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Robert Thurman

 

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Contents
 
Biography
 
Robert A. Thurman
 
Named as one of Time magazines 25 most influential people of 1997, 
Robert A. Thurman, PhD., has been a college professor and writer for 30 years, and holds the first endowed chair in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in America.  co-founder and president of the non-profit oranization, Tibet House New York, he was the first Western Tibettan monk, and has shared a thirty-five year friendship with the Dalai Lama.
 
Thurman is also known as the father of actress Uma Thurman. More on this at 
http://members.tripod.com/erntheburn/cinema/uma/Parents.htm 
 
Quotations
 

Whether or not enlightenment is a plausible goal for us is a vital question for our lives.  If it is possible for us to attain such perfect enlightenment ourselves, our whole sense of  meaning and our place in the universe immediately changes.  To be open to the possibility is to be a spiritual seeker, no matter what our religion.  Enlightenment is not meant to be an object of religious faith.  It is an evolutionary goal…

 

Writings
 
"Is Enlightenment a Plausible Goal? "
 
Religious people, west and east, have always tended to feel there is a mysterious power of life in everything.  The appearance of darkness and pain and death is overcome by a glorious light of goodness in most forms of religion.  What Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Hindus call “God,” or perhaps “Godhead,” is a force of reality much like the infinite ocean-body of living joy that great Buddhist meditators experience.  When a believer asserts unshakable faith in the face of the worst experience or apparent reality, she or he is reaching for connection to the deepest awareness of infinite living energy.  Enlightened people do not see this boundlessness as something other than themselves.  They experience themselves as one with all gods and other beings.  They consider us all capable of becoming fully aware of our own freedom and happiness.  Faith in such a possibility is a good place to begin this journey to liberation; it encourages us to set forth.  But we all can move beyond faith to direct experience and full knowledge of our true state.   
 
Whether or not enlightenment is a plausible goal for us is a vital question for our lives.  If it is possible for us to attain such perfect enlightenment ourselves, our whole sense of  meaning and our place in the universe immediately changes.  To be open to the possibility is to be a spiritual seeker, no matter what our religion.  Enlightenment is not meant to be an object of religious faith.  It is an evolutionary goal, something we want to become, like president of the United States, a concert violinist, or a great poet.  Once we recognize the biological possibility of our evolving into beings of full understanding, we can begin to imagine ourselves as buddhas, awakened or enlightened beings.
 
“Buddha” is not a personal name.  It is a title, a state we can attain.  It means “awakened,” “blossomed,” “enlightened.  It is the blossoming of all happiness and positive powers.  By definition, being enlightened is a fully evolved way of living.  It is perfect freedom – a freedom so total it cannot be lost even in relationships.  It is perfect security, certain of its reality, perfection, and eternal bliss – it is the goal in the quest for happiness.
 
This evolutionary process and its result of buddhahood have profound effects on the individual, on the society one is a member of, and, by resonance, on the whole world.  These effects are incalculable by our usual yardsticks of self and social improvement, being a transformation of the very ground of the social contract.  A society of enlightened beings is bound to be an enlightened society. 
 
~  Robert A. F. Thurman, Inner Revolution : The Politics of Enlightenment , pp.86-87
 
 
 

 
Notes
 
Bibliography
 

Robert A. F. Thurman, Inner Revolution : The Politics of Enlightenment

Robert A. F. Thurman, Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of IndoTibetan Studies at Columbia University, Essential Tibetan Buddhism

Robert Thurman and Tad Wise, Circling the Sacred Mountain

Robert A. F. Thurman, The Central Philosophy of Tibet

Robert A. F. Thurman and Padma Sambhava, The Tibetan Book of the Dead

 
 
 
Links
 
Tibet House, New York  http://www.tibethouse.org
 
The Realpolitik of Spirituality~ A interview witrh the Dalai Lama by Robert Thurman
 
The Dalai Lama:  on China, hatred, and optimism ~ A conversation with Robert Thurman
 
VIMALAKIRTI NIRDESA SUTRA: translated by Robert A. F. Thurman
http://www.cyberhighway.net/~kwday/sutraidx.htm
 
Curing with Compassion
 
Virtual Tibet
 
Being Here Now on Broadway and 66th Street
 
Biographical Information
http://members.tripod.com/erntheburn/cinema/uma/Parents.htm 
 
Thurman sits on the editorial board of The Journal of Buddhist Ethics
 
Library Lecture Series & General Information on Thurman
 
 
 

 
 
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