Chapter 1 Love in Action The essence of nonviolence is love. Out of love and the willingness to act selflessly, strategies, tactics, and techniques for a nonviolent struggle arise naturally. Nonviolence is not a dogma; it is a process. Other struggles may be fueled by greed, hatred, fear, or ignorance, but a nonviolent one cannot use such blind sources of energy, for they will destroy those involved and also the struggle itself. Nonviolent action, born of the awareness of suffering and nurtured by love is the most effective way to confront adversity. The Buddhist struggle for peace in Vietnam in the 1960s and ''70s arose from the great suffering inflicted on our nation by international forces. Blood and fire ravaged the countryside, and people everywhere were uprooted. The Vietnam War was, first and foremost, an ideological struggle.

To ensure our people''s survival, we had to overcome both Communist and anticommunist fanaticism and maintain the strictest neutrality. Buddhists tried their best to speak for all the people and not take sides, but we were condemned as "pro-Communist neutralists." Both warring parties claimed to speak for what the people really wanted, but the North Vietnamese spoke for the Communist bloc and the South Vietnamese spoke for the Capitalist bloc. The Buddhists only wanted to create a vehicle for the people to be heard--and the people only wanted peace, not a "victory" by either side. During our struggle, many scenes of love arose spontaneously--a monk sitting calmly before an advancing tank, women and children raising their bare hands against barbed wire, students confronting military police who looked like monsters wearing huge masks and holding bayonets, young women running through clouds of tear gas with babies in their arms, hunger strikes held silently and patiently, monks and nuns burning themselves to death to try to be heard above the raging noise of the war. And all of these efforts bore some fruit. Any nonviolent action requires a thorough understanding of the situation and of the psychology of the people. In Vietnam, we inherited many ideas from the Buddhist tradition, and we learned from our mistakes as we went along.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Buddhist monks joined the struggle for independence from the French, and they won the support of their countrymen. When the Vietnam War broke out, they still had that support, as well as the knowledge gained earlier to go beyond passive resistance and undertake positive efforts to overcome the war and the oppression. In 1966, when the people of Hue and Danang learned that Field Marshall Nguyen Cao Ky was about to bring tanks and troops from Saigon to suppress the movement for peace, the people of those cities brought their family altars--the most sacred objects in their homes--onto the streets, relying on their culture and tradition to oppose the forces of destruction. Some people were critical, saying they used religion for political purposes, but I do not agree. They were using their most potent spiritual force to directly confront the violence. This was not a political act; it was an act of love. Fasting, the method used most by Mahatma Gandhi to help India in its struggle for independence, was also used in Vietnam. Sometimes, thousands of people fasted, and other times, a single person fasted.

We fasted as prayer to purify our hearts, consolidate our will, and arouse awareness and compassion in others. When Thich Tri Quang fasted for one hundred days, those who passed the Duy Tan Clinic were jarred into awareness, and compassion was born in them. As a result, they felt compelled to meet, talk, and plan, thereby escalating the struggle. Thich Tri Quang had not planned to fast. He had to fast. We also used literature and the arts as "weapons" to challenge the oppression. Works by antiwar writers, composers, poets, and artists, although illegal, were widely circulated. Antiwar songs were sung in streets and classrooms, and antiwar literature became the largest category of books sold in Vietnam, even infiltrating army units.

Look Back at Your Homeland, Only Death Allows You to Speak Out, and Lotus in a Sea of Fire sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Our literature was considered dangerous by both sides. One book of poems, Let Us Pray so the White Dove Will Be with Us, was submitted to the Ministry of Information, and only two of the sixty poems in it were approved. A group of students published it anyway, and within a week, all copies were sold. In Hue, a policeman saw a copy in a bookstore and warned the owner, "Hide this and only bring it out when someone asks for it." Sister Cao Ngoc Phuong was arrested in Hue for transporting antiwar books, and before I left the country, I was also arrested and imprisoned for a few days in Bao Loc for "antiwar" activities although I was charged only with the crime of listening to Hanoi Radio. Folk poetry was used as means of education. This lullaby was sung throughout the country: My hand is holding a bowl of ginger and salt.

Ginger is hot, salt is strong. They embrace each other. North and South share the same sorrow. We love each other, why have we abandoned our love? This "Prayer for Peace" was printed by the tens of thousands and chanted during religious services throughout Vietnam, and its effects were widely felt: Homage to all Buddhas in the ten directions. Please have compassion for our suffering. Our land has been at war for twenty years, divided in two and covered with tears. Blood and bones of young and old are everywhere. Mothers weep until their tears run dry, while sons'' bodies decompose on distant fields.

Our beautiful country is being ripped apart. Blood and tears are flowing everywhere. Brothers kill each other just because we listen too much to those from the outside. During the superpower confrontation in Vietnam, while thousands and thousands of peasants and children lost their lives, our land was unmercifully ravaged. Yet we were unable to stop the fighting; we were not able to make ourselves heard or understood. We had little access to the international news media. People thought we Buddhists were trying to seize power, but we had no interest in power. We only wanted to stop the slaughter.

The voice of the Vietnamese people--80 percent Buddhist--was lost in the melee of shooting and bombs. But we realized that the means and the end are one, and we never employed any kind of action that betrayed our commitment to nonviolence. In 1963, Venerable Thich Quang Duc went to the crossroads of Phan Dinh Phung, sat in the lotus position, poured gasoline on himself, and transformed himself into a torch. His disciple read his last words to the press. Madame Nhu described it as a "barbecue." By burning himself, Thich Quang Duc awakened the world to the suffering of the war and the persecution of the Buddhists. When someone stands up to violence in such a courageous way, a force for change is released. Every action for peace requires someone to exhibit the courage to challenge the violence and inspire love.

Love and sacrifice always set up a chain reaction of love and sacrifice. Like the crucifixion of Jesus, Thich Quang Duc''s act expressed the unconditional willingness to suffer for the awakening of others. Accepting the most extreme kind of pain, he lit a fire in the hearts of people around the world. Self-burning was not a technique or program of action. When anyone wished to burn himself or herself, the Buddhist leaders always tried to prevent it. But many monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen did sacrifice themselves for peace in this way, including my disciple Nhat Chi Mai, who declared that she wanted to be "a torch in the dark night." Nhat Chi Mai was one of the first six people ordained into the Tiep Hien Order. In 1966, she placed a statue of Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, and a statue of the Virgin Mary in front of her, and burned herself alive at the Tu Nghiem temple, a nunnery.

She left behind letters to the presidents of North and South Vietnam, imploring them to stop the fighting. She wrote one letter to me: "Th'y, don''t worry too much. We will have peace soon." Evoking the force of love, Nhat Chi Mai moved the hearts of millions of her countrymen. I know that the self-immolation of monks and nuns was difficult for Westerners to understand. The Western press called it suicide, but it was not really suicide. It was not even a protest. What the monks wrote in the letters they left behind was intended only to move the hearts of the oppressors and call the world''s attention to the suffering of our people.

To make a statement while enduring such unspeakable pain is to communicate with tremendous determination, courage, and sincerity. During the ordination ceremony in some Buddhist traditions, the ordinee burns one or more very small spots on his body with moxa incense as he takes the twenty-five hundred vows of a monk, promising to live a life devoted to helping living beings. If he were to say this while sitting comfortably in an armchair, it would not be the same. When uttered while kneeling before the community of elders and experiencing this kind of pain, his words express the full seriousness of his heart and mind. The Vietnamese monks, nuns, and lay people who burned themselves were saying with all their strength and determination that they were willing to endure the greatest of suffering to protect their people. But why did they have to burn themselves to death? The difference betwe.