Thang Nguyen 555

1963 June 11. Police was trying to prevent us from pouring onto the intersection, then, Le v Duyet & Phan D Phung. The circle of chanting monks had formed when we got there acting upon a rumor that a monk would burn himself in protest against regime’s religious oppression.

Bang. On our quickest feet to cover the few blocks. Tension and resistance had built-up for weeks against Diem’s regime’s repressive policy and policing. Protests against the ban of displaying Buddhist flags had flared up culminating on Buddha birthday. Protesters passed around lemon wedges and nylon bags for self-protection against tear-gas.

To get a line of sight, I squeezed through at the five o’ clock vantage point, right in front of what used to be the Cambodian Embassy. A jerry-can was half- emptied laid next to the older monk, who sat motionless in the middle of the intersection. A younger monk (mumbling chants) turned and walked away diagonally across from me. Must be the pourer (my mom, a Buddhist, used to mumble chants while trying to slain a chicken. Buddhists, by practice, tried not to harm living things when avoidable).

I did not see how the combustion of gasoline-soaked cloth started, or if the monk himself flipped a concealed Zippo (popular during war time).

The photographer must have snapped those photos – later sent via AP/UPI around the world- from his 2-o-clock position. Winds fanned the flame sideway and upward (luckily not toward the gas station in front of Collette, an all-girls lycée).

The entire self-immolation last roughly 12 eternally long minutes before his body felt sideways, his bright orange cloak turned black. The stench of burned flesh and fuel engulfed us.

A few days later, I was in line at Xa-Loi Pagoda to view his charred remains – encased in glass, very similar to my viewing the Moon rock 6 years later in my city.

The monk, his existence and resistance, his death and his remains. All spoke volumes to me at a young age. I was so transfixed. I had to blink many times to make sure it was real, whatever it was I saw that day.

I know then and now: someone, somewhere always stands up (in this case, by sitting still) for a cause. Causes that advance the human race: whether it is by discovering penicillins, or by having her hands cuffed for climate change. Or by coming up with an AI app for medical check-ups.

We need disruptors, builders and inventors. We need to fight for what makes us more not less, for what we could become.

The monk sat motionless, but his cause rolls on. It’s in my memory bank but I am not content to be mere memory-keeper. I’d rather brew it into energy and action, in my own way, my own time. Why would we want anything less from life?

For the monk, it was a can and a cause, conviction over cronyism.. I saw that fleeting flame flapping in protest – his flag of fire – while others obeyed with folded flags. And I shed tears of shame as I recall the incident, and for how life gently passes us all like that wind in June.