Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2000 | Page 157

Synthesizing Eastern and Western Religious Traditions 149 in France where images of both Buddha and Jesus reside. The altar functions as a symbol of unity, rapprochement, and synthesis. An additional symbolic act is evidenced when Thay “shocked” Buddhists and “horrified” Christians by participating in a Catholic Eucharist. Thay was symbolically acting out a ritual drama of religious rapprochement and drove his symbolic message home by the almost flippant statement: “I do not see any reason to spend one’s whole life tasting just one kind of fruit. We human beings can be nourished by the best values of many traditions” (p. 2). Non-verbal action can also function as group and personal liberation, and can often transcend cultural and language barriers having universality. Importantly, non-verbal symbolic action can be enabling and, empowering, giving voice to marginalized individuals and groups, can equalize power relationships with the dominant culture, and help raise the consciousness of the poor and powerless. As Thay says: When you are caught in a war in which the great powers have huge weapons and complete power over the media, you have to do something extraordinary to make yourself heard. Without access to radio, television, or the press, you have to create new ways to help the world understand the situation you are in. Self-immolation can be such a means. If you do it out of love, you act very much as Jesus did on the cross and Gandhi did in India (p. 82). Direct non-violent action is a powerful channel of communication that has gained popular acceptance and respect, as seen in the persuasive non-verbal/ nonviolent actions of the iconic Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. The power and credibility of action as opposed to words is evidenced in the popular cliches: “actions speaks louder than words” “your actions speak volumes,” “show me, don’t tell me,” as does Emerson’s popular dictum: “your actions speak so loudly that I cannot hear a thing you s