Awang Chozin, a Tibetan Buddhist Lama from the Drepung Monastery in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, became serious when talking about the self-immolations happened earlier. [Photo/ China Tibet Online]

We bore a hole in a piece of wood and throw it into an ocean; the block will float on the water. There is a blind Mr. Turtle living in the ocean; it raises his head once a thousand years. It happened that the block is there when he raises his head and he creeps through the hole. But how tiny the chance is for this to happen on the Mr. Turtle!

"The chance for you to be a human being is tinier than that for the turtle to creep through the hole. So everybody should appreciate his life", Awang Chozin, a monk from the Drepung Monastery of the Gelug Sect, the Dalai Lama's sect of Tibetan Buddhism, told reporter in an interview on March 30 on the Tibetan calendar. It was the first day of the Sagya Dawa Festival of the year 2012，which lasts 15 days to mark the birth and the attainment of nirvana of the Buddha Sakyamuni.

Reporter from China Tibet Online was having an interview with Awang Chozin, a Tibetan Buddhist Lama from the Lhasa's Drepung Monastery, May 20, 2012. [Photo/ China Tibet Online]

Life is hard to get and all lives are equal; never take others' lives as more precious than yours. To illustrate his view, Awang quoted the story of Mr. Turtle in Buddhist scriptures.

"The self-immolators who committed suicide months ago did not appreciate his own life, nor did he appreciate others' lives", Awang got serious when talking about the self-immolation incidents.

"Every life is not a single one. Instead, it comprises tens of thousands of lives", Awang added, saying that in Buddhism, there are lives in people's hair, pores and every cell; if you destroy your own life, then you destroy all lives living in your body.