On 10 June 1963, U.S. press based in Saigon were informed that ‘something important’ would happen the following morning on the road outside the Cambodian embassy in Saigon. They were unsettled times, so that in itself was certainly nothing unusual. But what followed created an emotional shock wave that was felt on a global scale.
The morning after the announcement, a handful of journalists turned up at the Cambodian Embassy. In due course, a procession appeared. It was led by a black sedan and followed by 350 monks and nuns marching in two phalanxes. The monks and nuns were carrying banners. They had come in protest.
Once all the protestors had congregated silently, three monks emerged from the car. The first monk to emerge placed a cushion on the road. The second monk took a five-gallon petrol can from the trunk of the car. While the third monk emerged from the vehicle and made use of the cushion. Using it to calmly and silently assume the lotus position. He continued to sit quietly as the monk holding the petrol can emptied the contents over his head. The sitting monk then gently thumbed his wooden prayer beads one last time, uttered a few words under his breath, struck a match, and dropped it on himself.
After about 10 minutes, the body toppled onto its back, still in the lotus position. Once the heat had subsided enough to get close, a group of monks covered the corpse-shaped charcoal with yellow robes, picked him up and struggled to fit him into the coffin. Then they left.
The journalist who had shown up from The New York Times said, “Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shrivelling up, his head charring and blackening. In the air was the smell of burning human flesh. ‘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 complete composure was a sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.”
The monk’s name was Thích Quảng Đức, and he was protesting the incumbent Vietnamese government’s treatment of Buddhists… through the act of self-immolation.
As well as creating questions about our true ability to endure pain. Acts of extreme pain and endurance like this reverberate within our collective imagination. Photographs of the self-immolation made headline news in the world press. They created a seldom-seen sense of collective speechlessness across the Western world.
When JFK was shown the picture of Thích burning on the cover of a newspaper, his first response was reportedly “Jesus Christ“. He later said of the image, “No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one’’.
The Pulitzer award-winning photograph of Quảng Đức’s death became an icon. And has since been reproduced and referenced millions of times on merchandise, in films, television programs, and music album covers.
After about 10 minutes, the body toppled onto its back, still in the lotus position. Once the heat had subsided enough to get close, a group of monks covered the corpse-shaped charcoal with yellow robes, picked him up and struggled to fit him into the coffin. Then they left.
The journalist who had shown up from The New York Times said, “Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shrivelling up, his head charring and blackening. In the air was the smell of burning human flesh. ‘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 complete composure was a sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.”
The monk’s name was Thích Quảng Đức, and he was protesting the incumbent Vietnamese government’s treatment of Buddhists… through the act of self-immolation.
As well as creating questions about our true ability to endure pain. Acts of extreme pain and endurance like this reverberate within our collective imagination. Photographs of the self-immolation made headline news in the world press. They created a seldom-seen sense of collective speechlessness across the Western world.
When JFK was shown the picture of Thích burning on the cover of a newspaper, his first response was reportedly “Jesus Christ“. He later said of the image, “No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one’’.
The Pulitzer award-winning photograph of Quảng Đức’s death became an icon. And has since been reproduced and referenced millions of times on merchandise, in films, television programs, and music album covers.
Ultimately Quảng Đức’s self-immolation also had the desired effect. It was subsequently observed to have been a turning point in the Vietnamese Buddhist crisis; and a critical point in the collapse of the brutal South Vietnamese regime.
To my mind, sitting quietly while every cell in your body turns to charcoal seems like an impossible feat. You are, of course, free to disagree, but before you do, try holding the tip of your finger in a small flame for 10 seconds with firm composure.
As far as I know, it is somewhat of a mystery as to how a human can sit through the burning of their entire body in noble and composed silence. At the very least, it poses some interesting questions.
It’s highly unlikely that Thích had a true genetic insensitivity to pain. As far as we know, he was a perfectly healthy 65-year-old monk. And most sufferers of congenital hypoalgesia don’t live much past their mid 20’s. It also doesn’t seem likely that he was insane, having been a long-standing and much-beloved member of the Buddhist community in Saigon. It is, of course, possible that he had a dissociative relationship with pain on account of early life trauma. Although millions of people have that going on, how many could endure what he endured in complete stillness and silence?
So if he didn’t have the resume of someone with a genetic defect or simple pain insensitivity due to trauma, is it possible that he had cultivated his superhuman tolerance to pain through some level of practice?
A clue to the truth may be the countless other recorded instances of self-immolation. Because, in reality, the world needn’t have been so shocked by these events. Self-immolation is a practice that has been undertaken by literally thousands of people in the modern era alone. Almost all of them have been Buddhist and Hindu monks. And thus being vastly more experienced in the meditative arts than the average punter.
These facts may point to this level of possible pain mastery being something cultivated at an extremely high level. Potentially via ‘ experiential learning’ like martial artists and soldiers do, potentially via deep meditation practice. But more than likely, a lot of both. Which, if it is the case, implies that we may be able to experience pain but not be ‘bound’ by it.
At the core of Buddhist teaching is the concept of surrender. And the notion that our suffering is not caused by what happens to us so much as by our resistance to life’s struggles.
If Thích Quảng Đức was flexing this muscle, we could assume that he felt every last little bit of his body being burned to a crisp. But that he surrendered so deeply that the suffering was in no way similar to what we would experience.
The circumstantial evidence surrounding the phenomena of self-immolation may point to the possibility of the dream being a possible reality. ‘The dream’ is freedom from pain without the horrendous health impacts of living in a body that doesn’t register physical damage.
Somewhere deep down, we all want to be free of pain, preferably by us not having any. But most of us will face scary pain at some point. Wouldn’t it be beautiful to be able to greet that without fear?
Quietly composed self-immolation heavily implies freedom from the struggle and suffering that come with pain. And that’s exactly what the gesture means in Buddhist monking circles.
The attention self-immolation grabs arises from our deep sense of the hold pain has over each of us. This feeling about pain as something that constrains us – something that holds us back – something that scares us – something that makes life worse, not better. But it may just be our resistance to pain that causes problems rather than the fact of pain itself.
There is something within us that sees pains hold over us as being something limiting. So not only is there more to pain than simple nerve signals in the body – there is also more to pain than just the physical.
Maybe the value of the example is simply in what it implies –
There is a clear implication behind the history of self-immolation and of countless other similar acts of sacrifice and martyrdom – the idea that we can cultivate ourselves to a point where pain no longer has the power to control us.
Pain is a symptom. Symptoms are the feedback that the body generates when it faces problems with its delicate internal balance (homeostasis). Without symptoms like pain, thirst, nausea and fevers, it would be very difficult for us to maintain a healthy body in the same way that it would be hard to drive a car safely with no dashboard display.
John is one of those rare gentlemen who has continued to play competitive soccer well into his late 50s. He is in really good shape, which you need to be to play football at that age—good shape except for his left leg. His left leg is not in good condition at all. In fact, once you get to know his left leg a bit better, it becomes apparent that it’s miraculous that he’s able to run at all, Let alone the type of running required to play competitive soccer against younger men.
Is My Pain All In My Head? 
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!