Rage – Goddess, sing the rage of Van Tuc’s son Thich Quang Duc, murderous, doomed, that cost the Diem regime countless losses, hurling himself down to the House of Death, such a sturdy soul, a great fighter, but making his own body carrion, a feast for the dogs and birds.
Fire – Goddess, sing the fire of self immolation, that fiery end blazing its meaning for all of Heaven and Earth and the Underworld to see, scorching its message into the hearts of its witnesses, burning bright against the darkness of those times. I was a witness to those times; I was a witness to his death. Incomplete as this writing will be, this inchoate idea, a seed of insight, let it speak as a witness of his life. His death was a sign of his life, a type, a symbol, an allegory. His fiery parting from this world stood for a lifetime of blazing fury, passionate, completing necessity.
Light – Goddess, sing the light of his life, shining out against the gloom of eternity, see his life flash briefly in the darkness of space and time. Goddess, you who live immortal have shone so long, yet his life’s brevity, its furious instant, outshines your endless days. His incandescence, even so brief a flash as it was, lights up the universal emptiness of the ancient of days.
Glory – Goddess, sing the glory of Thich Quang Duc. His name will not be forgotten for aeons, his glorious life and sacrificial death will be sung of for millennia. Stories will be told for generations. Where will the memory of those who watched be? Who will remember their names? Their names will not be in the book of the dead, the inglorious drones of quotidian drudgery, no their names will not be written.
It’s thanks to you Goddess, your immortality, that we can comprehend our own life, our own days. The meaning of our mortality can only be seen when we hold it up against your endlessness. Thich Quang Duc shows us how to see, his short, furious, burning bright life set against your ageless existence. There is no heaven waiting for us, nowhere for earthly virtue to rewarded by an eternity of bliss. There is but an ignition, a brief flash, then nothing. A match lit and burning in the wind, struggling to burn well, but burning nonetheless.
