Thay¹, beloved bodhisattva²,
Teach me the way of your steadfast, adamantine³ heart
How to discard the self-preservation instinct like an outworn robe
In favor of compassion wrought in saffron-bright flame
The vessels left behind, burned yet unconsumed
One, a photograph of your moment of decision
The other, a relic of your enduring compassion

image: remains of Thich Quang Duc’s heart, displayed as a relic; a powerful symbol
of Thay’s unyielding compassion less-well-known in the West than photographs of his death

CW: image of self-immolation below the fold

Read more: Adamantine Images

I (1970 – ) am here⁴ because you (c. 1897-11 June 1963) were there. My root teacher⁵ is Surya Das (1950 – ). He was once a college student named Jeffrey Miller. His girlfriend, Allison Krause (1951 – 4 May 1970), was killed at Kent State protesting the Vietnam War’s expansion into Cambodia. “Flowers are better than bullets,” she said on May 3rd, catching a lilac discarded from a rifle barrel. Not knowing then that she would soon die by the bullet and that those words would be her epitaph.

After May 4th, 1970, like many of my teachers, Miller looked eastward to find answers for his experiences⁶. Were your images part of his consideration? I haven’t asked. I don’t know. Miller went to India in search of the Dharma, in order to discover why – why suffering? To learn that to live is to suffer as all mortal beings suffer: birth, illness, loss, old age (for the fortunate), and death (for us all). To learn that loving-kindness is the answer for living in the meanwhile, in that bardo⁷ of the dash between birth and death. That embodied in the dash is everything, the sublime and the ridiculous, the bitter and the sweet.

“This moment, only moment; this breath, only breath”, Lama-la⁸ taught, a moment in which we hold stillness or run, catch a blossom or a bullet, live or die, grow or wither, bear witness or turn away.

When I look at photographs of you, the one that stands out for me is not your “about to die” moment, but this: your “remaining in stillness” moment. I also wonder what compassion stirs in the heart of the bhikkuni⁹ at the right of this image. What connection burns so brightly between your heart and hers? Did the water of her tears and those of your sangha¹⁰ temper the flames and anneal the mettle of your heart? How did their support allow you to make your statement in silence and with dignity¹¹?

Viewing the image of the relic of your unconsumed, diamond-strong heart also speaks to me. Adamant: the quality that Lama Surya Das taught me to recognize. You, Thay, taught the Mahayana, the Great Vehicle way of Buddhism. To my eye and my heart, you died in the Vajrayana, the Diamond Vehicle of skillful means that transforms adverse experiences into fuel for enlightenment. This is the way Lama Surya Das teaches. The Dzogchen to your Chogchen, my current teacher, Lama Lena, taught me to say in Tibetan. It remains an object lesson that there are miraculous events writ large and small but that the only proper use of siddhis¹² is for the benefit of all beings, and that it is my karma to witness and draw meaning from events just as it was yours to act in all the moments leading up to the photographs that are your epitaph.

In conclusion, I don’t know what to say except thank you. And that, after this, I cannot rightly demur when people ask me if I’m Buddhist, can I? I don’t know what date will follow my bardo-dash or how this life will end, but I hope to spend it well, with poise and dignity, and to have done a micro-smidgeon of something for the benefit of all beings. Thank you for your teaching, Thay-la¹³.

1. “Teacher” in Vietnamese ↩︎
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhisattva ↩︎
3. diamond-like, indestructible; derived from adamant ↩︎
4. In Dharma? In college? Yes. Lama Surya Das has said that Dharma is the true higher education; I say porque no los dos? ↩︎
5. One’s root teacher is who introduces one to Dharma, especially the nature of mind ↩︎
6. My frustration at being human-teacherless until they all fucked back in after having fucked off for India, at which point I was in my 20s and already entirely too jaded to deal with human teachers is a story for another time. As is the story of how Ram Dass, one of the people whose own travels to India sparked a wave of people including Surya Das to travel to India, and I managed to avoid becoming involved in the same Florida-based cult. ↩︎
7. “Between state”. The most well-known use of the term describes the stage of life between death and rebirth. Other bardos exist including those between birth and death, and between waking and sleep. ↩︎
8. “Lama” is is a title bestowed to a realized practitioner of the Dharma in Tibetan Buddhism. “-la” is a suffix denoting affection ↩︎
9. “Nun” in Pali, the language the Shakyamuni Buddha spoke and taught in ↩︎
10. Buddhist congregation of bikkhus (monks) and bikkhunis; the term is often widened to include lay practitioners ↩︎
11. As I also learned from the hunger strike at Pelican Bay and from other protest movements, well-organized, collective action is what makes systemic changes ↩︎
12. Powers, including that of the ability to sit still while one is literally on fire and, I would add, to stand still and keep shooting when you’re a photographer called to bear witness ↩︎
13. This is not a real word ↩︎