This past weekend Patrick, my wife Sydney, and I biked to Thien Mu Pagoda or Linh Mu (Pagoda of the Celestial Lady) on the Perfume River near the Citadel in Hue. The pagoda was founded in 1601 by Lord Nguyen Hoang, and it has since been renovated and restored many times. Thien Mu was a center of Buddhist opposition to colonialism during the French rule in the 1930s and 1940s. Rice production had been restructured by the French from small social systems and local economies to large scale rice production for export, and after the Great Depression this market collapsed, and commodity prices fell. Ho Chi Minh was writing and organizing at this time, and the pagoda was accused of harboring Communists.
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Catholic President Ngo Dinh Diem consolidated his position by subduing the militias of the various religious sects and attempting to defeat Ho Chi Minh?s VietMinh and Viet Cong. He was supported by the US and Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, who saw his efforts as opposing communism.
President Diem repressed all dissidents including Buddhists. On June 11, 1963, the Venerable Thich Quang Duc, a monk from Thien Mu, drove to Saigon with other monks in his powder-blue Austin car. As the Rough Guide says; ?There, Thich Quang Duc, a 66 year old monk from Hue, sat down in the lotus position and meditated as fellow monks doused him in petrol, and then set light to him in protest at the repression of Buddhists by President Diem ?. As flames engulfed the impassive monk and passers-by prostrated themselves before him, the cameras of the Western press corps rolled, and by the next morning the grisly event had grabbed the world?s headlines.? This immolation was witnessed by David Halberstam, who said, ?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….? The most famous photograph, by Malcolm Browne, shows the Austin in the background.
Diem was assassinated on November 2 in a coup by generals who squabbled for power for the next year, with US support.
In 1963 I was 15 years old, and in high school. It was the year of Kennedy?s assassination. I remember the pictures of either Thich Quang Duc or other monks reproduced in color in Life Magazine over several months, until there were new deaths to cover. It was difficult to understand what would drive a Buddhist monk to such a sacrifice, particularly a monk under Buddhist strictures against killing and suicide. These pictures were, for me, the beginning of the Vietnam War.