Robert Thurman

Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman (born August 3, 1941) is an American Buddhist author and academic who has written, edited, and translated several books on Tibetan Buddhism. He was the Je Tsongkhapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, before retiring in June 2019. He was the first endowed chair in Buddhist Studies in the West. He also is the co-founder and president of the Tibet House US New York. He translated the Vimalakirti Sutra from the Tibetan Kanjur into English. He is the father of actress Uma Thurman and grandfather of Maya Hawke.

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). He is of English, German, Scottish, and Scots-Irish/Northern Irish descent. 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.

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. Their daughter Taya Thurman was born on March 5, 1961.

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. After the accident, Thurman says, he decided to refocus his life, divorcing de Menil and traveling from 1961 to 1966 in Turkey, Iran and India. In India he taught English to exiled tulkus (Tibetan lamas). 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. Thurman became a Buddhist and went back to India where, due to Wangyal's introduction, Thurman studied with Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. Thurman was ordained by the Dalai Lama in 1965, the first American Buddhist monk of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and the two became close friends.

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.

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.

In 1986, at the request of the Dalai Lama, Thurman created Tibet House US along with his wife Nena, Richard Gere and Philip Glass. 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. In 2009, Thurman starred in Rosa von Praunheim's film History of Hell - Rosas Höllenfahrt.

Time named Thurman one of the 25 most influential Americans of 1997. 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. In 2020 he was a recipient of India's prestigious Padma Shri Award for literature and education.