Replay: Bob Thurman shares Five Things He's Learned about Wisdom, Bliss, and Openness
Check out the first five minutes of his recent class.
“The great thing about what I’ve learned: The Buddha’s path of education is for anyone. You need not be Buddhist, you need not be religious, you need not even be “spiritual” – in fact, skeptics are most welcome. You do need to be a bit open-minded about the question of what is real and what is unreal. You need to be willing to learn, to think critically and confidently, to get rid of the idea that you can’t understand important things, and to question everything.”
– Bob Thurman, Five Things I've Learned about Wisdom, Bliss, and Openness
Bob Thurman is the Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University. After learning Tibetan and studying Buddhism he became a Tibetan Buddhist monk and was the first Westerner to be ordained by the Dalai Lama. Here’s the first five minutes of Bob’s two-hour class in which he shares the Five Things He’s Learned about achieving reliable and lasting happiness during his lifetime learning and teaching the Buddha’s curriculum.
Five Things I’ve Learned about Wisdom, Bliss, and Openness offers an opportunity to learn about the path to achieving lasting happiness through the teachings of the Buddha. The class explores the preciousness of human life, the significance of facing death, the importance of ethical conduct, the transformative power of love and compassion, and the necessity of wisdom for realizing true bliss and understanding the nature of reality.
Want to better understand the Buddha’s path of education and its links to Wisdom, Bliss, and Openness? This class is for you.
Bob’s own search for enlightenment began while he was a student at Harvard. After an accident in which he lost the use of an eye, Thurman left school on a spiritual quest throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia. He found his way to India, where he first saw H.H. the Dalai Lama in 1962. After learning Tibetan and studying Buddhism he decided to become a Tibetan Buddhist monk and was the first Westerner to be ordained by the Dalai Lama. However, some years later, he offered up his robes when “he discovered he could be more effective in the American equivalent of the monastery: the university”.
Bob is president of the Tibet House U.S., a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan civilization, and President of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies, a non-profit affiliated with the Center for Buddhist Studies at Columbia University and dedicated to the publication of translations of important artistic and scientific treatises from the Tibetan Tengyur. The New York Times recently said Thurman “is considered the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism.”
Inspired by his good friend the Dalai Lama, Bob stands on Buddhism’s open reality, and thence takes us along with him into an expanded vision of the world, whether the sweep of history, the subtleties of the inner science of the psyche, or the wonders of the life of the heart. He always shares the sense of refuge in the Dharma, which unfailingly helps us clear away the shrouds of fear and confusion, sustains us with the cheerfulness of an enriched present, and opens a door to a path of realistic hope for a peaceful future.
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