Thích Quảng Đức

Malcolm Browne's photo of Quảng Đức's self-immolation on June 11, 1963

Thích Quảng Đức (* 1897 as Lâm Văn Túc in Hội Khánh , in the Vạn Ninh district of Khánh Hòa province ; † June 11, 1963 in Saigon ) was a Vietnamese monk who set himself on fire on June 11, 1963 in Saigon, so to protest against the oppression of the Buddhist majority in Vietnam.

Life

Thích Quảng Đức was born in a small village in the central Vietnamese Khánh Hòa Province . Its original name was Lam Van Tuc.

At the age of seven he became a student of the Zen master Hoang Tham. When he was twenty years old, he became a Buddhist monk . After being ordained a monk , he retired to the Ninh Hòa Mountains near the city of Nha Trang for some years for spiritual purification . There he performed extremely demanding ascetic cleansing rituals in isolation.

In 1932 he became a Buddhist teacher in Ninh Hòa . Afterwards he was responsible for rebuilding temples in parts of central Vietnam. In 1943 he moved to Saigon in South Vietnam to live in a temple there.

Course of self-immolation

During the Buddhist crisis , which had been going on for weeks at the time , the government under President Ngô Đình Diệm had their demonstrations suppressed and participants arrested. The present journalist David Halberstam , reporter for the New York Times , described the monk as completely composed:

Thích-Quảng-Gedc Memorial

“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. "

“I was supposed to see that sight again, but once was enough. Flames rose from a man; his body withered and shrank slowly, his head blackened and charred. The smell of burning human flesh was in the air; People burn amazingly quickly. Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese, who now came together. I was too shaken to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, even too dismayed to even think ... While he burned, he didn't move a single muscle or make a sound and train through it his visible composure a sharp contrast to the plaintive people around him. "

- Translation of David Halberstam's statement

The monk's heart remained intact from the flames and is considered a sanctuary.

Others

Thích Quảng Đứcs Austin A95

• The Thích Quảng Đứcs monastery was located at the gates of Huếs in central Vietnam. The sky-blue Austin , in which he drove to Saigon to burn himself, can still be seen there along with the photo showing his self-immolation and in the background of which the car can be seen.

• An image of the self-immolation captured by photographer Malcolm W. Browne was voted Press Photo of 1963.

• Madame Nhu , the “unofficial first lady” and sister-in-law of the Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm , had only contemptuous words for the self-immolation of Buddhist monks. She cynically referred to these files as a "monk's barbecue," where she would have liked to bring mustard.

• The American band Rage Against the Machine later used the picture for the cover of their first album Rage Against the Machine and the first single, Killing in the Name .

literature

• Hammer, Ellen Joy: A Death in November: America in Vietnam . Oxford University Press, 1987. ISBN 0-525-24210-4

Web links

Commons : Thich Quang Duc  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Solveig Grothe: Colored black and white photos Suddenly the world is a little more colorful . one day on Spiegel Online , July 14, 2016. Especially pictures 21 and 22 of the photo series "Post-colored pictures: What the photographer really saw (probably)"

• Thích Quảng Đứcs Monastery (Vietnamese, English)
• The Self-Immolation of Thich Quang Duc . Discussion of Thích Quảng Đức's self-immolation and its consequences on Buddhism Today, July 1, 2000, accessed on July 14, 2016

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Page Tiểu sử Bồ tát Thích Quảng Đức (German: biography of Bodhisattva Thich Quang Duc ) of the Buddhist Quang Duc monastery. Retrieved March 11, 2018.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} page About Us of the Buddhist Quang Duc monastery; Section The Most Venerable Thich Quang Duc . Retrieved March 11, 2018.
3. ^ David Halberstam: The Making of a Quagmire . Random House, New York, 1965, LCCN  65-011258 ; Bodley Head, London, 1965, p. 211. German edition: Vietnam or Will the jungle be defoliated? Rowohlt, Reinbek b. Hamburg, 1965, DNB 451778219 .
4. ↑ Hammer, EJ, 1963: p. 146: "They found [another monk's] heart untouched just as the Saigon faithful found the heart of Thich Quang Duc in 1963."
5. ↑ Archive.org-Memento of the page with a picture of the heart (homepage of the monastery named after Thich Quang Duc). Last available version April 12, 2013. Accessed March 11, 2018.
6. ↑ Malcolm W. Browne: World Press Photo 1963: Saigon, Vietnam Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc sets himself ablaze to protest the South Vietnamese government's. World Press Photo Foundation, accessed June 17, 2016 . 
7. ^ Robert Templer: Madame Nhu obituary . In: The Guardian . April 26, 2011, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed March 13, 2019]). See also: Wikipedia article on Madame Nhu, section The "Buddhist Crisis" .