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http://www.UrbanDharma.org
...Buddhism for Urban America
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The
Urban Dharma Newsletter...
May 27, 2003
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In
This Issue:
2. Vietnam Marks Anniversary of Monk's Self Immolation
3. The Self-Immolation of a Buddhist Monk
4. The Self-Immolation of Thich Quang Duc
5.
Temple/Center/Website- of the Week: www.QuangDuc.com
6. Book Review: No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom
for Life ...by Thich Nhat Hanh, et al
7. Peace Quote...
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2. Vietnam Marks Anniversary of Monk's
Self Immolation
http://www.abc.net.au/ra/newstories/RANewsStories_860846.htm
Vietnam
has marked the 40th anniversary of the self-immolation of Thich
Quang Duc.
The
monk's protest came to symbolise the repression of the US-backed
South Vietnamese regime against Buddhism.
The
Executive Council of the Vietnamese Buddhist Church and local
government officials in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as
Saigon, attended the memorial service at the An Quang Pagoda.
On
June 11, 1963, Duc, a 67-year-old monk from the Linh-Mu Pagoda
in Hue, burned himself to death at a busy intersection in Saigon.
3.
The Self-Immolation of a Buddhist Monk
http://www.uwec.edu/greider/BMRB/culture/student.work/hicksr/#Who%20Was%20Thich%20Quang%20Duc?
On
June 11, 1963, Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk from the Linh-Mu
Pagoda in Hue, Vietnam, burned himself to death at a busy intersection
in downtown Saigon, Vietnam.. Eye witness accounts state that
Thich Quang Duc and at least two fellow monks arrived at the
intersection by car, Thich Quang Duc got out of the car, assumed
the traditional lotus position and the accompanying monks helped
him pour gasoline over himself. He ignited the gasoline by lighting
a match and burned to death in a matter of minutes. David Halberstam,
a reporter for the New York Times covering the war in
Vietnam, gave the following account:
"I
was to see that sight again, but once was enough. Flames were
coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and
shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air
was the smell of burning human flesh; human beings burn surprisingly
quickly. Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese
who were now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused
to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think….
As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound,
his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people
around him."
Thich
Quang Duc had prepared himself for his self-immolation through
several weeks of meditation and had explained his motivation
in letters to members of his Buddhist community as well as to
the government of South Vietnam in the weeks prior to his self-immolation.
In these letters he described his desire to bring attention
to the repressive policies of the Catholic Diem regime that
controlled the South Vietnamese government at the time. Prior
to the self-immolation, the South Vietnamese Buddhists had made
the following requests to the Diem regime, asking it to:
1.
Lift its ban on flying the traditional Buddhist flag;
2.
Grant Buddhism the same rights as Catholicism;
3.
Stop detaining Buddhists;
4.
Give Buddhist monks and nuns the right to practice and spread
their religion; and
5.
Pay fair compensations to the victim’s families and
punish those responsible for their deaths.
When
these requests were not addressed by the Deim regime, Thich
Quang Duc carried out his self-immolation. Following his
death, Thich Quang Duc was cremated and legend has it
that his heart would not burn. As a result, his heart
is considered Holy and is in the custody of the Reserve Bank
of Vietnam.
While
Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation has received little
attention from religious scholars, it has been interpreted from
both a religious and political perspective. From the prevailing
point of view he has been "exclusively conceptualized as
a transhistorical, purely religious agent, virtually homologous
with his specifically religious forebears and ancestors."
Therefore, his self-immolation is seen as a "religious
suicide" and is religiously justified based on Chinese
Buddhist texts written between the fifth and tenth centuries
C.E.
On
the otherhand it has been pointed out by both Thich Nhat Hnah
and Russell McCutcheon that by contextualizing the event in
1963 Vietnam, the self-immolation can be seen as a "political
act" aimed at calling attention to the injustices being
perpetrated against the South Vietnamese people by a puppet
government of Euro-American imperialism. In this context, Thich
Nhat Hnah describes the act of self-immolation as follows:
"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…. The Vietnamese monk, by
burning himself, says with all his strength and determination
that he can endure the greatest of sufferings to protect his
people…. To express will by burning oneself, therefore,
is not to commit an act of destruction but to perform an act
of construction, that is, to suffer and to die for the sake
of one’s people. This is not suicide."
Thich
Nhat Hanh goes on to explaing why Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation
was not a suicide, which is contrary to Buddhist teachings:
"Suicide
is an act of self-destruction, having as causes the following:
(1) lack of courage to live and to cope with difficulties; (2)
defeat by life and loss of all hope; (3) desire for nonexistence…..
The monk who burns himself has lost neither courage nor hope;
nor does he desire nonexistence. On the contrary, he is very
courageous and hopeful and aspires for something good in the
future. He does not think that he is destroying himself; he
believes in the good fruition of his act of self-sacrifice for
the sake of others…. I believe with all my heart that
the monks who burned themselves did not aim at the death of
their oppressors but only at a change in their policy. Their
enemies are not man. They are intolerance, fanaticism, dictatorship,
cupidity, hatred, and discrimination which lie within the heart
of man."
The
Impact of the Self-Immolation
This
famous picture was on President Kennedy's desk that day.
As a result, Thich Quang Duc's self-immolation:
Accelerated
the spread of "engaged Buddhism" that had begun in
Vietnam in the 1930’s.
Led
to the overthrow of the Diem regime in South Vietnam in November
of 1963.
Helped
change public opinion against the American backed South Vietnamese
government and its war against the communist supported Viet
Cong.
The
social and political impact of Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation
was far reaching. It was reported in the New York Times the
next day and a copy of the fach Quang Duc in 1963 has been followed
by the self-immolation of several monks and by the continued
activism of the "rebellious monks of Hue" against
the communist government in Vietnam over the past three decades.
Who
Was Thich Quang Duc?
Thich
Quang Duc was born in 1897 and was 67 at the time of his self-immolation
in 1963. He had lived in a Buddhist monastic community since
he was seven years old and was ordained as a full Buddhist monk
or Bhikku when he was twenty. Thich Quang Duc practiced an extreme
ascetic purification way for several years, became a teacher,
and spent many years rebuilding Buddhist temples in Vietnam
prior to 1943. At the time of his death, he was a member of
the Quan the Am temple and Director of rituals for the United
Vietnamese Buddhist Congregation. Thich Quang Duc is considered
to be a bodhisattva, "an enlightened being - one on the
path to awakening who vows to forego complete enlightenment
until he or she helps all other beings attain enlightenment."
4. The Self-Immolation of Thich Quang Duc ...
Russell T. McCutcheon
http://www.buddhismtoday.com/english/vietnam/figure/003-htQuangduc.htm
------------------------------------------------------------------------
June 11, 1963, in Saigon, Vietnam, a Buddhist monk, Thich Quang
Duc immolated himself in a busy intersection. The following
is an excerpt taken from my book- "Manufacturing
Religion"-
------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195105036/wwwkusalaorg-20/
,
pp. 167-177, which discusses this incident.
Representing
Vietnamese "Self-Immolations"
The
often-occluded relations among power, imperial politics, and
the specific portrayals of religious issues is perhaps no more
apparent than in the case of the interpretations American media
and intellectuals gave to the much-publicized actions of several
Vietnamese Buddhists who, beginning in mid-June of 1963, died
by publicly setting themselves on fire. The first of these deaths
occurred at a busy downtown intersection in Saigon, on 11 June
1963, and was widely reported in American newspapers the following
day, although the New York Times, along with many other
newspapers, declined to print Malcolm Browne's famous, or rather
infamous, photograph of the lone monk burning (Moeller 1989:
404). The monk, sixty-seven-year-old Thich Quang Duc, sat at
a busy downtown intersection and had gasoline poured over him
by two fellow monks. As a large crowd of Buddhists and reporters
watched, he lit a match and, over the course of a few moments,
burned to death while he remained seated in the lotus position.
In the words of' David Halberstam, who was at that time filing
daily reports on the war with the New York Times:
"I
was to see that sight again, but once was enough. Flames were
coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and
shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air
was the smell of burning flesh; human beings burn surprisingly
quickly. Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese
who were now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused
to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think....
As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound,
his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people
around him." (1965: 211)
After
his funeral, where his remains were finally reduced to ashes,
Quang Duc's heart, which had not burned, was retrieved, enshrined,
and treated as a sacred relic (Schecter 1967: 179).
In
spite of the fact that this event took place during the same
busy news week as the civil rights movement in the United States
was reaching a peak (with the enrollment of the first two black
students at the University of Alabama and in the same week as
the murder, in Jackson, Mississippi, of the civil rightsleader
Medgar Evers), as the week progressed, Quang Duc's death and
the subsequent demonstrations associated with his funeral were
covered by the American media in greater detail. From the small
initial article on page three of the New York Times on
12 June that reported the death accompanied only by a photograph
of a nearby protest that prevented a fire truck from reaching
the scene, the story was briefly summarized and updated on page
five the next day and then was moved to the lead story, on page
one on 14 June 1963, accompanied by the following headline:
"U.S. Warns South Vietnam on Demands of Buddhists: [South
Vietnamese President] Diem is told he faces censure if he fails
to satisfy religious grievances, many o which are called just."
The story, no longer simply involving the actions of a lone
Buddhist monk but now concerned with the official U.S. reaction,
remained on page one for the following days, was reported in
greater detail by Halberstam in the Sunday edition (16 June
1963), and was mentioned for the first time in an editorial
column on 17 June 1963, one week after it occurred. By the autumn
o that year, the images of either protesting or burning monks
had appeared in a number of popular magazines, most notably
Life Magazine (June, August, September, and November
issues).
In
spite of the wide coverage this event received in newspapers
and the popular presses, it seems puzzling that it received
relatively little or no treatment by scholars of religion. Apart
from a few brief descriptions of these events in an assortment
of books on world religions in general (such as Ninian Smart's
World's Religions, where it is interpreted as an "ethical"
act [1989: 4471) or on Buddhism in Southeast Asia, only one
detailed article was published at that time, in History of
Religions, written by Jan Yiin-Hua (1965). This article
was concerned with examining the medieval Chinese Buddhist precedents
for Quang Duc's death, a death that quickly came to be interpreted
in the media as an instance of self-immolation, or selfsacrifice,
to protest religious persecution of the Buddhists in South Vietnam
by the politically and militarily powerful Vietnamese Roman
Catholics. According to such accounts, the origin of the protests
and, eventually, Quang Duc's death, was a previous demonstration,
on 8 May 1963, in which government troops aggressively broke
up a Buddhist gathering in the old imperial city of Hue that
was demonstrating for, among other things, the right to fly
the Buddhist flag along with the national flag. The government,
however, took no responsibility for the nine Buddhists who died
in the ensuing violence at that time, blaming their deaths instead
on Communists. Accordingly, outrage for what the Buddhists considered
to be the unusually violent actions of the government troops
at Hue was fueled over the following weeks, culminating, according
to this interpretation, in Quang Duc's sacrificial death.
Given
that the event was generally acknowledged by most interpreters
to be a sacrifice, an essentially religious issue, it is no
surprise that the central concern of Jan was to determine how
such actions could be considered Buddhist, given their usually
strict rules against killing in general, and suicide in particular.
In his own words, these actions "posed a serious problem
of academic interest, namely, what is the place of religious
suicide in religious history and what is its justification?"
(243). The reader is told that the monks' motivations were "spiritual"
and that their self-inflicted deaths were "religious suicides,"
because "self-immolation signifies something deeper than
merely the legal concept of suicide or the physical action of
self-destruction" (243). Given that the event is self-evidently
religious (an interpretation that is based on an assumption
that is undefended), the question of greatest interest has little
to do with the possible political origins or overtones of the
event but rather "whether such a violent action is justifiable
according to religious doctrine" (243). It seems clear
that for this historian of religions, the action can only be
properly understood-and eventually justified-once it is placed
in the context of texts written by Chinese Buddhist specialists
from the fifth century C.E. onward (e.g., the Biographies
of Eminent Monks by Hui-chiao [497-554 C.E.] and the Sung
Collection of Biographies of Eminent Monks by Tsan-ning
[919-1001 C.E.]). Jan's concern, then, is to determine whether
these actions were justifiable (something not properly the concern
of scholars of religion) exclusively on the basis of devotee
accounts, some of which were written over one thousand years
before the Vietnam War.
After
a survey of these texts, the article concludes that these actions
are indeed justifiable. Basing his argument on changing Chinese
Buddhist interpretations of self-inflicted suffering and death,
Jan finds a "more concrete emphasis upon the practical
action needed to actualize the spiritual aim" (265). Accordingly,
these actions largely result from the desire of elite devotees,
inspired by scriptures (255), to demonstrate great acts of selflessness
(acts whose paradigms are to be found in stories of the unbounded
compassion and mercy of assorted bodhisattvas). The closest
Jan comes to offering a political interpretation of any of these
reported deaths is that the "politico-religious reasons"
for some scriptural instances of self-immolation are "protest
against the political oppression and persecution of their religion"
(252).
In
terms of the dominance of the discourse on sui generis religion,
this article constitutes a fine example of how an interpretive
framework can effectively manage and control an event. Relying
exclusively on authoritative Chinese Buddhist texts and, through
the use of these texts, interpreting such acts exclusively in
terms of doctrines and beliefs (e.g., self-immolation, much
like an extreme renunciant might abstain from food until dying,
could be an example of disdain for the body in favor of the
life of the mind and wisdom) rather than in terms of their socio-political
and historical context, the article allows its readers to interpret
these deaths as acts that refer only to a distinct set of beliefs
that happen to be foreign to the non-Buddhist. And when politics
is acknowledged to be a factor, it is portrayed as essentially
oppressive to a self-evidently pure realm of religious motivation
and action. In other words, religion is the victim of politics,
because the former is a priori known to be pure. And precisely
because the action and belief systems were foreign and exotic
to the vast majority of Americans, these actions needed to be
mediated by trained textual specialists who could utilize the
authoritative texts of elite devotees to interpret such actions.
The message of such an article, then, is that this act on the
part of a monk can be fully understood only if it is placed
within the context of ancient Buddhist documents and precedents
rather than in the context of contemporary geopolitical debates.
(And further, that the ancient occurrences of such deaths can
themselves be fully understood only from the point of view of
the intellectual devotees [i.e., Buddhist historians].) That
the changing geopolitical landscape of South Asia in the early
1960s might assist in this interpretation is not entertained.
It is but another instance of the general proscription against
reductionism.
Such
an idealist and conservative interpretation is also offered
by several contributors to the Encyclopedia of Religion.
Marilyn Harran, writing the article on suicide (Eliade 1987:
vol. 14, 125-131), agrees with Jan's emphasis on the need to
interpret these events in light of doctrine and in the light
of spiritual elites. She writes that although religiously motivated
suicide (an ill-defined category that prejudges the act) "may
be appropriate for the person who is an arhat, one who
has attained enlightenment, it is still very much the exception
to the rule" (129). And Carl-Martin Edsman, writing the
article on fire (Eliade 1987: vol. 5, 340-346), maintains that
although death by fire can be associated with "moral, devotional,
or political reasons," it can also be "regarded as
promoting rebirth into a higher existence as a bodhisattva,
an incipient Buddha, or admittance to 'the paradise' of the
Buddha Amitabha" (344). In a fashion similar to the exclusive
emphasis on the insider's perspective, and having isolated such
acts in the purer realm of religious doctrine and belief, Edsman
immediately goes on to assert that the "Buddhist suicides
in Vietnam in the 1960s were enacted against a similar background;
for this reason-unlike the suicides of their Western imitators-they
do not constitute purely political protest actions" (344).
The "similar background" of which he writes is the
set of beliefs in a pure land, compassion, selflessness, and
so on, all of which enable Edsman to isolate the Vietnamese
deaths from issues of power and politics. Because similar deaths
in the United States took place' without the benefit of, for
example, a cyclical worldview and notions of rebirth, and the
like, he is able to conclude that the U.S. deaths by fire may
have been political. For Edsman, the doctrinal system of Buddhism
provides a useful mechanism for interpreting these acts as essentially
ahistorical and religious.
Some
will no doubt argue that, if indeed the discourse on sui generis
religion was at one time dominant, it no longer is. Even if
one at least acknowledges that the study of supposedly disembodied
ideas and beliefs is interconnected with material issues or
power and privilege, it is easy to banish and isolate such involvements
to the field's prehistory, its European, colonial past, in an
attempt to protect the contemporary field from such charges
(recall Strenski's attempt to isolate interwar European scholarship
as a means of protecting the modern profession). To rebut such
isolationist arguments, one need look no further than Charles
Orzech's 1994 article, "Provoked Suicide," to find
this discourse in its contemporary forma form virtually unchanged
since jan's article was published some thirty years ago. Like
Jan, Orzech attempts to overcome the "huge cultural gulf
that separated the observer from those involved" (155)
by placing Quang Duc’s tradition of what Orzech terms
the "self-immolation paradigms" (149) as well as the
many other stories of selfless action one finds throughout the
mythic history of Buddhism (e.g., from the jataka tales, the
story of the bodhisattva who willingly gives up his life to
feed the hungry tigress). Also like Jan, Orzech is concerned
to answer one of the questions often asked about these apparently
puzzling Vietnamese Buddhists' actions: "whether 'religious
suicide' was not a violation of Buddhist precepts condemning
violence" (145). Using Rene Girard's theory of sacrificial
violence, Orzech answers this question by recovering a distinction
he believes to be often lost in the study of Buddhism: its sacred
violence as well as its much emphasized nonviolent aspect (for
a modern example of the latter emphasis, see the essays collected
by Kraft [1992]).
For
our purpose, what is most important to observe about both Jan's
and Orzech's reading of Quang Duc's action is that in neither
case are historical and political context of any relevance.
In both cases, it is as if the burning monk is situated in an
almost Eliadean ritual time, removed from the terrors of historical,
linear time-a place of no place, where the symbolism of fire
is far more profound than the heat of the fire itself. For example,
in his interpretation of the early selfimmolation tales, Orzech
explicitly acknowledges that "(al)though little context
information is available to us, it is clear that in each
case the sacrifice is performed as a remedy for an intolerable
situation" (154, emphasis added)--clearly, social and political
contexts are of little relevance for authoritatively interpreting
timeless ritual or religious actions. Several lines later, when
he addresses Quang Duc's death directly, Orzech effectively
secludes and packages this particular event within its insider,
doctrinal, and mythic context, by noting that the "politics
are complex, and I will not comment on them now" (154).
At no point in his article does he return in any detail to the
geopolitics of mid-twentieth-century Vietnam; instead, Quang
Duc's actions are exclusively understood as "sanctioned
by myth and example in Buddhist history" and as reworked,
reenacted Vedic sacrificial patterns (156). Assuming that mythic
history communicated through elite insider documents provides
the necessary context for ultimately interpreting such actions,
Orzech is able to draw a conclusion concerning the actor's motivations
and intentions: "Quang Duc was seeking to preach the
Dharma to enlighten both Diem and his followers and John Kennedy
and the American people" (156); "As an actualization
of mythic patterns of sacrifice it [the self-immolation] was
meant as a creative, constructive and salvific act, an act which
intended to remake the world for the better of everyone in it"
(158). Simply put, Quang Duc's death is an issue of soteriology.
In
both Jan's and Orzech's readings, as well as those of Harran
and Edsman cited earlier, the death of Quang Duc has nothing
necessarily to do with contemporary politics. In fact, it appears
from the scholarship examined here that to understand this death
fully requires no information from outside of elite Buddhist
doctrine whatsoever. In all four cases-much as in the case of
the comparative religion textbooks examined earlier-the discourse
on sui generis religion effectively operates to seclude so-called
religious events within a mythic, symbolic world all their own,
where their adequate interpretation needs "little contextual
information." For example, in all these studies, Quang
Duc is never identified as a citizen of South Vietnam but is
understood only as a Buddhist monk, a choice of designation
that already suggests the discursive conflict I have documented.
In other words, from the outset, the parameters of the interpretive
frame of reference are narrowly restricted. Quang Duc is hardly
a man acting in a complex sociopolitical world, in which intentions,
implications, and interpretations often fly past each other.
Instead, he is exclusively conceptualized as a transhistorical,
purely religious agent, virtually homologous with his specifically
religious forebears and ancestors. It is almost as if Thich
Quang Duc--the historical agent who died on 11 June 1963, by
setting himself on fire at a busy downtown intersection in Saigon--has,
through the strategies deployed by scholars of sui generis religion,
been transformed into a hierophany that is of scholarly interest
only insomuch as his actions can be understood as historical
instances of timeless origin and meaning.
However,
it is just as conceivable that for other scholars, the death
of Thich Quang Duc constitutes not simply "spiritually
inspired engagement" but a graphic example of an overtly
political act directed not simply against politically
dominant Roman Catholics in his country but also at the American-sponsored
government of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. This
alternative framework, one that recognizes the power implicit
in efforts to represent human actions, is best captured by Catherine
Lutz and Jane Collins:
Coming
to political consciousness through the period of the Vietnam
War, we were acutely aware of the power of photographic images
to evoke both ethnocentric recoil and agonizing identification.
Malcolm Browne's famous photo of a Buddhist monk's self-immolation
in Saigon was profoundly disturbing to Western viewers, who
could not fathom the communicative intent of such an act. (1993:
4)
According
to Paul Siegel, this event constituted an act of protest against
the Vietnamese government "which was carrying on a war
of which they [the Buddhists] were profoundly weary" (1986:
162). The distance between these two readings is great indeed.
On the one hand, one finds representations varying from the
Diem government's own press release that, according to the New
York Times, maintained that the event was an example of
"extremist and truth-concealing propaganda that sowed doubt
about the goodwill of the Government" (12 June 1963), to
the Times' and Orzech's (1994: 154) portrayal of the
protest as being against the specifically religious persecution
of the Buddhists by the powerful Roman Catholics. On the other
hand, however, one can question the relations between the presence
of Christianity in South Vietnam and European political, cultural,
military, and economic imperialism in the first place as well
as question the relations between Diem's government and his
U.S. economic and military backers. To concentrate only on the
specifically religious nature and origins of this protest, then,
serves either to ignore or, in the least, to minimalize a number
of material and social factors evident from other points of
view using other scales of analysis.
Concerning
the links between Christianity and European imperialism in Southeast
Asia, it should be clear that much is at stake depending on
how one portrays the associations among European cultures, politics,
religion, and the ever increasing search for new trading markets.
For example, one can obscure the issue by simply discussing
an almost generic "encounter with the West," where
"the West" stands in place of essentially religious
systems, such as Judaism and Christianity (for an example, see
Eller 1992). Or one can place these belief and practice systems
within their historical, social, and political contexts-a move
that admittedly complicates but also improves one's analysis.
For instance, in practice, the presence of Christianity was
often indistinguishable from European culture and trade. This
point is made by Thich Nhat Hanh, in his attempt to communicate
the significance of Quang Duc's death for his American readers.
Much of his small book, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire
(1967), is concerned with contextualizing this event by placing
it not simply in a religious but also in its wider historical,
social, and political framework. Accordingly, of great importance
for him is not simply to identify elements of Buddhist doctrine
for his reader but to clarify early on that, since its first
appearance in Vietnam in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
Roman Catholicism has always been "closely associated with
white explorers, with merchants, and ruling classes"-specifically
with the explorers, traders, and cultural and political elites
of France between the years 1860 and 1945 (1967: 15). Whether
intentional or not, the exportation of Christianity throughout
the world brought with it new people, new architecture, new
languages, new legal and ethical systems, new styles of dress,
new economic arrangements, new trading goods, and so on, all
based on the standards of large, powerful, and distant European
countries. Because of these interrelated issues, it is inaccurate
and misleading to understand Christian missionaries exclusively
in terms of what may very well have been their good intentions.
Such missionaries were part of a complex and interrelated system
or bloc of power relations, all of which presupposed that the
other was in desperate need of European-style education, economies,
technologies, trade, wisdom, and, ultimately, salvation. To
understand missionaries as somehow removed from this system
of power would be to inscribe and protect them by means of the
sui generis strategy. Without the benefit of such a protective
strategy, however, it is easily understood how, at least in
the case of Vietnam, the popular belief arose that Christianity
was the religion of the West and "was introduced by them
to facilitate their conquest of Vietnam." As Thich Nhat
goes on to conclude, this belief "is a political fact of
the greatest importance, even though [it] may be based on suspicion
alone" (20).
It
is completely understandable, therefore, that Thich Nhat takes
issue with circumscribing these provocative actions that took
place in Vietnam in the early 1960s as essentially sacrificial,
suicidal, and religious. In his words:
"I
wouldn't want to describe these acts as suicide or even as sacrifice.
Maybe they [i.e., the actors themselves] didn't think of it
as a sacrifice. Maybe they did. They may have thought of their
act as a very natural thing to do, like breathing. The problem
[however,] is to understand the situation and the context in
which they acted." (Berrigan and Thich Nhat Hanh 1975:
61)
The
context of which Thich Nhat writes is not simply the context
of mythic self-immolation paradigms so important to other scholars
but the context of Vietnamese meeting Euro-American history
over the past several centuries. Emphasizing this context, Thich
Nhat's remarks make it plain that insomuch as sui generis religion
plays a powerful role in dehistoricizing and decontextualizing
human events, the very label by which we commonly distinguish
just these deaths from countless others that took place during
the Vietnam War-for example, "religious suicide"--is
itself implicated in the aestheticization and depoliticization
of human actions. What is perhaps most astounding about Thich
Nhat's comments is that, despite the discourse on sui generis
religion's tendency to limit scholarship to the terms set by
religious insiders (recall Cantwell Smith's methodological rule),
Thich Nhat-most obviously himself an insider to Vietnamese Buddhism-is
the only scholar surveyed in this chapter whose remarks take
into account the utter complexity of human action as well
as the many scales of analysis on which participants and nonparticipants
describe, interpret, understand, and explain these actions.
That
the death of Quang Duc had a powerful influence on the events
of 1963 in South Vietnam is not in need of debate. It has been
reported that Browne's photograph of Quang Duc burning, which
ran in the Philadelphia Inquirer on 12 June 1963, was
on President Kennedy's desk the next morning (Moeller 1989:
355). And virtually all commentators acknowledge that the imminent
fall of the Diem government was in many ways linked to the Buddhist
protests and their popular support among the South Vietnamese.
In the least, most commentators would agree that the deaths
had what they might term unforeseen or indirect political implications.
The question to be asked, however, is just what is at stake
for secluding politics to the margins of these otherwise self-evidently
religious events.
As
should be evident, depending on how one portrays this historical
event, one thing that is at stake is whether it could be construed
as having possible causes or direct implications for American
political and military involvement in the escalating war or
whether, as many commentators seem to assume, it was: (1) a
localized Vietnamese issue, Of (2) an essentially religious
nature, which (3), due in large part to the Diem government's
mishandling of the protest and its unwillingness to reach a
compromise with the Buddhists, only eventually grew from a local
religious incident into an international political issue. The
event is thereby domesticated and managed. As the children's
literary critic Herbert Kohl has convincingly demonstrated,
in the case of the surprisingly homogeneous and depoliticized
school textbook representations of the events surrounding the
19551956 Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, the story is truncated,
presented completely out of context, and portrayed as the single
act of a person who was tired and angry. intelligent and passionate
opposition to racism is simply not part of the story. [In fact,
often] there is no mention of racism at all. Instead the problem
is unfairness, a more generic and softer form of abuse that
avoids dealing with the fact that the great majority of White
people in Montgomery were racist and capable of being violent
and cruel to maintain segregation. Thus [in the dominant textbook
account of this event] we have an adequate picture of neither
the courage of Rosa Parks nor the intelligence and resolve of
the African American community in the face of racism. (1995:
35)
The
very act of representation, in both the cases of the Buddhist
death and the bus boycott, acts to defuse what might otherwise
be understood as the tremendous sociopolitical power of the
events and acts in question. In the case of the self-immolations,
the image of the monk burning has by now become so decontextualized
that it has been commodified; it is now a consumer item in popular
culture. For example, the photograph appears on the cover of
a compact disk for the alternative rock music group Rage Against
the Machine.
Although
both the example of the Montgomery bus boycott and the Vietnamese
deaths arise from dramatically different historical and social
contexts, both actions are clearly part of an oppositional discourse
that is today communicated to us through, and therefore managed
by, the means of dominant discourses school textbooks in one
case, and as a mechanism for selling both scholarly privilege
and expertise as well as a Sony Music product in another. Therefore,
it should not be surprising that, in both cases, we find strategies
that effectively package these actions in a decontextualized
and delimited fashion. It is in this precise manner that the
strategies of representation that constitute the discourse on
sui generis religion are complicit with such larger issues of
cultural, economic, and political power and privilege. One way
to support this thesis further would be to examine carefully
media, government, and scholarly interpretations of other specific
historical episodes and demonstrate the ways in which it may
have been economically, socially, or politically beneficial
for a specifiable group to portray events as essentially and
exclusively religious rather than, say, political or military.
The example of what was widely termed the self-immolation-a
term that from the outset does much to isolate the event as
being exclusively concerned with issues of religious sacrifice--of
Vietnamese Buddhists is a particularly useful example, because
it seems that there was, and may yet be, a great deal at stake,
economically, politically, and militarily, in the interpretation
and representation of these events.
Another
example well worth study would be the interpretations given
to the practice of suttee or, the practice of a woman following
her deceased husband to his funeral pyre, for only within an
interpretive system founded on sui generis religion and which
privileges the insider's account could such a practice evade
contemporary feminist analysis. As van den Bosch has recently
argued, the "question whether the custom [of suttee] should
be regarded as religious depends upon the definition of religion
within this context" (1990: 193 n. 76). In other words,
one of the primary differences between the frameworks that represent
this practice as, on the one hand, an example of pious female
religious duty that embodies lofty motives (as suggested by
Tikku 1967: 108) and, on the other, an instance of institutionalized
misogyny is primarily the assumption of the autonomy of religious
life from social and, in this case, specifically gendered ideology
(van den Bosch 1990: 185). As already suggested, the deaths
of the Buddhists could be seen as a statement either against
American-backed imperialism and war or simply against the localized
persecution of one religious group by another, all depending
on the scale of the analysis. If the former, then the repercussions
of the event strike deeply not only in Vietnam but in the United
States as well. If only the latter, then the problem is isolated,
it remains in Saigon, and it is up to the decision makers in
Washington simply to distance themselves from Diem's mishandling
of the episode. Washington's decisions are then based on reasons
varying from declining public opinion in the United States,
once the images reach the popular media, to the realization
that in fact Diem did not represent the majority of South Vietnamese
and therefore was the wrong leader to back in the war against
the North (this is the dominant theme of the Times editorial
on 17 June 1963). Clearly, there are practical and political
advantages and disadvantages depending on which of the two above
intellectual interpretations is favored.
Furthermore,
it is intriguing that there exists a general correspondence
between the interpretations offered in the New York Times
and those offered by scholars of religion. Although differing
in many ways, it appears that both are part of a complex system
of power and control, specializing in the deployment of interpretive
strategies-the politics of representation.
5. www.QuangDuc.com
http://www.quangduc.net/menu2.html
Quang
Duc Homepage... Letter from the Editor
Now
days, the development of computer technology, especially through
that of the World Wide Web, internet communication and the Super
Information Highway, we are al connected through individual
computers in a new kind of electronic society. This activity
has been effective in strengthening al fields of human endeavor
and it has created new ways of social organization in which
Buddhism cannot avoid being involved. This electronic communications
revolution is a natural progression that must be embraced by
Buddhism. Buddhism is a religion, which always adapted to new
discoveries and social changes, and through modern technological
science, and has used new media to communicate the Buddha’s
teachings into the world.
In
this spirit, besides constructing the Quang Duc Monastery, (a
Vietnamese Buddhist and cultural centre in the City of Moreland,
Melbourne Australia ), our Monastery establish the www.quangduc.com
website in May 1999, the aim being to assist everyone to
have an easily accessible means to study Buddhism. It is hoped
that through the teachings available on this website that all
will gain insight into Buddhism and themselves towards relieving
their suffering and in promoting greater harmony everywhere.
This website is bilingual being published in both Vietnamese
and English and was created and maintained by the Venerable
Thich Nguyen Tang, the Vice Abbot of the Quang Duc monastery.
On
the www.quangduc.com site you can find:
·
The Biography of The Most Venerable Thich Quang Duc.
· The
life of Lord Buddha & His Teachings
·
Buddhism throughout the world, news & events on the establishing
and developing of Buddhism on the five continents. especially
Buddhism in Vietnam
· Buddhist
scriptures
· Buddhist
concepts toward our lives
· Buddhist
tales
· Famous
Buddhist People
· The
Meaning of being a Vegetarian
· Buddhism
& women
·
Buddhist philosophy
·
Buddhist psychology
· Buddhist
sociology
·
Death and rebirth
·
Writing about the Buddha's birthday
·
Writing about the Parent's celebration
·
Writing about the Buddhist lunar New Year
·
Buddhist temples in Australia
·
Buddhist Poetry & Poets
·
Buddhist painting & Art
At
the moment this website is still under development, and will
be constantly updated as a matter of course, there are many
things to do. We would appreciate any help that you may provide,
particularly that of practical skills such as word processing
and layout of both Vietnamese and English documents that can
be posted on the site. Parents may assist in encouraging their
children to contribute to the site and positively effect the
promotion of Buddhism, to establish a moral and ethical foundation
in their lives. This life is impermanent, everything will rapidly
change and all things seemingly constant will fade away, nothing
will be retained forever. However, positive and negative Karma
(the positive and negative actions you have performed in this
and past lives) will remain with you. Negative Karma will cause
suffering and turmoil in life, and positive Karma will provide
you with peace and happiness. Performing good actions benefits
all and oneself as a happy disposition is a healthy one, and
this is communicated to others. Taking time to perform useful
actions in the world is most important, all actions resonates
across the world and affection and peace need to be cultivated
within and without. All of us are the world, we do not live
in isolation, it is imperative then that we act in improving
and reflect this in our lives. When we are happy so is the world
and vice versa. Helping to bear the load and dealing with difficulty
in a positive manner can only improve things not the contrary.
Thinking of other is thinking of ourselves in the long run while
being selfish and acting entirely in ones own self interest
without a thought for others splits and divides us form the
common good. The fruit of peace happens and glory will bloom
after you initiate this deep and profound vow of action.
We
appreciate any contributions, support and assistance you can
provide for the benefit of all beings. We hope our web page
will serve as a good friend of you personally and all others
in the realization of enlightenment in this busy life. Contact
with us in regards to anything you may be able to contribute
may be made by email quangduc@quangduc.com, by phone:
(61) 03 93573544, fax: (61) 03 93573600.
May
the Lord Buddha bless all of you and may all of you attain peace
and happiness.
Yours
in Dharma,
Venerable
Thich Tam Phuong,
Abbot
of the Quang Duc Monastery
6. No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life
...by Thich Nhat Hanh, et al
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1573222216/wwwkusalaorg-20/
Amazon.com
Thich
Nhat Hanh always invites us to look deeply, and he does so once
again in No Death, No Fear. Recognizing interconnections,
Nhat Hanh brings us to beginnings, how they depend on endings,
and how they are but temporary manifestations. Everything endures,
he says, but in different forms. And this isn't just a palliative
to make us feel better for a while--Nhat Hanh's philosophy of
Interbeing takes the long view, challenging us to open our eyes
to subtle transformations. He shows how extraordinary things
happen when we are fully present with others and at peace with
ourselves, both of which require openness and deep looking.
In his bestselling style of easy prose, compelling anecdotes,
and pragmatic advice, Nhat Hanh gradually drains the force out
of grief and fear, transforming them into happiness and insightful
living. Death doesn't have to be a roadblock, and in 'No Death,
No Fear' Thich Nhat Hanh shows us the way around. --Brian Bruya
Amazon.com-
Reviewer: G. Merritt from Boulder, CO... Perhaps because
I read this book shortly after the sudden, unexpected death
of someone close to me, and after Thich Nhat Hanh's recent "day
of mindfulness" here in Boulder, it touched me more deeply
than any of Thay's previous books. In NO DEATH, NO FEAR, Thich
Nhat Hanh succeeds once again at reducing a complex subject
into a simple Buddhist teaching. Many of us would rather avoid
the troubling subject of death. Thay observes that this is because
we are afraid we will become nothing when we die. If we believe
we cease to exist when we die, he says we are not looking deeply
enough into death.
Death
teaches us valuable lessons about impermanence and the interconnectedness
(or "interbeing") of all things. In his characteristic
style, the Vietnamese monk uses metaphors and simple illustrations
to reveal that our human life is just a temporary manifestation,
much like a wave on the ocean or a signal transformed into a
song on the radio. By looking deeply into the everyday world
in which we are interconnected with everything else, we may
experience life without the fear of death.
7. Peace Quote...
When
men talk about defense, they always claim to be protecting women
and children, but they never ask the women and children what
they think. -- Pat Schroeder, American politician and feminist
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