Thich Quang Duc (Photo credit: HopeTom)
I saw this caption, ‘I hate fire’ embedded in a picture on a blog I visited recently and I thought, why not quickly pen this down before returning to my Nanowrimo novel.
Yes, I hate fire and it was actually strange and saddening that some people could light themselves up in protest against oppression! Don’t get me wrong guys, I am not against people demonstrating, albeit, peacefully, but burning yourself? That is a bit in the extreme.
A few months ago, I saw the picture of a Tibetan monk literally lighting himself up! He was protesting against oppression and when I did a little research, I found out the story of Thich Quang Duc, a very popular Buddhist monk revered to this day.
Early in the morning on June 11,1963 at a popular intersection in Saigon, Thich Quang Duc had made his intention known to his superiors that he was going to burn himself to draw attention to the plight of the monks who were being severely oppressed by the US-backed Catholic regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam.
Now I won’t bore you with the graphic details but this Duc guy died for a cause he believed in, and I can’t begin to imagine the excruciating pain he must have felt when he was being burned alive! And so… he died!
The war finally came to an end and many people attested to the fact that his sacrifice was instrumental in drawing the attention of the world to the plight of the monks, and also in a way ending the war.
I don’t encourage anyone emulating that in any way, but that is just my opinion!
Life is a mystery and we can’t understand it all…
Seyi Sandra David 
To set fire to ones self you have to be either mad, fanatical or have a belief that is beyond the imagination of 99.99% of the human population. Whichever is the case it saddens me whenever I hear of people taking there own lives.
Life is precious, we should hang on to it with all our might and learn to fight another day.
My opinion exactly, although sometimes, it might be an act of desperation that would drive people to such extremes but whatever the case, it’s a tragedy of the human race that such channel must be taken before people wake up to the harsh realities of life. And as I rightly pointed out in the post, the world we live in is quite mysterious! Thanks for your comment Mike!