He acted on the instructions of the 14th Dalai Lama and his followers, according to police, who cited confessions and investigations.
In January, in an address that seemed to encourage self-sacrifice, the Dalai Lama told his disciples in a prayer meeting in India that Sakyamuni Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, cut off his own flesh to feed seven starving tigers. He died rescuing the tigers.
However, self-immolation has nothing to do with the Sakyamuni story, according to Palden Donyu, the former abbot of Sagya Monastery in Tibet Autonomous Region's second-largest city of Shigatse, the key temple for Tibetan Buddhism's Sagya branch.
"Life is so precious," he added, mourning those who self-immolated.
The fact that many self-immolators were youths makes Donyu especially sorrowful, with the Buddhist urging the generation born in the 1980s to improve themselves inwardly in order to avoid the emergence of severe problems.
The Dalai Lama himself has publicly applauded the "courage" of the people who died or were injured in self-immolations.
However, Chuan Yin, president of the Buddhist Association of China, on Wednesday described inducing, encouraging or even praising suicides as "an extremely severe crime."
Committing suicide or goading others to do so violates Buddhist tenets of mercy and compassion, he said.
These self-immolations were due to others' incitement, instigation and coercion, according to the Buddhist master, who advised followers to "discern good and evil."
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