Quang+Duc

After lighting himself on fire (self-immolation), Quang Duc was cremated and legend has it that his heart would not burn. As a result, his heart is considered Holy and is in the custody of the Reserve Bank of Vietnam. From the most religiously important point of view he has been "exclusively conceptualized as a transhistorical, purely religious agent, virtually homologous with his specifically religious forebears and ancestors." Therefore, his self-immolation is seen as a "religious suicide" and is religiously justified based on Chinese Buddhist texts written between the fifth and tenth centuries C.E.

David Halberstam, a reporter for the //New York Times// covering the war in Vietnam, gave the following account: "//I was to see that sight again, but once was enough. Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning human flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly. Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think…. As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him."//