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ROBERT THURMAN, PH.D., Became the First Westerner to Be Ordained As a Tibetan Buddhist Monk by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

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ROBERT THURMAN, PH.D., Became the First Westerner to Be Ordained As a Tibetan Buddhist Monk by His Holiness the Dalai Lama Listening inWith … In 1964, ROBERT THURMAN, PH.D., became the first Westerner to be ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. These days, Thurman is no longer a monk; instead, he’s a Buddhist scholar and professor at Columbia University—not to mention an author, a speaker, a retreat center spiritual director, and cofounder of an organization dedicated to preserving Tibetan culture. Here, the self-professed WASB (white Anglo-Saxon Buddhist) talks to Unity Magazine editor Katy Koontz about Jesus’ bodhisattva status and what it’s like to be buddies with one of the most popular spiritual leaders on the planet. Robert Thurman CLOSE FRIENDS IN FARAWAY PLACES Katy Koontz: How did you first knew much about Buddhism until sense. I did ask him a lot of questions become interested in Buddhism? I met the Tibetans. And the minute about Buddhism, but he would usually I met them, I felt something. I was deflect them to the old teachers, and Robert Thurman: I was very home. I later felt strongly that I’d had then he and I would start talking about interested in philosophy in high a previous life as a Tibetan because Sigmund Freud, or Albert Einstein, or school and read works written by I learned the language unusually quantum physics, or how to make an many important philosophers. I felt quickly, even for someone who is A-bomb. something was missing, though, so good at languages in general. We met twice a week for more than I began to read spiritual works, but I just loved the Buddhist a year. Finally, because we became I didn’t like conventional theism. I philosophical works about emptiness such great friends, he forgot about was not into the picture of the old and selflessness (which are actually the advice of the old lama, and he did guy with the white beard up there scientific theories) as well as ordain me as a full monk. bossing people around. compassion (which has scientifically At the time, I didn’t necessarily established benefits for all concerned). admire him as an enlightened KK: I can relate! It gave me a purpose to aim for and a high teacher but as a friend and a path to the answers I was seeking. It sincere, wonderful person. I was not RT: I also never quite took to the idea really kindled me, and so I wanted to that much into the Dalai Lama bit. of the crucified Jesus. I liked what be a monk. I went whole hog into it. Even he wasn’t taking himself that Jesus had to say, but I didn’t really like seriously. He was of course very kind this idea of the sacrifice. So I became KK: How did you befriend His to everybody, but he wasn’t acting very intrigued with Eastern thought, Holiness the Dalai Lama? like, “I’m the cat’s meow.” He was and my real interest was in India. acting like, “I still have a lot to learn.” When I was an undergrad at RT: I met him when he was 29 and I Harvard, I had an accident and lost was 23. I’d returned to the U.S. for my KK: That’s a wonderful hallmark of a an eye, which I considered a kind father’s funeral, and I met a Mongolian master, of course. of wake-up call. I decided I wanted who had a tiny monastery in New to figure out how the world works Jersey. He became my root teacher, but RT: Exactly. and what the purpose of life is. I he didn’t want to make me a monk. wasn’t finding satisfactory answers in “It’s good to be a devotee,” he told me, KK: So what was it like being friends Western culture, and I felt somehow “but you were born in New York, and with the most powerful and exalted that India had the answer I wanted. maybe you have another mission that’s figure in Tibetan Buddhism? So I left the university, although not being a Tibetan monk because, unfortunately, my wife at the time actually, you’re not a Tibetan.” Finally, RT: One great thing about His didn’t want to go with me. in 1964, after I’d been bothering him Holiness is that he’s not stuck in his for two years, he took me back to India 24-hour “holiness” identity. You don’t KK: It sounds like you were really and introduced me to His Holiness, have to kowtow every time you see driven. who was amazed I was speaking him. He believes that you can be Tibetan fluently. enlightened without being a Buddhist. RT: Yes, I was very driven to find He’d been hungering for a He had a great influence on making meaning. On my way to India, I conversation partner who could me a better Christian in the same way visited some Christian monasteries in speak Tibetan and English; someone that Laurance Rockefeller once said Greece and some Sufi communities who knew something about Western the Dalai Lama was the best Christian in Turkey. I also traveled to Syria, studies that he hadn’t had a chance to he knew, meaning he was trying to live Iran (which was under the shah at the study in Tibet, although he was already those virtues. time), Afghanistan, and Pakistan. I very learned. He recommended me I might’ve been a little too dogmatic then met a bunch of Hindus in India. to his senior teachers for studies, and about Buddhism in my 20s and 30s. I didn’t find anyone in India who we were like fellow students in that His Holiness pressed me, saying, UNITYMAGAZINE.ORG MAY/JUNE 2016 25 “Don’t be like that. Jesus was a great KK: Busted! figure in the Tibetan stream of things. bodhisattva or maybe even a Buddha. So I returned to India and saw the You never know. He was just teaching RT: I began to realize the wisdom of Dalai Lama again. people Christianity because that’s what what he was saying because although He was upset with me because he they could use. Don’t get all sectarian I liked being with the Dalai Lama, hadn’t had a personal explanation and freak out about it. That’s very bad.” I realized they didn’t really need of why I ceased being a monk. But another mouth to feed in Dharamsala. by then, I had married my current KK: So why did you decide to hang up The Tibetans in exile were in dire wife, and he liked her so much, and your monk’s robes? circumstances. I wasn’t able to really he thought our children were very give them the help they needed, extraordinary. At that time, we had RT: After a year and a half, I was sent although they were helping me, and it only two—my older son, Ganden, on a mission to Argentina where they didn’t seem fair in the long run. And and my daughter, Uma—and he said hoped to make a Tibetan settlement, the monastery in New Jersey was really they must’ve had their own destiny which didn’t work out. I then returned in the Mongolian community; it wasn’t to want to have me as a father, so to the monastery in New Jersey in the serving Americans. There was no therefore, I had to be an ex-monk, mid-1960s, when both the civil rights American Tibetan monastery. and he forgave me. GOOD FRIENDS ACCEPT EACH OTHER UNCONDITIONALLY ON A BASIC LEVEL, BUT ON A DEVELOPMENTAL LEVEL, THEY SHOULD CHALLENGE EACH OTHER TO DO BETTER, FEEL BETTER, AND BE BETTER, HAPPIER DAY BY DAY. movement and the anti-Vietnam I wanted to be helpful but War movement were getting under wasn’t helping anybody as a white At one point, Ganden (who was 3) way. All my peers and my old friends Buddhist monk. None of my family took a running leap into His Holiness’s were deeply engaged in something members or friends thought it made lap to give him a hug, and he knocked meritorious of that kind, and I got sense. Years later, my daughter said his glasses across the room by accident. involved in some protest marches. that I looked like [author] Henry The secretary looked worried and Then some of my friends were also Miller in drag with my red robe and rushed to pick up the glasses, but His into the psychedelic movement. While shaved head. Holiness was delighted, laughing and psychedelics can open the door, by So I resigned my robes. I decided hugging my son. It was a wonderful themselves, they’ll just be bad for your the Western equivalent of a monk moment. health in the long run. You really have was a professor. I went back to to do a spiritual discipline and train Harvard and finished my English KK: That’s incredibly sweet! in meditation. So I was into helping major and then I got into the reform my friends. I was becoming a graduate school for my master’s, and RT: By that time, he’d become a top- bit of a sensation—the monk who was in record time I got a Ph.D. in both of-the-line Buddhist philosopher. trying to help the American idealistic East Asian and South Asian studies, The book I was translating is very youth straighten themselves out. and also in Buddhology.
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