Thích Quảng Đức

**Thích Quảng Đức** (1897 – 11 June 1963) was a Vietnamese Buddhist monk. He was born in Hội Khánh, French Indochina. He committed suicide by burning himself to death while sitting in a street in Saigon. He was protesting the South Vietnam's government and Catholic president Ngô Đình Diệm's persecution of Buddhists. Pictures of him burning spread around the world, and made more people know about the Buddhist crisis.

Because of Quảng Đức's protest, Diệm said that he was going to change how the government acted towards Buddhists. However, Diệm did not, so Buddhists kept protesting. The ARVN Special Forces (a group in the Vietnamese army) attacked many Buddhist pagodas in South Vietnam. They took Quảng Đức's heart, and killed many people. Many Buddhist monks were inspired by Quảng Đức, and also burned themselves to death. The Buddhist crisis ended when Diệm was killed in a coup in 1963.

## Life 
When he was born, Quảng Đức was named **Lâm Văn Tức**. He had six siblings. When he was seven, he left Hội Khánh to study Buddhism. His teacher, Thích Hoằng Thâm, took care of him. Lâm Văn Túc changed his name to **Nguyễn Văn Khiết**. When he was 20, he became a monk, and was renamed to **Thích Quảng Đức**. After becoming a monk, he went to live in a mountain in Khánh Hòa. He lived there as a hermit for three years. Later in his life, he came back to the mountain to make a pagoda.

After being a hermit for three years, he left the mountain. Quảng Đức traveled around central Vietnam teaching people about the dharma. After two years, he went into retreat at a pagoda near Nha Trang. In 1932, he became an inspector (someone that makes sure rules are being followed) for the Buddhist Association in Ninh Hòa. He later became an inspector for monks in Khánh Hòa, the province where he was born. While he was in central Vietnam, he helped build 14 temples. In 1934, he moved to southern Vietnam and taught people about Buddhism. He later went to Cambodia for two years to learn about Theravada Buddhism.

After he came back to Vietnam, he helped build 17 more temples. After building these temples, Quảng Đức became a leading member of the Congregation of Vietnamese Monks. He also became the abbot (Buddhist temple leader) of the Phuoc Hoa pagoda. However, the country's president, Ngô Đình Diệm, was Catholic. He made many laws that made things easier for Catholics, such as being promoted in the military and getting land. Many officers in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam became Catholic so they could still be officers. When village militias in South Vietnam were given weapons, they were only given to Catholics. Some Buddhists in the army were not promoted unless they became Catholic.

Some Catholic priests had their own armies. Some of them made people become Catholic and destroyed pagodas. The government did not do anything about this. Some Buddhist villages became Catholic so that the government could help them. Catholics did not have to do corvée (unpaid) work, which the government made everyone else do. When the United States gave money to South Vietnam, Diệm gave most of it to Catholic villages. Most of the journalists did not do anything, because the Buddhist crisis had been going on for a month. The next day, only a few journalists went to the Cambodian embassy. Quảng Đức came to the embassy as a member of a Buddhist parade. Around 350 monks and nuns were in the parade, and they were led by a car. They had signs with words in Vietnamese and English that said Diệm's laws against Buddhists were bad. They wanted religious equality.

Quảng Đức's last words were in a letter. He wrote that Diệm needed to have religious equality in South Vietnam to keep the country strong. He also wrote that other Buddhists should "make sacrifices to protect Buddhism".

The people who watched the protest were mostly silent, but some cried and prayed. Many of the monks and nuns from the parade laid on the ground around Quảng Đức while he burned. Some of the police officers who were sent to control the crowd also did this.

A Buddhist monk repeated the words "a Buddhist priest burns himself to death. A Buddhist priest becomes a martyr." into a microphone in English and Vietnamese. After around 10 minutes, Quảng Đức's body fell onto its back. Once the fire stopped, a group of monks covered the body with robes. They picked it up and put it into a coffin, then carried it to Xá Lợi pagoda in the center of Saigon. Outside of the pagoda, students showed banners that said "a Buddhist priest burns himself for our five requests" in English and Vietnamese. On June 16, the Joint Communiqué was signed. This was an agreement between Buddhist leaders and South Vietnam.

Quảng Đức's funeral was supposed to be on June 15. However, the funeral was postponed after 4,000 people came to it. On June 19, his body was carried to a cemetery 16 kilometers south of Saigon. His body was cremated, and 500 monks came to the funeral. This was thought to be holy, and the heart was put in Xá Lợi pagoda. Because of this, many Vietnamese Buddhists say Quảng Đức is a *bodhisattva*, and call him Bồ Tát Thích Quảng Đức. On August 21, the ARVN Special Forces attacked Xá Lợi and other pagodas. They wanted to take Quảng Đức's ashes, but two monks took the ashes and ran away. The Special Forces took Quảng Đức's heart.

### Impact 
Vietnamese monks had burned themselves to death before Quảng Đức. Buddhists had been doing it for centuries to honor Gautama Buddha. In 1948, a monk in Harbin, China burned himself to death. He was protesting how Mao Zedong and Chinese communists treated Buddhists. His heart did not burn, in the same way that Quảng Đức's heart did not burn.

Malcolm Browne, an American journalist, took pictures of Quảng Đức burning himself to death. They were quickly put on the front page of many newspapers worldwide. The protest is thought of as a major point of the Buddhist crisis, and the start of Diệm's government failing.

Diệm's newspaper, *The Times of Vietnam*, said many bad things about journalists and Buddhists. The newspaper wrote stories named things such as "Monks plot murder". Diệm also said that Browne gave Quảng Đức money to burn himself.

After Quảng Đức's protest, five more monks burned themselves in the Buddhist crisis. On November 1, Diệm's government was overthrown by a coup. Diệm and his brother Ngô Đình Nhu were killed on November 2.

## References 
## Other websites 
*['How to say Thích Quảng Đức'] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cW6rCyqQf4. Learning Family, on Youtube.com