By Tenzin Nyidon
DHARAMSHALA, May 30: Kunzang Longyang, a 17-year-old Tibetan monk from Yulung Monastery in Drakkar County, in the so-called Qinghai Province took his own life in mid-April, according to a report by Radio Free Asia.
The report indicates that Longyang faced immense pressure to abandon his religious and cultural traditions. This culminated in his forced removal from the monastery and being ordered to join a government-run school, leading to his tragic decision.
Longyang was forced to leave his monastery due to the Chinese government’s enforcement of a rule prohibiting individuals under 18 from becoming monks. After being removed from the monastery, Longyang was required to attend a local government-run school, where he was instructed to wear regular clothing instead of his monk’s robes. This led to Longyang’s severe depression, sources told RFA.
Initially, the school made some accommodations for Longyang, allowing him to wear his robes during examinations and during inspections by government officials as well as not requiring full-time attendance. However, these exceptions were revoked a few months ago. Longyang, along with other young monks, was ordered to permanently disrobe and stay at the school full-time, causing him severe distress.
“He was adamant that he would not take off his monk’s robes,” another source reported. “He had said that if he were permanently stripped of his robes and required to go to school in plainclothes, he would kill himself.”
In April, after falling into another bout of depression following the school’s renewed mandate, Longyang was sent home. Shortly after, he took his own life, sources said.
2 Responses
My prayers for Kunzang Longyang for his act of bravery. No Buddhist monk should ever be forced to disrobe against his will. My father, Lama Lhakpa Tshring GYATSO committed self-immolation in protest of illegal Chinese occupation in Tingri in Tibet in 1983 when I was only 2 years old. I can very well relate to Kunzang Longyang’s frustration. I have been depressed myself and often contemplated self-immolation. I stopped only for the compassion showed to me by a few individuals who showed me there is another way to achive one’s goals. Self – immolation is an act of compassion and to show once commitment to the Tibetan cause. May Kunzang Longyang be reborn in a Free Tibet. May his brave act be a cause for Freedom For Tibet NOW.
What a terrible tragedy! In our culture, anybody practising the holy Dharma (དམ་པའི་ལྷ་ཆོས་བྱེད་པ་) is looked up with admiration and esteem! However, now we are enslaved by a evil heretical brood called communist China which is anti- religion and anti-Buddhism. It is a violent ideology which relishes in violence and intimidation as a means of subjugating it’s victims and also as a means of expansionism. Today, the free world and the orthodoxy of chinese communist ideology are head-butting each other! The free world let by the US is trying to contain the spread and influence of the insidious Chinese communist regime’s violent ideology and it’s malevolent influence. If the Americans are unable to stop the menace of communist China, the world will be turned into another Tibet. There will be no human rights, no religious freedom and no civil society. You might think, it’s not possible since every country is sovereign and communist China can’t influence the internal politics of the countries. The thing people need to know is the communist regime’s attempts to seize the high ground of ideology to boost domestic morality and dispirits the enemy.It bolsters legitimacy of its institutions while degrading the enemies by calling democracies “chaos”! It always portrays democracy as anarchy while portraying its totalitarian system as “orderly and workable”. In this way it propagates this narrative to the world as an alternative to democracy. It uses propaganda channels to spread its narrative to increase its soft power! The CCP has a massive propaganda machinery of 170 Xinhua new outlets, 30 China Radio International (CRI) controls 30 plus radio stations in 14 countries. It is also planning to create more than 100 global think tanks as part of its information warfare. It’s spending billions of dollars to change the narrative in world political discourse by using their hired “experts” and think “tanks”. There are many western people who are hired by the CCP to create a narrative that lavishes the achievements of the CCP while exposing US hypocrisy and CCP’s attempt to dominate the world as some noble duty to support the third world. This is music to the ears of poor African countries and Asian countries who have an axe to grind with the west. Today, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, Thailand, Cuba and many African and Arab countries have already fallen to CCP’s sleazy propaganda. They have cozied up to the CCP. This include Nepal which under Oli even taught Xi Jinping thought to Nepalese young people. Countries like Cambodia, Burma and Thailand are already more like satellites of communist China and worse there is virtually no democracy and no human rights in these countries. This is how the CCP spreads it’s malign tentacles of influence. In occupied Tibet, Tibetans are total slaves of the regime. Tibetans have no rights even to freely practice our precious religion. The death of the 17 old year Kunzang Loyang is a shocking predicament of Tibetans under the evil regime. Instead of giving the freedom to be a monk which was his wish,he was expelled from the monastery! There is nothing more cruel for a monk than be kicked out if his monastery. According to the Buddha’s edict, no monk can be expelled from his monastery unless he has broken his self-liberation སོ་སོ་ཐར་བའི་བསྡོམ་པ་ vows. He is entitled to live there. But the CCP is heretic so it doesn’t respect the laws of Buddhism. Nobody can disrobe a monk except himself! A monk disrobes only if the monk breaks one of the four cardinal ཕམ་པ་བཞི་པོ་གང་རུང་ vows. That includes 1) killing a human willfully, 2) stealing an item that would amount to be regarded as a thief in the locality he lives, 3) having sexual intercourse with a woman, animal or a man through རྨ་སྒོ་གསུམ་ which consist of mouth, anus and vagina. 4) Telling a lie to deceive such as claiming he has achieved nirvana. There is nothing more painful for a monk than be denied to remain in his monastery and devote ones life in quest of nirvana but the cruel, heretical CCP denied the most basic human rights to a exceptional child who had such devotion to the holy Dharma! This is the true evilness of the most ruthless regime on earth which has killed millions and still remain blood thirsty as ever! Kunzang Loyang died for the Dharma which was the love of his life but cruelly denied which made him conclude that life was not worth living without the holy Dharma. Most of one hundred and sixty Tibetans who set themselves on fire for Tibet’s independence were all driven by the same motivation to save the holy Dharma which is fast expunged by the CCP! Every Tibetan who believes in the holy Dharma and the Lord Buddha should take the act of Kunzang Loyang as an exemplary act of devotion and sacrifice for our most treasured gem- སངས་རྒྱས་ཀྱི་བསྟན་པ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ།།