On Fire

I’ve been thinking about the 1963 photograph of the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức who set himself on fire in protest of the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government. 

I had been doing research about mindfulness and meditation, and I came across this photograph as an example of mindfulness in action. This feels terrible and inaccurate to write. Setting oneself on fire as an example of mindfulness? The thing about the photograph is that if you look at the monk’s face as he sits in a blaze of flames of which he is the epicenter, he looks calm, prayerful, at peace. The reason I can’t stop thinking about it is that this image goes against everything I have learned as a person: when you are on fire, you freak out.

If something doesn’t go the way I want, I learned to have a tantrum. I learned road rage, how to give the finger to someone who snagged my parking space. I learned to act out. 

Setting myself on fire is such a final way of acting out. That is acting out in service of a vision or belief because the corporeal body that I am putting a match to will not be able to see or even enjoy the fruits of my labor. 

COVID taught me that when you are on lock-down, you go numb. You overeat, overspend, overworry. You rage on Twitter at others who don’t get vaccinated, don’t wear masks. You hate. You keep your distance. I have noticed that children give me wide berth when I am out in the world. Their heads duck down when they are near me. I am danger, and they want to get past me.

John F. Kennedy said of the photograph of the monk, a photograph that won the Pulitzer, “No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as this one.” 

Beauty and rage are complicated and intertwined. I have been thinking about rage recently, because it seems to me that so many people who come to me for help with their writing skirt their rage and so they end up writing things that are not the point because the point, to the writer, feels too sharp, too dangerous, too alienating. 

I can’t assume to know what emotions led Thích Quảng Đứcn to believe self-immolation was the best course of action, but, to me, a man on fire at his own hand in an illustration of rage and heartbreak and a wildly radical response to helplessness. 

Last night I asked Siri what year it was. I have a deep sense of confusion as to what it means to be a person in the world. The rules changed. Roe v. Wade looks like it’s headed for the tanker. Christmas is coming but it’s unclear if gathering in groups is really a good idea. Well, it’s not that unclear. Wishful thinking says that it’s okay to gather in groups while the news tells us the virus is morphing. 

What is worth burning for? A woman’s right to make decisions about her own body? A belief that all people are equal and deserve equal rights? A belief that our planet is worth fighting for, worth saving? A belief that no one should go to bed hungry unless by their own hand? 

It’s easier to get cold, I think, than to burn. You risk offending fewer people, making a spectacle of yourself. You risk looking like a fool, like someone who cares too much, like someone who just needs to take a chill pill and relax.

What happens when you let yourself burn? What things would you say that are, as of this moment, frozen inside, killing you from the inside out?

What happens when you don’t?