The Journalist Who Photographed the Burning Monk

The Man Behind an Iconic Vietnam War Image Captured ‘the Ugliest Events of Our Time’

While President John F. Kennedy was talking by phone with his brother, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, on the morning of Tuesday, June 12, 1963, he suddenly exclaimed: “Jesus Christ!”

The president’s outburst had nothing to do with their conversation. Rather, he was responding to a photograph taken the day before, splashed on the front pages of the newspapers just delivered to him. The photo showed 73-year-old Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc engulfed in flames on a street in Saigon, South Vietnam while sitting calmly—it seemed—in the lotus posture. He hoped …

by Ray E. Boomhower | June 8, 2023

How Tibetan Buddhists Helped Me Seek Enlightenment at Howard Jarvis’s House

Revisiting the Former Home of the ‘Mad as Hell’ Tax Reformer as Another Fight Over Prop 13 Begins

by Joe Mathews | September 8, 2020

Want to stop worrying so much about the future of California? Go and say a prayer at Howard Jarvis’s house.

No historic plaques mark the five-bedroom home at 515 N. Crescent …

The Origins of Burma’s Old and Dangerous Hatred

A Nationalist Strain of Buddhism Has Unleashed Violence Against a Muslim Minority

By Michael Jerryson | November 8, 2017

In a recent interview with a Guardian journalist, the Burmese monk U Rarzar expressed his country’s rationale for fearing and repressing its Muslim minority. “[The] Ma Ba Tha is protecting …

Finding Inner Peace Between Thin Black Lines

Agnes Martin’s Monochromatic Art Was Her Answer to Taoism’s Call for Austerity

By Scarlet Cheng | May 3, 2016

Black is a strong color, and makes a powerful line. It is also elemental and austere—things that would have appealed particularly to artist Agnes Martin, who grew up in a …

China and Tibet’s Lama Drama

The Centuries-Old Power Struggle Over Buddhism’s Highest Figurehead, Reincarnation, and Cultural Survival

by Gregory Hillis | May 4, 2015

Over the last several years, Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, has suggested that he may be the last in the venerable line of Dalai Lama reincarnations dating …

The Path to Tranquility Goes Through Pomona

A Buddhist Monastery Just Off the 10 Freeway Is My Place to Reflect, Meditate, and Just Breathe

by Connie K. Ho | June 30, 2014

A stone lion, a protector from negativity and a talisman against evil spirits, sits in front of the Middle Land Chan Monastery in Pomona, about 30 miles east of downtown …

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