When I first saw Malcolm Browne’s picture of Thich Quang Duc, I honestly felt sadness and anger, just thinking about how someone would have to burn themselves for their message to be heard.

Read more: Who Is the Sacrifice For?

I had never even heard the term self-immolation before. Scrimer points out that immolation originally just meant sacrifice, and it only got tied to fire after 1963. The word comes from the Latin immolare, which describes sprinkling sacred meal on an animal before it’s offered, so in a way it already has an altar in it.

This made me think of the Bible, and the story of Cain and Abel. Abel brought the firstborn of his flock, the best of what he had, while Cain brought fruit of the ground, and God accepted Abel’s offering. To me that story is less about trading for a blessing and more about giving God your best.

Yang’s “Still Burning” shows that Duc’s act worked in a different way though. She traces early Buddhist self-burning back to the Lotus Sutra and to dāna, which is the virtue of giving everything away, even your own life. The bodhisattva gives up their own enlightenment in order to help others. So Duc did give his best, but not to God and not to receive something for himself. He gave himself for his people while they were being persecuted under Diem.

Yang calls this act a hybrid, religiously grounded but politically motivated, and I agree with her. Duc wasn’t even the first to burn himself in protest. Back in 574 AD, a monk named Tao-chi did it to protest an emperor persecuting Buddhists. What was new about Duc was who he was speaking to: the whole world watching, with banners in English and a reporter the monks tipped off the night before. When a regime refuses to listen to its people, it unfortunately makes them feel like this is their last resort.

This is where sacrifice stopped feeling so distant to me. Most sacrifice isn’t dramatic. I think of it as skipping dinner so there’s enough for breakfast, or a parent not eating so their kids can. That kind of sacrifice comes from scarcity, not really from free choice. The hunger strikers in The Strike made a similar sacrifice. They refused food so it could become their protest, because it was one of the few things they were actually able to control. So when powerless people sacrifice, a lot of the time it’s because the system left them nothing else to give.

I’m glad the Ministers’ Vietnam Committee understood how big this was. Their New York Times ad used the photo of Duc fully engulfed, and the message was basically, he gave his life, so can you give something too? Yang argues that images of the dead ask “what now,” since the moment has already passed. The ad’s answer was a donation, which is a small, everyday kind of sacrifice. I don’t think that cheapens what Duc did. I think it shows the burden shouldn’t fall on one person’s body. If enough people give a little, through organizing or documenting or even just showing up, nobody would have to give everything.

It says something painful about a system when sacrifice is the only thing that gets attention, and honestly I still hear about it today. We don’t need more people to become martyrs just to be heard.

So I want to ask, is sacrifice ever really a choice when you’re powerless?