The Power of Peace: Lessons from the Burning Monk

Mechanical skill is not sufficient to achieve peace in the midst of self-immolation. One must practice the deepest levels of upekshya, that is, letting go of and cutting off all attachment and all causes of suffering. One must also learn strong disciplines of controlling reaction to sensation. Lastly, one must be called from within, from a spiritual source. Attempting this from a place of anger will lead to a very painful death.

In Lotus in a Sea of Fire, Thich Nhat Hanh explains that Thich Quang Duc “was over 70, that I [Nhat Hanh] had lived with him for nearly one year at Long-Vinh Pagoda and found him a very kind and lucid person, and that he was calm and in full possession of his mental faculties when he burned himself.”

Thich Nhat Hanh explained the nature of this self-immolation – the choice to do it, and the ability to do it in peace – to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in this letter:

The self-burning of Vietnamese Buddhist monks in 1963 is somehow difficult for the Western Christian conscience to understand. The Press spoke then of suicide, but in the essence, it is not. It is not even a protest. What the monks said in the letters they left before burning themselves aimed only at alarming, at moving the hearts of the oppressors and at calling the attention of the world to the suffering endured then by the Vietnamese. To burn oneself by fire is to prove that what one is saying is of the utmost importance. There is nothing more painful than burning oneself. To say something while experiencing this kind of pain is to say it with the utmost of courage, frankness, determination and sincerity. During the ceremony of ordination, as practiced in the Mahayana tradition, the monk-candidate is required to burn one, or more, small spots on his body in taking the vow to observe the 250 rules of a bhikshu, to live the life of a monk, to attain enlightenment and to devote his life to the salvation of all beings. One can, of course, say these things while sitting in a comfortable armchair; but when the words are uttered while kneeling before the community of sangha and experiencing this kind of pain, they will express all the seriousness of one’s heart and mind, and carry much greater weight.

…

Their enemies are not man. They are intolerance, fanaticism, dictatorship, cupidity, hatred and discrimination which lie within the heart of man. I also believe with all my being that the struggle for equality and freedom you lead in Birmingham, Alabama… is not aimed at the whites but only at intolerance, hatred and discrimination. These are real enemies of man — not man himself. In our unfortunate father land we are trying to yield desperately: do not kill man, even in man’s name. Please kill the real enemies of man which are present everywhere, in our very hearts and minds.

A person who is ready to engage in peaceful self-immolation and who is called to it and chooses it becomes, quite literally, a torch. This torch shines a light on suffering in the world that many people want to turn away from. John F. Kennedy himself said of this act, “No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one.”

I can say from experience that Zen meditation is not the easiest way to learn not to feel pain. Both yoga and self-hypnosis can lead to a place of say, being able to get a filling without novocaine much easier than one can do it with Zen. (I have actually had a crown done without Novocaine, using meditation alone.) Zen is the hardest way because part of Zen practice is to become acutely aware, to open up all the senses. Closing down the senses is a more yogic practice. Closing down the senses is part of advanced, not beginning, Zen practice. But the advantage is this: Once one has learned to fully open the senses, then when one closes them, one closes them very fully, as well.

Again, though, this is not a matter primarily of skill and discipline. In fact, after Quang Duc’s peaceful self-immolation, others followed suit. Other members of my Order did it peacefully, or did not do it at all. However, others, including Buddhist monks, did it in imitation, and from a place of anger, and sadly died very painful deaths.

What message does such an act send? Remember, at the time, the US was supporting an oppresive regime in South Vietnam, particularly repressive of Buddhism that was at war North Vietnamese communists who sought to bring an end to all religion in Vietnam, including Buddhism. (Thanks to Fernando Cavallo for clarification on this point in a comment below.) Many people were dying painful deaths, some burning to death. And no one was paying any attention. Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation was, spiritually, the same as a fireman running into a house to save the lives of burning people. No, he did not personaly carry anyone out of the fire. But his sacrifice of his bodily life lit the way for what became the peace movement and the eventual end of the Vietnam War. Two years later, Thich Nhat Hanh came to the US to speak out for peace. The South Vietnamese regime, supported by the US, had made writng the word “peace” illegal, so Thich Nhat Hanh was exiled and cound not return to his homeland for over 40 years. The South Vietnamese did not want him back and the North Vietnamese wanted him dead. And all he wanted was peace for all.

Mechanical skill is not sufficient to achieve peace in the midst of self-immolation. One must practice the deepest levels of upekshya, that is, letting go of and cutting off all attachment and all causes of suffering. One must also learn strong disciplines of controlling reaction to sensation. Lastly, one must be called from within, from a spiritual source. Attempting this from a place of anger will lead to a very painful death.

An expansion of these ideas:

• Mechanical skill. And advanced practitioner can learn meditations to block pain. This can make surgery without anaesthesia and without overwhelming pain possible. I did it many years ago for getting a crown without any anaesthetic. Some have done this a different way, not with meditation, but with hypnosis. One trained in this skill could not remain still while being burned alive. The skill would falter as both severe pain and death approached.
• Deepest level of upekshya. I have been experiencing severe pain that comes and goes for decades. I had a breakthrough when I examined a phrase I used, “unbearable pain” in deep shamata/vipassana (similar to Zen koan work, which I also call a life koan). I realized and fully accepted that the phrase “unbearable pain” has no meaning. The level of pain is not the issue. One’s ability to bear it – and having that ability both in ordinary consciousness and also in deep meditation – can allow one to bear any pain in stillness. I did this in relation to my illness, lying still and meditating for up to eight hours at a time through excruciating pain, until the body found a way to heal the root of the pain. Upekshya includes total commitment to clarity of mind and stillness and Love no matter what one is experiencing. I do not recommend or encourage self-immolation, but the skill to bear pain without any weakness or anger arising is a powerful tool for those who wish to live in peace in this world.
• Controlling reaction to sensation. From my experience at the dentist andmy more recent experience allowing healing to come through severe pain no matter how long it took, I can say that holding still through severe pain requires a moment-by-moment self-control at a level normally controlled by local reflexes that are operated from nerve gatherings well below the brain, some even outside the spinal cord. This requires a type of whole body self-training rarely found outside the martial arts. The difference is that, rather than being able to do this while wired to fight, we are able to do this in a deeply relaxed body.
• One trained in this skill could not remain still while being burned alive. The skill would falter as both severe pain and death approached. By this, I mean several things that people from different philosophies and religious traditions migh say in different ways. I’ll try to make them clear here.
• • Thich Quan Duc was not an angry protestor. He chose to become a torch, a light to show the horror of the war that was being kept suppressed, in darkness rather than unconsciousness, because we (those who watch modern media), particularly in the US did not want to see what we (American citizens as taxpayers) were doing. It worked. Both the (somewhat unfortunate) anti-war movement and the wonderful peace movement were, metaphorically, set on fire by this Zen Master’s act.
  • Again, the ego cannot do this. Some other Vietnamese monks and nuns tried. Some of them died in agony. Some remained in the same deep peace as Thich Quan Duc experienced. To read about this, please read Learning True Love, the autobiography of Sister Chan Khong, Thich Nhat Hanh’s closes associate.
  • In contemporary terms, thinking of a scene that might appear in a Tom Clancy or Lee Child thrller, imagine a hero being tortured. If he gives in to the pain, he will compromise a secret and allow the evildoer to do great harm to many, perhaps succeed in a terrorist attack with mass deaths. He will have the will not to reveal the secret and may even die silently and calmly after hours of torture. In contrast, an angry hero cannot do this. Love has a power anger does not have.
  • In Christian and Jewish terms, the great martyrs were able to die peacefully rather than renounce their faith. Again, an angry rebel might resist unto death, but the death would not be peaceful. And any of us falling into the error of false martyrdom, not in harmony with maitri or agape (spiritual or divine Love) will falter.

My reason for writing this is not to encourage martyrdom, even true martyrdom, nor to teach how to do it.

Rather, I encourage living and rising in mahamaitri, great spiritual Love, agape, Divine Love.

Read more from Sid.