Do you? says the mind. “Yes,” I say. “I have to write the word, see it in my handwriting, my forever mouth. Genocide. Genocide.” But what is it? asks the mind. How does it differ from the inciting incident? “It’s the systematic extermination of a human people,” I say. What was Vietnam? I close my eyes but in the bloodheat there are still rows of babies strapped in tiny wooden crates, each one readied for a fiery death on the edge of the airfield. In the Ādittapariyāya Sutta, the Noble One taught all is burning. “Don’t minimize this,” I say, recalling how I waited, was silent, watched the students (who historically are always right) get ripped from their colorful tents, wondering when my heart would finally let itself know. After knowledge comes release, offers the mind. As a test, it raises the curtain on the tableau of the little girl on the cellphone in the bombed out car and the hours it took her to die, all the while begging the helpless for help. “I’m alive in a time of genocide,” I say. “And I was afraid to name it.” Wrong answer, sneers the mind. Remember ‘63 when Thích Quảng Đức set himself on fire at the intersection of Phan Đình Phùng and Lê Văn Duyệt? The mind picks at something wedged in its teeth. Guy never flinched not because he was not of this world but because he was balls deep in it.