Robert Thurman

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Template:Cleanup-date Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman (born August 4, 1941 in New York City) is the Je Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University and is the co-founder and president of Tibet House New York and currently holds the first endowed chair in this field of study in the United States. He is the father of five children including the actress Uma Thurman.

Dr. Thurman is highly-regarded for his lucid, dynamic translations and explanations of Buddhist religious and philosophical material, particularly that pertaining to the Gelukpa (dge-lugs-pa) school of Tibetan Buddhism and its founder, Je Tsong Khapa including Tsong Khapa's Speech of Gold: Reason and Enlightenment in the Central Philosophy of Tibet, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Essential Tibetan Buddhism, and his most recent, Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Happiness.

At the age of 24, he became the first Western monk of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. A close personal friend of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama,he has served as occasional translator to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. He has lectured all over the world; his charisma and enthusiasm draw packed audiences.

Robert Thurman's flair for the dramatic may be attributed to the weekly Shakespeare readings hosted by his parents, in which Robert participated alongside such guests as Laurence Olivier. He managed to get himself kicked out of Exeter just prior to graduation for playing hooky in a failed attempt to join Fidel Castro's Cuban guerrilla army in 1958. Harvard University admitted him anyway, but a deep dissatisfaction and questioning led him to drop out and he traveled on a "vision quest" as a pilgrim to India. Returning home to attend his father's funeral, he met a Mongolian monk, Geshe Wangyal, and thus began Thurman's life-long passion for Tibetan Buddhism.

In 1964, Geshe Wangyal introduced Thurman to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and described Robert as, "...a crazy American boy, very intelligent and with a good heart (though a little proud), who spoke Tibetan well and had learned something about Buddhism [and] wanted to become a monk…. Geshe Wangyal was leaving it up to His Holiness to decide." Thurman became the first Westerner to be ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk. He was 24 and the Dalai Lama 29. They eventually met weekly and His Holiness would quickly refer Thurman's questions concerning Buddhism to another teacher and turn the conversation to Sigmund Freud, physics, and other "Western" topics of interest to him. Thurman describes this phase of his life: "All I wanted was to stay in the 2,500-year-old Buddhist community of seekers of enlightenment, to be embraced as a monk. My inner world was rich, full of insights and delightful visions, with a sense of luck and privilege at having access to such great teachers and teachings and the time to study and try to realize them." But when he returned to the United States, Thurman found that his career as a monk was not viable, so "I decided that I wanted to learn more Buddhist languages, read more Buddhist texts.… The only lay institution in America comparable to monasticism is the university, so in the end I turned to academia."

Dr. Thurman is not only a scholar, but a champion of the preservation of Tibetan culture and Tibetan Freedom all over the United States and the world. In 1987, he and actor Richard Gere founded New York City's Tibet House, a nonprofit institution devoted to preserving the living culture of Tibet. Thurman writes, "What I have learned from these people [Tibetans] has forever changed my life, and I believe their culture contains an inner science particularly relevant to the difficult time in which we live. My desire is to share some of the profound hope for our future that they have shared with me."

1 Works
2 Multimedia
- 2.1 External links
- 2.2 Reference

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Works

The Central Philosophy of Tibet: A Study and Translation of Jey Tsong Khapa's 'Essence of True Eloquence' (Princeton Library of Asian Translations, Princeton University Press, 1991)
The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1994)
Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet (H. Abrams, 1996)
Tibetan Buddhism (HarperSanFrancisco, 1996, ISBN 078816757X)
Mandala: The Architecture of Enlightenment (Shambhala Publications, 1997)
Worlds of Transformation: Tibetan Art of Wisdom and Compassion (Harry N. Abrams, 1999)
Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Happiness (Penguin, 1999)
Circling the Sacred Mountain: A Spiritual Adventure Through the Himalayas co-authored with Tad Wise (Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1999)
Infinite Life: Seven Virtues for Living Well (Riverhead Books, 2004, ISBN 1573222674)
The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism (Free Press, Simon Schuster, 2005)
Anger (Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0195169751)
The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti: A Mahayana Scripture (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000 ISBN 0-271-01209-9)