62+ Robert Thurman Quotes On Human Nature, Humanism And And Marriage

Robert Thurman is an American Buddhist writer and academic who has written extensively on Tibetan Buddhism. He is the co-founder and president of the Tibet House US and a professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University. He is the father of actress Uma Thurman and the first American to be ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Robert Thurman on life, love, leadership.

Top 10 Robert Thurman Quotes

1. Wisdom is tolerance of cognitive dissonance.
2. Buddhism is all about science. If science is the systematic pursuit of the accurate knowledge of reality, then science is Buddhism, Buddhism is science.
3. Hate poisons your life.
4. A possession can't make you happy.
5. The worldly person is insane from the point of view of the spiritual person.
6. Thich Nhat Hanh is one of the greatest teachers of our time. He reaches from the heights of insight down to the deepest places of the absolutely ordinary.
7. If you love your enemy, that means you want your enemy to be happy.
8. Enlightenment is not meant to be an object of religious faith. It is an evolutionary goal, something we want to become.
9. Nonviolence against humans cannot take firm hold in society as long as brutality and violence are practiced toward other animals.
10. Actually there's a very bad trend in some cults about how Guru's are supposed to be mean to their students, and there are some who revel in this and are abusive.

Robert Thurman Short Quotes

• You should never be ashamed of the suffering you've been through.
• More than whether you live or die, it's how you are living or dying that is important.
• I am daily making myself what I am.
• Live fully each day to the full . . .
• What makes me fully alive is anything. Really just being alive is enough.
• In the practice of exchanging self & other, paradoxes abound.

Robert Thurman Quotes About Life

The Buddhists think that, because we've all had infinite previous lives, we've all been each other's relatives. Therefore all of you, in the Buddhist view, in some previous life ... have been my mother - for which I do apologize for the trouble I caused you. — Robert Thurman

This question, Is loving your enemy a life practice?, I like that question. It is a life practice, certainly, for everyone. It relates to the idea of, Is this a householder practice or is it a monk practice? I think it's both. Everyone has that practice. — Robert Thurman

Therefore, what you do as a spiritual practitioner in this life shapes that. To seek and find this beautiful, continuing existence, where there can be more progress towards Buddha-hood, toward love, and wisdom, and helping all being etc. So that's the great value of it. — Robert Thurman

Everyone has the same life purpose, which is the quest of happiness for oneself and for others. — Robert Thurman

Robert Thurman Quotes About Love

It isn't the meaning of love where you somehow desire that one or you want them or want them to love you. — Robert Thurman

The problem in our society is the ego psychology and conventional wisdom about "look out for #1." That conventional wisdom thinks that "love your enemy" is to some a principle no one can ever live by. — Robert Thurman

That love, in the sense of wishing their happiness, will cause your actions to be effective in relation to that person. — Robert Thurman

You take up energy towards someone because you think loving your enemy doesn't just mean caving into your enemy. It means first of all liberating yourself. — Robert Thurman

Robert Thurman Quotes About Humanism

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

I think humans will find their humanity sometime, somehow. — Robert Thurman

Human beings are such social animals. We're very connected with the feelings of those we're close to, so we can't really be happy when the ones we are close to are unhappy. — Robert Thurman

Robert Thurman Quotes About Free

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

The point is that you free the ego. The ego is only a pronoun. It's a Greek first person pronoun, ergo. When you're in Greece you say, Ergo wants to take a bus, and you don't mean your ego wants to take a bus, like some big entity, you only mean I want to take a bus. — Robert Thurman

Those caught in the cycle of self-concern suffer helplessly, while the compassionate are more free and, implicitly, more happy. — Robert Thurman

Robert Thurman Famous Quotes And Sayings

The understanding of it [absolute] is very important as a beginning point. Then you can use meditation, further reasoning, long-term familiarity etc., you can use all kinds of methods to deepen this understanding and to have it counter the instinctual sense of being an absolute you. — Robert Thurman

People in Tibet have an expression. When you reach a certain degree of venerableness and age, and people ask, "How are you?," there is an expression that people use that means, "Just barely not dead." Some people might be frightened by it but I think it's quite funny. — Robert Thurman

The most important enemy for everyone is their own illusion that makes them unrealistic or exaggerates their sense of self-importance in the world. Ironically, you're the super secret enemy. Whether lay or householder, everyone has that internal enemy. — Robert Thurman

I think about the trends at the moment in the planet and how it looks for my grandchildren. I don't panic over it, even though rationally maybe I should. I have faith that these terrible trends will change, and they will not go to their logical conclusions of climate change, militarism, pollution, overpopulation. — Robert Thurman

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

However, because of your interconnectedness with all things, other beings still have a problem, and when you realize that you have no absolute self apart from things, you realize that essentially, you are all the other beings. — Robert Thurman

People are afraid that if they let go of their anger and righteousness and wrath, and look at their own feelings-and even see the good in a bad person-they're going to lose the energy they need to do something about the problem. But actually you get more strength and energy by operating from a place of love and concern. You can be just as tough, but more effectively tough. — Robert Thurman

They [Chinese] will need a sympathetic intercessor with other people in the world to avoid conflict and create trust, and of course, Dalai Lama would be ideal. In another ten years from now though, he won't have the time to be really effective for them. They're truly wasting their time not using him now. — Robert Thurman

You have to be responsible for yourself, refer to yourself, develop yourself, help others, whatever it may be. So we shouldn't have an idea that the whole thing is to shatter ones ego. — Robert Thurman

An absolute being would be irrelevant to the world, as it couldn't create it. Any action, or causal process that would involve them, would make them relational. An absolute is the opposite of relative. So that's easy to understand, however, even though we understand that intellectually, which is very important to do, you don't transform yourself completely, yet. — Robert Thurman

Take the example of people who are being most unrealistic - people who are beating monks to death and torturing them. Why shouldn't you be angry or hate that person? Well, the person who is doing that is very unhappy. They are being ordered by a higher-up. — Robert Thurman

A lot of people, after seeking a bit, have some experience, and sometimes will believe they're enlightened. One has to be careful about that. Especially Americans, who are very external stimulus oriented. When they have some type of deep inner experience, often they think that was the ultimate experience. — Robert Thurman

If your enemy is happy, then why would they be bothered to be your enemy? Being someone's enemy is no fun. It does not add to happiness. — Robert Thurman

You're more responsible ethically for being there with your interconnection to the world, but the you now is an always changing one, and you're responsible for how you change it. It's very important to understand that whole thing about the ego. — Robert Thurman

The problem has to be answered by means of art, because you can't blast them with bliss. Tat freaks them out even more. So instead, you have to have an artful way of approaching them. You do a dance for them, you get them to imagine being interconnected, and to imagine being free of their suffering, and not so self involved, through art that draws them out. Then you, and they, are all established in what's called a Buddha-verse, or Buddha-land — Robert Thurman

Practice giving things away, not just things you don't care about, but things you do like. Remember, it is not the size of a gift, it is its quality and the amount of mental attachment you overcome that count. So don't bankrupt yourself on a momentary positive impulse, only to regret it later. Give thought to giving. Give small things, carefully, and observe the mental processes going along with the act of releasing the little thing you liked. — Robert Thurman

So that's the process of understanding, and through that process, if you have a deep realization of the selflessness in regard to your absolute self, then it releases your relational self to be happily interconnected with everything in a blissful way. Then you yourself have "no problem" in the sense of no suffering. You reach Nirvana. — Robert Thurman

Every time you have a big blast-out experience you think that's the ultimate-everything, and of course it isn't, although you can get hints. The key however, is not to take those hint experiences to be the ultimate experience. There always needs to be a balance. For example, when you find something, by having some experience, you always want to keep looking because there could be more to it. — Robert Thurman

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. — Robert Thurman

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

If you see really bright lights, or hear really loud noises, go towards them, don't run away from anything. It's like giving someone instructions on how to handle a bear, don't run away from it. Stand up and try to make yourself look as big as possible. Don't give it the signal that it should chase you. And that's the case with the after death visions. Don't go for dark seductive lights, go only for bright lights. — Robert Thurman

Greed, the desire to incorporate, is magnified and fed back to produce the pretan realms, just as hate creates the hells. — Robert Thurman

When all is lost, when all is let go of, when all is abandoned what you are left with is an ocean of bliss. What you emerged with what you are is an ocean of bliss. Your cells and atoms and brain and bones and blood stream all of it is bliss. — Robert Thurman

I'd like to say is that we shouldn't have an idea that the goal of spiritual practice is to annihilate ones ego, that would be a mistake. In the early years of enlightenment, psychologists were afraid of Hindus and Buddhists meditating because they thought they were going to shatter their egos and then they'd have to wear diapers or something, like they'd lose their toilet training or what have you. They were really afraid of it. — Robert Thurman

You could then use the dream to learn more about yourself, others, the world, and the nature of life. You can come awake in the matrix and realize you're the one in your own dream. People on the spiritual path can do that, thus they can avoid wasting the whole night, and use it in a developmental, nice way. — Robert Thurman

It took me forty years of dealing with buddhism to finally realize that actually Buddha's discovery was happiness and bliss. — Robert Thurman

You can't relate to an absolute or it wouldn't be absolute, it would be relative. On an intellectual level, that's easy. However, you hear theologians in the theistic traditions talk about absolute God, and I saw God, or God spoke; speaking, being seen, these are all relational things. So what is absolute about such a being, wouldn't actually be absolute. — Robert Thurman

You feel so happy about that, that you feel loving towards these poor being who are suffering in their separateness, and their alienation Then have the problem of how to help them get free, because just by your knowing that they're essentially free, that doesn't free them. Just by your being blissful, it doesn't release them from their knot of separation and false self absolutization. — Robert Thurman

First of all, "no self" doesn't mean there is no self, haha. So the "no problem" is jumped at a little too fast I'm afraid. Especially in American culture where people tend to be materialistic philosophically. I don't mean running to the mall, but philosophically, you see? — Robert Thurman

The Chinese people absolutely need good spiritual examples. They also could use a citizen of their own, who is free and happy, and pleased with them, and represents them in a positive way to the world. Especially now that they're becoming this mega-power, and no longer known as a puppet in the game, or strictly business people. — Robert Thurman

If someone gets a bigger house, does that automatically make them happy? Maybe for a second. But then they worry about the bigger house and how to take care of it. — Robert Thurman

The person who is tormenting the Tibetans feels they have to get rid of the Tibetans in order to be happy. — Robert Thurman

Life Lessons by Robert Thurman

1. Robert Thurman encourages us to embrace the present moment and to be mindful of our thoughts and actions. He teaches us to be aware of our inner strength and to use it to make positive changes in our lives.
2. He encourages us to take responsibility for our own lives and to be mindful of our impact on the world around us. He also emphasizes the importance of being kind and compassionate towards others.
3. Robert Thurman emphasizes the importance of cultivating inner peace and joy, and of finding balance in our lives. He encourages us to be open to learning and to strive for growth and self-improvement.