Anagi, as he is affectionately known, understands only too well the need to live within the 227 rules. However, he is still an unenlightened bhodhisattva and, one day, as he eats a modest offering of binderbaht food - rice and dried fish – an audacious plan begins to hatch in his trained but dissatisfied mind.
Following in the footsteps of Thich Quang Duc, the self-immolater whose protest became one of the defining images of the 20th century, Anagi is going to make an equally powerful statement. He will become the first ever Buddhist suicide bomber.
Of course his beliefs mean that he should not countenance taking the life of another living thing, apart from himself, as suicide is not necessarily frowned upon in Buddhist teachings. Anagi has to wrestle with his conscience. How can he possibly justify such drastic action? Then he thinks of the 500 monks chased out of Lhabsang monastery and the executed monks dumped in the jungle by the Myanmaran junta and he is filled with fist-clenching fury. He comes to a momentous decision. He will plough a truck packed with explosives into to the Chinese Consulate building in Chiang Mai.
Fortunately a rickety old truck has recently been donated to his monastery by a devout local villager. Anagi packs it with green mangoes and recyclable fertilizer bombs. The detonator is a modified prayer wheel. Three turns and then it’s time to blow some practitioners of the THREE BURNING MISDEEDS all the way to patala. Admittedly, they could progress from there to eventual Nibbana - if they then followed the path of enlightenment and achieved paññā.
Still, with quiet determination our mild-mannered martyr sets out for his chosen destination. He leaves behind a video message posted on a ‘free Tibet’ site. In it he sits silently on a prayer rug for sixteen hours in the lotus position. The message is loud and clear.
On arriving at the Consulate building, he wastes no time. He ploughs straight in, smashing directly through the front of it. The initial impact doesn’t detonate the bombs, but - as masonry and glass fall around him - he turns the wheel three times and that does the trick...
There are no fatalities, but screaming Consulate staff, many of them local, pour out of the building, clothes torn and bloodied. Ambulances arrive on the scene late and take the only seriously injured victim out on a gurney, a 63 year old charlady who suffered a subarachnoid haemorrhage. There is a general air of panic, smoke and police hitting bystanders with batons - many of them victims of the bomb.
Anagi has been protected from the blast by the mangoes. He is, however, on fire. He has already shut off the pain by modulating his rostral anterior cingulate cortex and controlling the release of endorphins. He has also reduced his body temperature to freezing via thermoregulation. Lastly, and most importantly, he has activated his sweat glands to such a degree that they are secreting enough liquid to stop the fire from burning his skin.
Still on fire, he calmly gets in to his truck and begins the long drive home. In the ensuing panic the Thai authorities have not even registered his existence. Ablaze for the whole journey, he stops only once to adjust the rusty mirror on the cracked windscreen. The truck, despite extensive damage, still drives. In fact, being a good deal lighter, it gets him back to the monastery in record time. Astonishingly the tyres have survived intact, as has Anagi.
On arriving home Anagi gets out of the truck and walks into his lodgings. There he meets his dharma teacher and begins a conversation about the day’s events. He is instructed to leave the communion for breaking the most serious of the Patimokkha . He promises to leave in the morning and, on being offered some lentils, he eats a light meal and retires to bed.
Anagi is still on fire to this day. His protest had little effect on Beijing officials or Burmese generals but it has turned him into a minor celebrity. Although he is no longer a monk, pilgrims come from all over the world to light joss sticks off his head and sit around him warming their hands as he tells them instructive tales about the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS. The Chinese Consulate building has been rebuilt and refurbished. The 63 year old charlady is back in her job and Buddhist terrorism is not exactly a problem...
