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Brotherhood - The Fire of Compassion
The question mark envelops the entirety of human life: the seven-word quatrain by Vu Hoang Chuong consists of four lines, twenty-eight characters (the twenty-eight constellations), presented through the image of a snail crawling, its brain crushed, silent blood dripping, then an exclamation mark released, a nail hammered into the coffin to answer the human condition. The image of the snail symbolizes the questions: where do we come from, why are we born as humans, where are we going—these questions hover in the mind throughout life, never to be resolved by intellect alone.
Half a century later, in 1954, in the poetry collection Duong Tuong Phong, the poem “Prayer” still carries the heavy anxiety of rebirth, the darkness of the path ahead, a thousand autumns of karmic debt, surrounded on all sides, looking out to the shore of delusion, looking within impermanence yet not finding non-self. By 1963, witnessing Venerable Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation for human rights, the poetry transformed into heroic verses praising brotherhood and compassion—especially in two poems:
- “The Fire of Compassion”: the auspicious moment, myriad hatreds and delusions open their eyes, beholding each other with boundless brotherhood
- “Continuing the Fire of Compassion”: the great courage and great strength of compassion will overcome bombs and bullets, the temple stands firm amidst the storm
At the end of his life, enduring much political misfortune, captured at the beginning of 1976, he still sat in unmoving meditation. This reveals a poet not only intoxicated by poetry, but one who had learned to eat vegetarian food, to sit in meditation, to return all doubts to the insight of the Zen gate, maintaining an indomitable spirit until the very last moment.
