[Buddha-l] Extreme practice

[buddhisti at aol.com]

Thich Quang Duc did not self-immolated. He was doused with gasoline and set to fire, that explained why Mrs Nhu said "he was barbecued".
Watch this video,?from 10:43:48:00 to 10:43:52:00, you could see a monk dousing Thich Quang Duc with gasoline from a plastic jerrycan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IId55YArfxM&feature=related
BTW, Mr Nhu was not head of the police chief, and Mr Diem was not a dictator, he was?democratically elected, like Obama or the one in Iran.
Just want to set the record straight.
MQ

-----Original Message-----
From: Zelders.YH <zelders.yh at wxs.nl>
To: buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com
Sent: Wed, Jul 8, 2009 9:08 pm
Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] Extreme practice





Dan Lusthaus wrote:

>The most famous example of Buddhist self-immolation is the Buddhist monk in
>Viet Nam in the 60s who used that means to protest the war (actually to
>protest the N. Vietnamese Catholics and their policies that the US kept
>installing as puppet dictators). But burning of fingers, limbs, entire
>bodies is a well documented, ancient practice.

Dan must refer to the self-immolation by Thich Quang Duc in June 1963 
; an act of protest against repression of the buddhist majority of 
the population by the South Vietnamese regime of catholic dictator 
Ngo Din Diem. Actually that was only the first of several burnings of 
monks that same year, followed by monks and nuns burning themselves 
in the years thereafter.
I remember being stunned at the time by the still image shown on TV 
and a little while later by the video footage. How in the world was 
it possible that a man could do this to himself and stay so 
motionless and composed. Did we witness a demonstration of 
the  effect of life long meditation ? Lovely Madame Nhu, the wife of 
the dictator's secret police chief, appeared before the cameras and 
declared that the monk had been drugged and that he had been 
barbecued with imported gasoline

There's quite a good article on that incident on Wikipedia, with some 
historical and cultural background.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thich_Quang_Duc


And to refresh your memory see that video footage again

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjpAh4rqTv4&feature=related [

Vietnam burning monk]

By the way, in the Wikipedia article you can read that the heart of 
the monk wasn't burnt even after the final cremation of his charred 
remains and is kept somewhere as a relic. Well, who knows what that 
implies, if anything.
But let us at least try to remember him by his name :Thich Quang Duc. 
Am I the only one being sentimental here ?

Herman




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