The Burning Monk

Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk Thíc Quang Duc sits perfectly still amidst being engulfed in flames over the protest of the Viet government's religious oppression in Saigon, 1963.

This act is called self-immolation; the act of sacrificing oneself by setting oneself on fire and burning to death. It is typically used for political or religious reasons, often a form of non-violent protest or in acts of martyrdom. It has a centuries-long recognition as the most extreme form of protest possible by humankind. (Wikipedia).

"As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him," says Photographer Malcolm Browne, who captured the scene in Saigon. 

At first, I thought 'wow.' Then it dawned on me; this monk is an actual human being with 2 eyes, 4 limbs, and 206 bones just like me. This begged the question: how did he not move a single muscle to communicate the pain? Like how? It's unimaginable.

Thanks to Google, it says that monks have trained the mind to mentally manifest itself elsewhere, without the need for physical presence. It takes years of meditative practice to achieve this extraordinary state of the human body. The monk, however, feels some sense of pain, but that pain travels only throughout his external body, wherein his mind does not acknowledge the pain.

It's like the reverse of feeling internal pain. Let's say a heartbreak; it hurts within but we control ourselves not to shed tears in front of all our friends. So here, it's an external source of pain, but the body neglects it internally and wears it like a coat of paint.

For all we know, our monk in the picture might've been walking among the clouds sipping some iced tea while at the same time, being wholly consumed by flames.

Nothing is impossible if you can tame your mind. Within all of us, there lies an immense amount of power. We only need to tap into it.