Burning Monk was inspired by a 1963 event in which a Buddhist monk self-immolated to protest the mistreatment of Buddhists by the government of South Vietnam. Today, the turmoil surrounding Tibet, the recent mass protests by monks in Myanmar, a lingering war in Iraq that has been compared (rightly or wrongly) to Vietnam, invests Burning Monk with an eerie pertinence. But politics in Burning Monk is less the theme than the subtext for a broader spiritual metaphor.