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It has been 55 years since the Tibetan people became victims of a conflict that engulfed their lives and displaced them from their homes. Since then, the people have been hit by wave after wave of disappointments with the likelihood of them regaining their independence nowhere in sight.
The Tibetan government-in-exile (now known as the Central Tibetan Administration or CTA) have always laid the blame on China for the breakdowns in negotiations between them and the Chinese government. As a matter of fact, the CTA has blamed Beijing for just about everything that has gone awry and rarely is the CTA’s role in any failure ever raised and examined.
It is only when we analyse the leadership culture of the Tibetans-in-exile that a disturbing picture arises – a picture that paints the CTA as being a dishonest government that habitually deceives and manipulates its own people to the detriment of the nation and its future. In fact, remarkable parallels are revealed concerning the CTA’s willingness to lie about topics as important as the fight for Tibetan independence, the Middle Way Approach and even the Dorje Shugden ban, as we shall see in this article.
If we are to appraise the integrity of a government, we have to study its leaders and key figures. In the case of the CTA, besides the Dalai Lama, the most prominent politicians who have shaped the fate of the Tibetan people in exile are Samdhong Rinpoche the ex-Prime Minister of the CTA, Lobsang Sangay the present Sikyong, and Penpa Tsering the Speaker of the Tibetan Parliament.
Samdhong Rinpoche is the elder statesman who was very much responsible for shaping the Tibetan people’s fight to regain their homeland. He was also the Prime Minister when the government adopted a policy of apartheid against a large segment of the Tibetan community, the Dorje Shugden worshippers. Recently Samdhong Rinpoche spoke to the students of Tibetan Children’s Village (TCV) Suja, which gives us a good opportunity to assess how much value he places on the future of the Tibetan people.
Watch Samdhong Rinpoche’s Speech at TCV Suja
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Samdhong Rinpoche is the third and hopefully final act in what has been the CTA’s effort in indoctrinating the minds of young Tibetans on the issue of Dorje Shugden, in particular to allay their concerns about the impact the CTA’s religious ban has on the Tibetan community. The Sikyong, Lobsang Sangay, and the Speaker of the Tibetan Parliament, Penpa Tsering, both had their turns earlier this year but with disastrous outcomes.
While Penpa Tsering fumbled throughout his manufactured version of Gelugpa history, Lobsang Sangay was completely caught off-guard by students questioning the wisdom of the government’s discriminatory policies towards Dorje Shugden practitioners, borne out of the Dalai Lama’s rather sudden and unexplained prejudice towards the practice. Samdhong Rinpoche’s presence at TCV then, was damage control. At least that was the plan.
As ever, the well-rehearsed narrative presented to the young Tibetans on the Dorje Shugden controversy is that the Dalai Lama and his government are defending the Tibetan people and Buddhism against unprovoked aggression by the Chinese government in their efforts to destabilize Tibetan unity and undermine the ‘Tibetan cause’. It is the same narrative we have been subjected to over countless years, one intended to paint the CTA as the perennial victim.
In the past, as is now, it is a blatant lie. Whilst previously the CTA has been crude in their fabrication and delivery of lies, Samdhong Rinpoche’s speech leaves little doubt as to who the master of misinformation and deception is, perhaps second only to the Dalai Lama himself.
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Samdhong Rinpoche and the Dalai Lama – partners in the crime of swindling the Tibetan people
Deception #1: To support Dorje Shugden is to support China
Right from the start, Samdhong Rinpoche wasted no time in stacking the deck by his warning that since the “Dholgyal issue” is being used by the PRC, any attempt to confront and challenge the CTA’s ban would have an adverse effect on the unity of the Tibetan people. In other words, don’t question the ban unless it is your intention to cause greater disharmony.
This is Samdhong Rinpoche’s perverted logic. Even if it’s true that the Chinese government is fanning the Shugden conflict with sponsorships, presumably to destabilize Tibetan unity and undermine the Dalai Lama’s authority as it is often accused of, surely it follows that lifting the ban would disarm the issue and save it from abuse.
In addition, Samdhong Rinpoche made it a point to state that he was there in his personal capacity and not as a representative of the CTA. In this way, the CTA can benefit from Samdhong Rinpoche’s program of misinformation and at the same time, deny any involvement should there be a backlash from his unsavoury campaign.
The truth is, the current Dorje Shugden conflict has little to do with China or Sino-Tibetan politics. It does however have everything to do with the Dalai Lama and the CTA’s decades-long policy of feudal-esque oppression, expropriation of its own people’s thoughts, chronic absence of transparency, lack of accountability, habitual manufacturing of lies and generally playing the Tibetan people and the rest of the world for fools.
Just look at the transcript of Samdhong Rinpoche’s speech. By his own account, he was supposed to tackle a number of issues that have troubled the Tibetan youth. But rather than addressing them as genuine concerns, his speech is clear evidence that he was there to gild over the CTA’s official lies on the Shugden issue, exposed by the students’ questioning. As past CTA leaders have demonstrated, it is far more important to perpetuate the lie than to arrest the rot in the unity of the Tibetan society heading towards disintegration.
Deception #2: There is no ban
For instance, to a student’s question pertaining to the CTA’s Dorje Shugden ban and the social discrimination that flows from it, Samdhong Rinpoche simply insisted that there is no ‘ban’ on the Shugden practice because the Dalai Lama has not issued a decree to forbid it. It is dishonest for Samdhong Rinpoche to make this statement as he, more than anyone else, knows that the government-in-exile and its officers exist only to anticipate and actualize the Dalai Lama’s demands. Samdhong Rinpoche even admitted in the past that the entire Tibetan government-in-exile had to work within the framework defined and limited ONLY by the Dalai Lama’s wishes.
Therefore when the Tibetan Kashag and The Assembly of Tibetan People’s Deputies (ATPD) legislated in June 1996 and again in September 1997 against the practice of Dorje Shugden, it was in response to the Dalai Lama’s open condemnation of the Shugden practice. These resolutions had the powerful effect of normalizing social codes that essentially criminalized the Shugden practice and turned its practitioners into social pariahs.
It was a significant government policy targeted at the Tibetan community itself, and could not have been executed without a nod from the Dalai Lama who was the indisputable head of the Tibetan people, politically as well as spiritually. So, under the Dalai Lama, not only did the CTA legislate against a religious practice, it began unleashing a series of hate-campaigns designed to turn uninformed Tibetans against their own kin.
Deception #3: Redefining religious freedom
And then, as if to test and establish a new limit of idiocy, Samdhong Rinpoche launched into a sermon based on his perverse construal of various human rights provisions, only to conclude that if anyone’s human rights have been infringed, it is the Dalai Lama’s and not those whose religious practice has been outlawed. To Samdhong Rinpoche, the oppressor has been victimised and by his interpretation, a person’s human rights as provided for by the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, The Indian Constitution and the Tibetan Charter extends also to the right to publicly condemn, insult and criminalize the practice of another person’s religion! That is not the case of course.
Citing Article 25 of the Indian Constitution in a complete bastardization of the Article’s real intentions, Samdhong Rinpoche insisted that so long as the Dalai Lama can form a negative opinion of the Shugden practice – notwithstanding such opinion being subjective, arbitrary and extremely personal, it also qualifies him to discriminate against the Shugden practice as an exercise of his religious freedom. And further, to challenge the Dalai Lama’s discrimination is tantamount to an infringement of his rights! Bizarre as it is, this was what Samdhong Rinpoche wanted his young audience to believe.
Article 25 of the Indian Constitution states:
“Freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion Subject to public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of this Part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion…”
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The Dalai Lama demanded the expulsion of Shugden monks from the monasteries. Yet, according to Samdhong Rinpoche, this is merely an expression of religious freedom and to say otherwise would mean that the Dalai Lama’s religious freedom has been infringed!
Did Samdhong Rinpoche misunderstand Article 25? It is impossible for he is regarded as one of the leading Tibetan scholars of Buddhism, and is also an authority on the works of Mahatma Gandhi and other great thinkers. The law on religious freedom is clear, not merely per the legislature but also as interpreted by the judiciary.
In the Indian Supreme Court case, Rev Stainislaus vs State of M.P. (A.I.R. 1977 SC 908) the court found that Article 25 does protect a person’s right to declare freely and openly one’s faith, but more importantly, that a person’s right to express his religion does not include the right to convert another person to the former’s faith, because the latter is equally entitled to freedom of conscience.
In sum, the Dalai Lama and the CTA are in breach of Article 25 of the Indian Constitution by their attempts to convert Shugden practitioners away from their faith through coercion and/or allurement. Samdhong Rinpoche took a good law that would incriminate an oppressor of religious freedom and deformed it into moral and legal ground for the Dalai Lama and CTA’s crime against human and civil rights to be justified.
And clearly the Indian Government disagrees with Samdhong Rinpoche. The proof is in the permission granted for Shar Ganden and Serpom Monastery, both Dorje Shugden-worshipping institutions, to be established. If Samdhong Rinpoche is correct in his accusation that Shugden worship contravenes morality and is more akin to terrorism, why would the Indian Government allow them to operate openly on Indian soil?
Deception #4: There is no discrimination against Dorje Shugden practitioners
In the same speech, Samdhong Rinpoche also suggested that the presence of these two monastic universities is evidence that there is no discrimination against Dorje Shugden worshippers by the Dalai Lama and CTA. In fact, the opposite is true.
The formation of Shar Ganden and Serpom Monastery (previously Dokham Khangtsen of Ganden Shartse and Pomra Khangtsen of Sera Mey) attest to the Dalai Lama’s prejudice against Shugden monks and their expulsion from their original monasteries. Why else would the monks of Dokham and Pomra give up their monastic homes only to start again with scarce resources and under strenuous circumstances? That they are even able to operate in relative peace is due to the protection accorded by the Indian Government to registered Indian societies which Shar Ganden and Serpom are, and has nothing to do with the Dalai Lama or CTA’s tolerance of Shugden worshippers.
Samdhong Rinpoche also claimed there is no ‘social discrimination’ but only some ‘social boycott’ against Shugden practitioners by the Tibetan community, but the Shugden people brought it upon themselves by their intransigence and betrayal of the Dalai Lama. In other words, it is not the CTA or the Dalai Lama’s doing.
Again this is false because such ‘boycott’ only arose after the CTA passed official resolutions declaring the practice of Dorje Shugden to be wrong and harmful, both to the life of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Cause. It became a serious social offence even to be seen with a Shugden worshipper as the renowned Tibetan writer, Jamyang Norbu discovered. He wrote of his experience:
…Since then I have not been paying much attention to the Shugden issue, but this business with the photograph troubled me. Is it now a criminal act in our society or a mortal sin in the eyes of the official church to have your photograph taken with a member of the Shugden organization? I asked around and it seems that the answer is yes. I was told that Dharamshala officials were now going around Tibetan communities making people sign pledges that they would completely ostracize Shugden devotees, not share a meal with them or have anything to do with them in any way
Deception #5: Lies and more lies
Clearly, Samdhong Rinpoche was unconcerned with the intelligence of his audience so he thought nothing of uttering statements that contradicted each other within minutes of their making. He said, monasteries that put up signs prohibiting entry to Shugden worshippers are only exercising their lawful rights. But minutes before that, the same Samdhong Rinpoche said that discrimination in granting or banning entry to temples is banned under law as it violates public order and morality.
To another TCV student’s plea for the CTA to defuse the Shugden conflict before it deteriorates into an India/Pakistan situation, Samdhong Rinpoche’s reassurance was that the percentage of Tibetans worldwide who worship Dorje Shugden is so insignificant that there was no risk of that situation happening. Again that is gravely inaccurate.
An estimated 400,000 Tibetans attended the Monlam Festival held at Trijang Rinpoche’s Sampheling Monastery in March this year, and over 200,000 Tibetans were drawn to the enthronement of the present Denma Gonsa Rinpoche in Gonsa Monastery in Tibet, yet another well-known Shugden monastery. We see how readily Samdhong Rinpoche dismisses a potential risk to the future of the Tibetan people in order to preserve a lie.
As if the dishonest semantics were not appalling enough, Samdhong Rinpoche even suggested that there is moral equivalence between Mahatma Gandhi’s struggle for India’s independence and CTA-sponsored discrimination against its own citizens; and between monasteries expelling Shugden monks and hotel guests hanging ‘Do Not Disturb’ signs on the door. It is simply bizarre to hear the ex-Kalon Tripa draw these parallels and think nothing of it, and even expecting the audience to swallow these farcicalities without objection.
Deception #6: Contradictions upon contradictions
Samdhong Rinpoche’s assault on the young Tibetans’ reason and logic did not end there but it would be beyond the scope of a single article to rebut every lie and misinformation in his speech, for they range from the absurd to the fantastic to those that plainly contradict CTA’s official statements.
For example, in response to a question on the CTA’s efforts to bridge the widening rift between Shugden and anti-Shugden Tibetans, Samdhong Rinpoche stated unequivocally that there is no way the CTA would welcome Shugden worshippers unless they parted with their practice. But that would mean the Sikyong Lobsang Sangay deliberately lied when he answered that the government has been trying to engage Dorje Shugden practitioners in dialogue since 1975 but to no avail.
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Who is the liar? The ex-Kalon Tripa or the current Sikyong or perhaps, both?
These must surely be some of the most morally and intellectually corrupt statements made in modern history and once we get over the shock of their sheer absurdity, it is vital that we realize the significance of such corruption within the upper echelons of the Tibetan leadership. All Tibetan people must remember this each time they wonder why, after half a century, the Tibetan people are still in the wilderness as the rest of the world moves on. How can anyone trust such a government and how can anything undertaken by such a government be accepted as being genuine and sincere? Every Tibetan, regardless of their stance on Dorje Shugden, should be concerned.
Deception #7: The Middle Way Approach was democratically approved
These lies and deceptions are extremely costly to the Tibetan people. For example, in June 1988 at Strasbourg, the Dalai Lama announced that he was giving up his demand for Tibet’s full independence from the Chinese government and would instead veer his efforts towards securing ‘full autonomy’. The Dalai Lama also stated clearly that ultimately the Tibetan people must decide for themselves in a nationwide referendum, which the Dalai Lama directed the Tibetan exile government to conduct. But there was never a true referendum carried out as the process was corrupted by vested interest within the government.
The writer and activist, Jamyang Norbu, chronicled the lies and deceptions of the Dalai Lama and the CTA regarding the Middle Way Approach in his writing:
The Great Middleway Referendum Swindle
One of the first referendum meetings was held at Rajpur, a settlement relatively close to Dharamshala. That same evening at the Amnye Machen Institute we received a phone call from a former reporter for MANGTSO who had attended the meeting. He told us that in their presentation, the MPs had dropped not very subtle hints that failure to vote for [Middle Way Approach] would be tantamount to disloyalty to the Dalai Lama. The public became confused but also very angry. A former (very) senior Kashag minister, Mr. W.G. Kundeling, who had retired to Rajpur was the first to speak after the MPs. He flat out declared that he found the whole idea of giving up the goal of independence unacceptable but that he also had no desire to go against the wishes of His Holiness. He would therefore not take part in such a referendum. Others spoke up, saying much the same thing. A few also pointed out that since the Dalai Lama had openly declared that his MWA policy had failed in his last two 10th March statements how could he now be asking the public to vote for MWA?
Just about everyone involved in what was intended to be a referendum refused to participate and yet the exile government under the then Prime Minister, Samdhong Rinpoche twisted the fiasco and through some sly machinations and misrepresentations, passed a resolution that amongst other things stated:
Among the views received from the Tibetan public, following a preliminary poll, the majority expressed preference for dispensing with the referendum, leaving it to His Holiness the Dalai Lama to take decisions from time to time in accordance with the prevailing political situation and circumstance. Altogether 64.60 percent of the opinions received demanded that the referendum be not held and favoured for His Holiness and the Central Tibetan Administration to decide.
We see the same trickery and chicanery employed by the CTA in the way they cheated the Tibetan people of their independence cause, repeating in the way the Shugden religious conflict was conjured out of thin air.
There was never a public referendum that approved of the shift in policy from Independence to The Middle Way. Such public approval was falsely manufactured by the government. Similarly, there was never a general consensus authorizing the CTA and Kashag to pass resolutions that outlawed the practice of Dorje Shugden, as Samdhong Rinpoche and various CTA leaders have claimed time and time again. In both cases, the government blatantly lied.
Furthermore we see that in order to arm-twist the Tibetan people into conformity, the CTA regularly leverages on the Dalai Lama’s name and would frame any position that does not fit in with their agenda as acts of betrayal against the Dalai Lama. Not to vote for the Middle Way was an act of disloyalty to the Dalai Lama. Similarly, not to obey the illegal Shugden ban was an act of treason, as it was to be associated with a Shugden practitioner.
And we see how the CTA does not hesitate to invent numbers (e.g. “64.6% of the people demanded that a referendum not be held”), statistics and ‘facts’ to give the impression that they are acting on the will of the Tibetan people and for the good of the people. Virtually all the accusations against Dorje Shugden have been fabrications as are claims that Shugden worshippers are Chinese agents. The CTA has never produced any proof whatsoever.
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With whom does Samdhong Rinpoche’s loyalty lie? With the Tibetan people, the Dharma or himself?
The following incidences show that manipulating the people is not a rare anomaly by a few corrupt leaders but a culture of deception which is routine in the CTA. And when we consider that these are issues of the highest importance to the Tibetan people, it is frightening to think that nothing is sacred to the CTA – not Tibetan independence that tens of thousands have fought and sacrificed for over the decades, not the future of the Tibetan people in exile who have placed their complete trust in the CTA and certainly not the preservation of pure Buddhist lineages and traditions.
CTA on the Highway to Autocracy
By Mila Rangzen
“The CTA’s attempts to get the final say from US consulates since 2009 on the issuance of visas to Tibetans is a top-down plot to control and eliminate aspirations of independence or any other form of opposition to its stance. Those who are vocal about independence in particular and critical of CTA inactions in general will be denied visas to US on one pretext or the other. If Sikyong Lobsang Sangay applies this unconstitutional control of the Tibetan thought, speech and movement; violence, bloodshed and assassinations as a payback among our community cannot be ruled out completely”
The Middle Way Approach of the Dalai Lama – A Self-Deception?
By Tenpel
“In that essay [Elliot Sperling] thoroughly questions the effectiveness of the Middle Way Approach of the Dalai Lama and the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) and a cult of personality of the Dalai Lama that prevents to question the effectiveness of the Middle Way Approach and that undermines and ignores all other opinions. According to Sperling, the drive within the CTA has led to a situation where “the Dalai Lama was unwittingly turned into the prime spokesperson against Tibetan independence, to the benefit of China.”
The analysis of Elliot Sperling with the title “Self-Delusion” (in German Selbsttäuschung – “Die Politik des Mittleren Weges ist realitätsfern“) Sperling is pointing out how the CTA and the Dalai Lama have undermined unintentionally [?] the Tibet independence movement and have weakened thereby the Tibet cause”.
The Great Middleway Referendum Swindle
By Jamyang Norbu
“It is this assertion that keeps appearing again and again in many CTA statements:
- The Middle-Way Approach was adopted democratically
- The mutually beneficial Middle-Way policy… adopted democratically by the overwhelming majority of the Tibetans…
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama has proposed the Middle Way Approach and has been adopted democratically by Tibetans
- The Middle-Way policy was adopted democratically — through unanimous agreement
Every one of these statements are bald-faced lies. There is no other way to express it. If I tried to put it any more diplomatically I am afraid I might end up telling a lie myself”
And,
“The Middle Way was not adopted democratically. Far from it. Instead the lies and swindles of officials and MPs led by Samdhong Rinpoche, to foist a phony referendum on the exile public have undoubtedly undermined Tibetan democracy. They also effectively sabotaged His Holiness’s genuine attempts, in 1995 and 2008, to democratically consult with the Tibetan people and find a workable alternative to the Middle Way Approach”.
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Over a hundred Tibetan lives were lost through self-immolation while hopes of a free Tibet are being destroyed by the CTA
The Tibetan people should not delude themselves that anything remotely close to a solution that would see their return to their homeland is anywhere in sight. Not as long as the CTA is staffed by deceitful politicians who do not hesitate to prey on their own kin while the rest of the people stand impotently.
The CTA may have fooled the Tibetan people for over half a century but it is clear to China as well as the rest of the world, what kind of government the CTA is. And unless this changes, the Tibetans can expect to remain as refugees and see their culture and religion wither away by the winds of change and time.
The Tibetan people’s war is not with China, at least not for the moment. Before the people can imagine taking on China with even the slightest chance of success, they must first confront their own government, the CTA, whose culture of deception has robbed the Tibetan people for decades.
Samdhong Rinpoche’s staggering dishonesty as demonstrated by a single speech to young Tibetan minds is typical of the CTA. Imagine the decay after 50 years of such corruption. It is disconcerting to think that this is the administration that is seeking the world’s support to govern a population of 6 million people and asking to be trusted to efficiently manage an ultra-sensitive geopolitical environment.
The same politicians now divide the Tibetan nation further with an unjust and unsubstantiated religious ban so as to distract the people from the issue of independence and to weaken the collective call for Rangzen permanently. After all, what is a religious ban if the CTA can trade away the freedom and future of an entire nation of Tibetan people? And yet, the people continue to rally blindly behind the CTA as it drives in the final wedge that could be the death of a splintering Tibetan unity, badly needed to secure the people’s future.
It is time for Tibetans the world over to open their eyes and see the truth behind the lies; not the rhetoric and deification of those who may wish to sell you their version of their “truth” behind smoke and mirrors, but to look at the facts for what they are rather than who is saying it.
Read Samdhong Rinpoche’s full speech at TCV Suja
(click image to enlarge)
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(Source: http://buddhism-controversy-blog.com/2014/07/21/the-middle-way-of-the-dalai-lama-a-self-deception/)
Read Jamyang Norbu’s full article
(click image to enlarge)
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Click on image to enlarge
(Source: http://www.jamyangnorbu.com/blog/2014/09/03/the-great-middleway-referendum-swindle/)
In Sanskrit ‘Mudra’ means ‘absolute necessity’ and ‘Maha’ means ‘great understanding’. The root text, also known as ‘The Great Seal of Voidness’ was composed by the 4th Panchen Lama, Lobsang Chokyi Gyaltsen (1570-1662), who was the tutor of the Great Fifth Dalai Lama as well as Tulku Drakpa Gyeltsen.
Geshe Lobsang Sopa, a contemporary of Trijang Chocktrul Rinpoche, is a highly accomplished Geshe who completed his studies in all aspects of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy. As a young boy, Geshe Sopa received his ordination vows and studied in Ganden Shartse Mahayana University.
Geshe Lobsang Phuntsok was born in 1969. He started his education in a Tibetan school for seven years before joining Ganden Shartse Mahayana University at the age of 12.
Geshe Cheme Tsering is a highly qualified Buddhist teacher. He studied in the Central Institute of Tibetan Higher Studies from 1972 to 1976 before joining Ganden Shartse Norling College as an ordained monk from 1976 until present.
Venerable Tharchen Lobsang studied in the Tibetan Children’s Village School in Dharamsala from 1962 to 1974. At the age of 15, he was ordained by Kyabje Trijang Dorje Chang. Since then, he has studied Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy at Ganden Shartse University in south India, where he received many great teachings from many great Buddhist masters.
Mrs. Kunsang Dechen was born in Leh/Ladakh India. She is the daughter of Venerable Drigung Rinpoche and Gangchen Drolma. Kunsang has two siblings, an elder brother, the recognized Kagyupa Lama Ayang Dupchen Rinpoche, and a younger sister, Dolma Lhamo.
Tashi Jamyang was born in Lhasa, Tibet in 1933. At the age of five he was offered to Kyabje Trijang Dorje Chang by his parents. Under the guidance of Kyabje Trijang Dorje Chang he studied in Nyarong Sha school in Lhasa for eight years.