose not to use force or violence to save my own life depending upon the circumstances, I would not hesitate to use both to protect the lives of the children entrusted to my care in my classroom.
Still, I reflect, I challenge my own thinking.
I am still uncomfortable remembering Thich Quang Duc and the other Buddhist monks of Vietnam. I am certainly uncomfortable with the memories of the Americans, and as a Quaker, most uncomfortable as I wrestle with what Norman Morrison did.
Yet there is something honorable in being willing to offer up one's life for others. After all, there are the clear words of Jesus in the Gospel of John, that there is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. For some that term "friends" is narrow, and requires direct knowledge. For others, even if we might not agree with all of their reasoning, it is in part because that term is all-encompassing, including as much of humanity as is possible.
I can imagine persons today who might act similarly to shock our conscience about the destruction not only of war, but of economic tyranny, and most especially of the perhaps irreversible destruction being done to the environment of our planet, in part by greed and selfishness, in part by ignorance.
Is such an act selfish? Some might say so. I do not not.
I am 65. In 1963, when that first self-immolation took place, I had just turned 17. I would in less than 2 weeks graduate from high school. I did not fully comprehend the impact it had in its own nation, but the words in response by Madame Nhu did shock me with their insensitivity, their callousness. In November of 1965 I was 19 and in the Marines. I was bothered not only by the action of Norman Morrison, but by the words I heard from fellow Marines, even as today i can understand that sometimes we deal with things that make us uncomfortable in ways that may seem callous or uncaring.
There are videos. You will not have difficulty finding them. I chose not to offer them. I do not need to view yet again the image of an elderly monk sitting quietly and setting himself on fire. That image is burned in my mind.
Why reflect on this today? I wonder what actions are necessary to shock the conscience of this nation? I wonder when instead of self-immolation we might begin to see the kind of suicide that includes mass death of others? We have had those we consider unstable take steps in that direction, from a variety of perspectives.
Somehow I wish no such action, whether destructive only of oneself or destructive of others as well, were necessary to shock the conscience of a society, any society, but certainly our society.
Yet I cannot forget the impact of the deaths of Thich Quang Duc and of Norman Morrison.
So I offer these fragmented and disorganized thoughts. These words have no conclusion. Perhaps they have no point.
Yet I felt I must write something on this day, in memory of a Buddhist Monk and what he did 48 years ago, and of others moved by what he had done.
I had to reflect, even if I cannot now and may never be able to draw any kind of clear conclusion from that reflection.
It is a grain of sand which has not yet led to any pearls. It still irritates. As it should.
Peace? I wonder . . . .