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Robert Thurman | |
|---|---|
 Thurman in 2016 | |
| Born | Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman August 3, 1941 New York City, U.S. |
| Died | June 16, 2026 (aged 84) Woodstock, New York, U.S. |
| Other names | Bob Thurman, Alexander Thurman, Alecsander Thermen |
| Alma mater | Harvard University (BA, MA, PhD) |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 5, including Uma |
| Relatives | Dash Snow, Maya Hawke, and Levon Hawke (grandchildren) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies |
| Institutions | |
| Daniel H. H. Ingalls Sr. | |
Doctoral students | Christian K. Wedemeyer |
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Robert Thurman receiving ICT’s Light of Truth Award from His Holiness in 2003 in Washington, DC.
The Tibet world suffered a major loss this week with the passing of Robert Thurman, renowned scholar of Tibetan Buddhism and retired Columbia University Professor. Bob was a force of nature who was a tireless advocate for the Tibetan people, religion, culture and way of life.
A true leader without whom thousands of people from around the world would not have been exposed to or educated about Tibetan Buddhism, Bob made Buddhism accessible to the American people, translating the religion so that it could be better understood by a western audience. He hosted decades of teachings of the Dalai Lama in New York City and wrote several prominent books on Tibetan Buddhism and the Dalai Lama. The International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) honored Bob with the Light of Truth award in 2003 for his significant contributions to public understanding of Tibet and its people.
“Bob was a steadfast friend and tireless advocate for the Tibetan people and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. In co-founding Tibet House New York, together we were able to do much to spread awareness of the profundity of Tibetan culture and the truth of the Chinese invasion and occupation that continues till today,” said ICT Chair Richard Gere. “In organizing the very successful International Year of Tibet in 1991, we showcased a flurry of activities in different parts of the US and the World. Tibet took center stage for that year. Bob was a completely unique, brilliant and charismatic free thinker. It’s a shock to lose him.”
Bob testified before Congress on the situation in Tibet and the need for the United States to strongly support the Tibetan cause.
Recognized as a worldwide authority on religion and spirituality, Asian history, philosophy and Tibetan Buddhism, Robert Thurman was the Je Tsongkhapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University until his retirement in 2019. After learning Tibetan and studying Buddhism initially with Geshe Wangyal, a Tibetan Buddhist monk of Kalmyk heritage, he traveled to India, became a monk and was ordained by the Dalai Lama, the first Westerner to earn that distinction. In 1987, he co-founded Tibet House US, a non-profit organization in New York City dedicated to the preservation and renaissance of Tibetan civilization.
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Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman (August 3, 1941 – June 16, 2026) was an American Buddhist author and academic who wrote, edited, and translated books about Tibetan Buddhism. He was the Je Tsongkhapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, before retiring in 2019.[1] He held the first endowed chair in Buddhist Studies in the West.[1] He was the co-founder and president of Tibet House US, New York and its Menla Retreat & Dewa Spa in Phoenicia, NY. He translated the Vimalakirti Sutra from the Tibetan Kangyur into English. He was the father of actress Uma Thurman, and grandfather of Maya Hawke.
Early life and education
Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman was born in New York City, the son of Elizabeth Dean Farrar (1907–1973), a stage actress, and Beverly Reid Thurman Jr. (1909–1962), an Associated Press editor and U.N. translator (French and English).[2] He was of English, German, Scottish, and Scots-Irish/Northern Irish descent.[2] His brother, John Thurman, is a professional concert cellist who performs with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy from 1954 to 1958, then went to Harvard University, where he obtained his B.A. in 1962. He later returned to Harvard for graduate study in Sanskrit, receiving an M.A. in 1969 and a Ph.D. in 1972.[3]
On June 7, 1960, he married Marie-Christophe de Menil, daughter of Dominique de Menil and John de Menil and heiress to the Schlumberger Limited oil-equipment fortune.[4][3][5] Their daughter Taya Thurman was born on March 5, 1961.[6][7]
Career
In 1961 Thurman lost his left eye in an accident "involving a racecar and a car jack", and the eye was replaced with a glass eye.[8][9] After the accident, Thurman said, he decided to refocus his life, divorcing de Menil and traveling from 1961 to 1966 in Turkey, Iran, and India.[3][6] In India he taught English to exiled tulkus (Tibetan lamas)[3] in Dalhousie[10] where the Young Lamas Home School was transferred. After his father's death in 1962, Thurman came back to the United States and in New Jersey met Geshe Wangyal, a Kalmyk Buddhist monk from Mongolia who became his first guru.[11][3] Thurman became a Buddhist and went back to India where, due to Wangyal's introduction, Thurman studied with Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama.[6][12] Thurman was ordained by the Dalai Lama in 1965, the first American Buddhist monk of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition,[13] and the two became close friends.[12][14]
In 1967, Thurman returned to the United States and renounced his monk status (which required celibacy) to marry the German-Swedish model and psychotherapist Nena von Schlebrügge, who was divorced from Timothy Leary.[6]
Thurman then worked towards his Ph.D. in Sanskrit Indian Studies from Harvard, which he obtained in 1972. He went on to become professor of religion at Amherst College from 1973 to 1988, then the Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, retiring in 2020.[3][15]
In 1986, at the request of the Dalai Lama, Thurman created Tibet House US along with his wife Nena, Richard Gere, and Philip Glass.[16] Tibet House US is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to help preserve Tibetan Culture in exile. In 2001, the Pathwork Center, a 320-acre (1.3 km2) retreat center on Panther Mountain in Phoenicia, New York, was donated to Tibet House US. Thurman and von Schlebrügge renamed the center Menla Retreat and Dewa Spa. Menla (the Tibetan name for the Medicine Buddha) was developed into a state-of-the-art healing arts center grounded in the Tibetan Medical tradition in conjunction with other holistic paradigms.[17]
Recognition and awards
Time named Thurman one of the 25 most influential Americans of 1997.[18] In 2003 he received the Light of Truth Award, a human rights award from the International Campaign for Tibet. New York Magazine named him as one of the "Influentials" in religion in 2006.[19] In 2020 he was a recipient of India's prestigious Padma Shri Award for literature and education.[20][21]
Thurman is considered to have been a pioneering, creative, and talented translator of Buddhist literature by many of his English-speaking peers. Speaking of Thurman's translation of Tsongkhapa's Essence of Eloquence (Legs bshad snying po), Matthew Kapstein (professor at the University of Chicago and Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris) wrote that "the Essence of Eloquence is famed in learned Tibetan circles as a text of unparalleled difficulty. ... To have translated it into English at all must be reckoned an intellectual accomplishment of a very high order. To have translated it to all intents and purposes correctly is a staggering achievement."[22] Similarly, prominent Buddhologist Jan Nattier has praised the style of Thurman's translation of the Vimalakīrti Sūtra, praising it as among the very best of translations of that important Indian Buddhist scripture.[23]
Personal life and death
Twice married, Robert Thurman was the father of five children and grandfather to eight grandchildren. With Marie-Christophe de Menil, he had one daughter, Taya; their grandson was the artist Dash Snow.[3] He also has a great-granddaughter through Snow.[24] Robert and Nena Thurman had four children, including Ganden, who is executive director of Tibet House US, actress Uma Thurman, Dechen, and Mipam.[6][7]
Robert and Nena's children grew up in Woodstock, New York, where the Thurmans had bought nine acres of land with a small inheritance Nena had received. The Thurmans built their own house there.[7]
Thurman died on June 16, 2026 in Woodstock, New York, at the age of 84.[25][26]
Selected publications
- The Central Philosophy of Tibet: A Study and Translation of Jey Tsong Khapa's Essence of True Eloquence, Princeton University Press, 1991 ISBN 9780691020679
- The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Natural Liberation Through Understanding in the Between Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1994 (translations in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Russian) ISBN 9780553370904
- Essential Tibetan Buddhism, Castle Books, 1995 ISBN 9780062510518
- Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet, with Marilyn Rhie Abrams, 1996 ISBN 0810939851
- Mandala: The Architecture of Enlightenment, with Denise P. Leidy, Shambhala Publications, 1997 ISBN 9780500280188, ISBN 978-0500280188
- World of Transformation: Masterpieces of Tibetan Sacred Art in the Donald Rubin Collection, with Marilyn Rhie, Tibet House US/Abrams, 1999 ISBN 9780810963870
- Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Happiness, Penguin, 1999 ISBN 9781573227193
- Circling the Sacred Mountain: A Spiritual Adventure Through the Himalayas with Tad Wise, Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1999 ISBN 9780553103465
- The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti: A Mahayana Scripture, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000, ISBN 9780271012094
- Infinite Life: Seven Virtues for Living Well, Riverhead Books, 2004, ISBN 9781594480690
- The Universal Vehicle Discourse Literature (with Lozang Jamspal, et al.), Columbia University Press, 2005 ISBN 9780975373408
- The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism, Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2005 ISBN 9780743257633
- Visions of Tibet: Outer, Inner, Secret, photographs by Brian Kistler, introduction by Robert Thurman, ed. Thomas Yarnell, Overlook Duckworth, 2005, ISBN 978-1585677412
- Anger: of the Seven Deadly Sins, Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 9780195169751
- Life and Teachings of Tsongkhapa, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 2006, ISBN 9788186470442
- Why the Dalai Lama Matters: His Act of Truth as the Solution for China, Tibet and the World, Atria Books/Beyond Words, 2008, ISBN 9781582702209
- A Shrine for Tibet: The Alice Kandell Collection with Marylin Rhie, Overlook, 2010 ISBN 9780967011578, ISBN 978-1590203101
- Tsong Khapa’s Extremely Brilliant Lamp, Robert Thurman, 2010, ISBN 978-1-935011-00-2
- Brilliant Illumination of the Lamp of the Five Stages, Columbia University Press, 2011, ISBN 9781935011002
- Love Your Enemies: How To Break the Anger Habit & Be a Whole Lot Happier with Sharon Salzberg, Hay House, 2013 ISBN 9781401928148
- My Appeal to the World, 14th Dalai Lama, Sofia Stril-Rever, compiler, Robert Thurman, foreword, Tibet House US, Hay House, 2015, ISBN 978-0967011561
- Man of Peace: The Illustrated Life Story of the Dalai Lama of Tibet, graphic novel, William Meyers, Robert Thurman, Michael G. Burbank, initiated artistically by Rabkar Wangchuk, art a team effort of five artists coordinated by Steve Buccellato and Michael Burbank, Tibet House US, ISBN 978-1941312032
References
- "Robert A. F. Thurman | Department of Religion". Columbia University. December 21, 2019. Archived from the original on December 21, 2019. Retrieved April 10, 2020.
Robert Thurman held the first endowed chair in Buddhist Studies in the West, the Jey Tsong Khapa Chair in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies (...)
- "Ancestry of Uma Thurman".
- Binelli, Mark (August 1, 2013). "Robert Thurman, Buddha's Power Broker". Men's Journal.
- The Houston Post, 12 June 1960, page 8, section 7, column 3.
- Foege, Alec (July 13, 1998). "Guiding Light". People. Retrieved April 9, 2016.
- Kamenetz, Rodger (May 5, 1996). "Robert Thurman Doesn't Look Buddhist". The New York Times Magazine.
- Green, Penelope (May 20, 2017). "50 Years of Marriage and Mindfulness With Nena and Robert Thurman". The New York Times.
- Jennifer Armstrong, "Robert Thurman, Buddha's Champion", lionsroar.com, 5 February 2019.
- Roberts, John B.; Roberts, Elizabeth A. (2009), "Freeing Tibet: 50 years of struggle, resilience, and hope", AMACOM Div American MGMT Assn: 160, ISBN 978-0-8144-0983-1, retrieved September 19, 2011
- Arpi, Claude (April 21, 2010). "Why the Dalai Lama Matters". Rediff.com.
- Keishin Armstrong, Jennifer (February 5, 2019). "Robert Thurman, Buddha's Champion". Lion's Roar. Retrieved February 21, 2021.
- Valpy, Michael (September 1, 2006). "Bob Thurman's Cool Revolution". Lion's Roar. Archived from the original on June 18, 2023. Retrieved February 4, 2018.
- Kamenetz, Rodger (May 5, 1996). "Robert Thurman Doesn't Look Buddhist". New York Times. Retrieved October 26, 2019.
- "Why We Need Monasticism". Lion's Roar. June 1, 2010.
- Lilly Greenblatt, "Celebrating Robert A. F. Thurman on his 82nd birthday", lionsroar.com, 3 August 2023,
- Hoban, Phoebe (March 15, 1998). "Thurmans All Come Out to Play". The New York Times.
- Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman. Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2007.
- Time's 25 most influential Americans. Time, 21 April 1997
- Heilemann, John (May 15, 2006). "The Influentials: Religion". New York Magazine. Retrieved October 26, 2019.
- "Padma Awards 2020 Announced". pib.gov.in.
- The Hindu Net Desk (January 26, 2020). "Full list of 2020 Padma awardees". The Hindu.
- "Review of Robert Thurman, Tsong Khapa's Speech of Gold in the Essence of True Eloquence in Philosophy East and West XXXVI.2 (1986): 184
- “The Teaching of Vimalakīrti (Vimalakīrtinirdeśa): A Review of Four English Translations” by Jan Nattier in Buddhist Literature 2 (2000), pg. 234-258
- Feuer, Alan; Salkin, Allen (July 24, 2009). "Terrible End for an Enfant Terrible". The New York Times.
- "Padma Shri Awardee And Noted Buddhist Scholar Robert Thurman Passes Away At 84". DDNews.gov. June 17, 2026. Retrieved June 17, 2026.
- "Robert Thurman, Academic and Father of Uma Thurman, Dies at 84". People. June 17, 2026. Retrieved June 17, 2026.
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Inspirational Quotes by Robert Thurman
Robert Thurman, a renowned American Buddhist scholar and author, often speaks on compassion, wisdom, and the transformative power of letting go. Here are some of his most memorable quotes:
“Wisdom is tolerance of cognitive dissonance.” — Robert Thurman A-Z Quotes
“When all is lost, when all is let go of, when all is abandoned, what you are left with is an ocean of bliss.” — Robert Thurman A-Z Quotes
“Imagine a culture in which everything is geared toward helping all individuals become the best human beings they can be; in which individuals are driven to devoting their lives to becoming enlightened by the natural flood of compassion for others that arises from their wisdom.” — Robert Thurman A-Z Quotes
“You should never be ashamed of the suffering you’ve been through.” — Robert Thurman A-Z Quotes
“Struggling with the world and having the problem of you vs. the world is a really big problem. You’re going to lose because the world is so much bigger than you, and longer lasting.” — Robert Thurman QuoteFancy
“The worldly person is insane from the point of view of the spiritual person.” — Robert Thurman QuoteFancy
“More than whether you live or die, it’s how you are living or dying that is important.” — Robert Thurman QuoteFancy
“Buddhism is all about science. If science is the systematic pursuit of the accurate knowledge of reality, then science is Buddhism, Buddhism is science.” — Robert Thurman QuoteFancy
“The better teachers recognize that by freeing yourself of the rigid ego identity habit, you actually strengthen the resilient, flexible, creative ego, and you then can be more effective in helping others, and creative in whatever work you do.” — Robert Thurman QuoteFancy
“True wealth is contentment, and happiness is forgetting to worry how you are and how much you have.” — Robert Thurman QuoteFancy
These quotes reflect Thurman’s emphasis on compassion, inner transformation, and the integration of spiritual insight into daily life. They are drawn from his writings, interviews, and public talks, and they continue to inspire readers seeking wisdom and mindfulness.
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Robert Thurman, Leading Interpreter of Tibetan Buddhism, Dies at 84
A former monk who was also Uma Thurman’s father, he made sure Buddhism retained its intellectual and spiritual rigor as it spread through the West.
Robert Thurman, whose erudite, exuberant efforts to expand the West’s understanding of Tibetan Buddhism earned him a reputation as “the Dalai Lama’s man in America,” died on Tuesday at his home in Woodstock, N.Y. He was 84.
His daughter, the actress Uma Thurman, confirmed the death.
Widely considered the foremost expert on Tibetan Buddhism in the United States, Dr. Thurman was a former Buddhist monk who had been ordained and partly trained by the Dalai Lama himself. He later earned a doctorate in Indic studies from Harvard and taught at Amherst and Columbia.
He wrote, edited and translated more than 20 books on Buddhism. Some of them were centuries-old texts intended for scholars and advanced practitioners; others, like “Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Happiness” (1998), were written for the broader public and sold briskly.
As the 1970s counterculture embraced Eastern religious ideas, and Buddhism in particular, Dr. Thurman pushed for a historically grounded, intellectually rigorous understanding of the tradition.
“His translations went to the depths of the sophistication of the Tibetan exploration of consciousness,” David Kittay, a former student of Dr. Thurman’s at Columbia who now teaches religion there, said in an interview. “Yet he could explain it so anyone could get it.”
Tall, sturdily built and with a shock of reddish-blond hair, he brought an infectious energy to the many lectures and conferences he organized around Buddhism and the plight of Tibet under Chinese rule.
People were often surprised by how sociable he was, given his years as a monk.
“I don’t think he considered those to be contradictions,” Rodger Kamenetz, an expert on Buddhist-Jewish relations and the author of “Seeing Into the Life of Things: Imagination and the Sacred Encounter” (2025), said in an interview. “He viewed meditation not as quietism, but as a release of energy, and he just had great energy.”
In 1972 he founded the American Institute of Buddhist Studies at Columbia; the organization translates and preserves classical Indian Buddhist texts.
In 1987, at the Dalai Lama’s request, he and his wife, Nena, joined the actor Richard Gere and the composer Philip Glass in founding Tibet House U.S., a sort of cultural consulate in Manhattan for the Tibetan nation. Dr. Thurman later served for decades as its president.
He and his wife also operated a Buddhist retreat west of Woodstock, the Menla Retreat and Dewa Spa.
“My father was a magnificent, charismatic, passionate, curious, alive, vibrant human being,” Ms. Thurman said. “He never stopped investigating the world in all its facets. He was obsessed with the power of compassion.”
Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman was born on Aug. 3, 1941, in Manhattan. His parents — Beverly Thurman, a journalist, and Elizabeth Dean Farrar, an actress — hosted regular salons in their home; Robert once read lines alongside Laurence Olivier, one of their guests.
He enrolled in boarding school at Phillips Exeter Academy, in New Hampshire. He was expelled in 1958 — weeks from graduation, having already been accepted at Harvard — after leaving without permission to join Fidel Castro and his guerrilla army in Cuba. He was stopped in Florida and worked for a brief time in Mexico.
In 1959, he married Christophe de Menil, an oil heiress. In 1961, while changing a flat tire, the tire iron slipped and destroyed his left eye, a freak accident that left him questioning his own mortality.
He dropped out of Harvard to travel across Asia. His wife, uninterested in his wanderings, left him. He arrived in Turkey close to broke.
“I was already by about that time like St. Francis,” he told The New York Times Magazine in 1996. “I had an empty socket, long hair and a scraggly beard. I wore black baggy Afghani pants, a T-shirt with a white shawl thrown around me and leather sandals.”
He continued on through Iran to India, where he got a job teaching English to young reincarnated Tibetan lamas in exile. He immediately took to their beliefs and culture — “I was in heaven, because the minute I met the Tibetans, I knew they had what I wanted,” he told The Times.
He returned home when his father died in 1962, but continued his pursuit of Buddhist knowledge with Geshe Wangyal, a Buddhist lama in New Jersey. Adept at languages, he learned Tibetan in a matter of months and eventually spoke it without an accent.
He decided to become a monk and persuaded his teacher to accompany him to Dharamshala, India, the home in exile of the Dalai Lama.
Dr. Thurman and the Dalai Lama became fast friends: He studied under the Tibetan spiritual leader and, in turn, gave him lessons in Freudian psychology, nuclear physics and other Western ideas.
“He would say, ‘Forget about the teaching, you can go and talk to some old lama,’” Dr. Thurman told The San Francisco Examiner in 1997. “‘But now what I want to know is how does the bicameral American constitutional system work? What is a gene, how does it work?’”
The Dalai Lama ordained Dr. Thurman but, when he returned to the United States, Geshe Wangyal persuaded him that he could better serve Buddhism by doffing his robes and becoming a professor.
He returned to Harvard and, in 1972, received a doctorate in Indic studies — an interdisciplinary degree now known as Sanskrit and Indian studies. He taught at Amherst College from 1973 to 1988, when he transferred to Columbia. There, he held the first endowed chair in Buddhist studies in the West. He retired in 2019.
Soon after returning to Harvard, Dr. Thurman went to Millbrook, the estate in upstate New York where the psychiatrist Timothy Leary and his circle were experimenting with LSD; he was there in an attempt to get Dr. Leary to tone down the drug use.
In the kitchen, he met Nena von Schlebrügge, a model who was soon to be the ex-wife of Dr. Leary. They married in 1967.
She survives him along with their daughter Uma and three sons, Ganden, Dechen and Mipam; a daughter from his first marriage, Taya Thurman; seven grandchildren, including the actress Maya Hawke; and three great-grandchildren. Another grandchild, the artist Dash Snow, died in 2009.
Across his many lectures, translations and books, Dr. Thurman tried to communicate a few key ideas about Buddhism, above all that it was not just a religion in a narrow sense, but a system of ethical education.
“Buddhism is not primarily religious,” he told The Believer magazine in 2020. “It deteriorates if someone believes they will get to nirvana if they just worship the Buddha. But the Buddha was saying, ‘Worshipping me is not going to get you there; you have to do something.’”
Clay Risen is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.
