Word: pagoda
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...means "brilliant mind." He was born Pham Bong on Dec. 31, 1923, in Diem Dien, a village in central Viet Nam now under Hanoi's rule. One of three sons of a well-to-do farmer, he was sent at the age of 13 to the Bao Quoc pagoda in Hué to train for monkhood. Wild and fond of practical jokes at first, he was expelled, then given a second chance. He matured into a student with a photographic memory and a searching intellect. His teacher at Bao Quoc, Thich Tri Do, who now heads the tame Buddhist church...
...took him seven years?years in which ostensibly he lived the life of an ordinary, if exceptionally austere, bonze. Abstaining from meat, cigarettes and liquor, he lived in a cramped cell in Hué's Tu Dam pagoda, rising with the "first sun on a man's hand," spending a third of his waking day in prayer, a third in activity, a third in contemplation of his mistakes. Twice he served as president of the Hué Buddhist Association, his stints interrupted by a total absence from public view from 1959 to 1961. His life has been filled with such disappearances...
...became defiance. When U.S. Charge d'Affaires William Trueheart formally threatened Diem with the statement that the U.S. would "dissociate" itself from the Saigon government's actions unless anti-Buddhist repressions ceased, Diem's brother Ngo Dinh Nhu respond ed by raiding the Buddhist pagodas. That, in Mecklin's informed opinion, was the turning point. "The pagoda raids made it categorically impossible for the U.S. to try to go on with the regime," he writes. "Its handling of the Buddhist issue conclusively discredited the regime's claim to the political savvy that would be essential...
...like being taken to visit the cask of Amontillado," said one awed viewer last week. "You wonder if you'll ever get out." Some Israelis have questioned whether the scrolls merit all the lavish architectural theatrics; Jerusalem children have taken to calling it "the Chinese pagoda." But after inspecting it, supporters have rallied to its defense...
...however, Buddhist frustration appeared to turn toward dangerous desperation. After his own fast, Tarn Chau, the sect's political coordinator, led 500 monks and nuns in another 24-hour hunger strike; before beginning it, a group of the bonzes prudently tucked into a hearty breakfast outside their pagoda. Then a Buddhist communiqué claimed that Tri Quang, leader of northern and central Buddhists, was continuing his original fast into a sixth day. Quang is said to like fasting, on grounds that it "clears the head...