Robert Thurman
American Buddhist philosopher and writer (1941–2026)
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Biography
Early life and education
Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman was born in Manhattan, 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 was of English, German, Scottish, and Scots-Irish/Northern Irish descent.
Thurman attended Phillips Exeter Academy from 1954 to 1958 but was expelled weeks from graduation 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 Marie-Christophe de Menil at age 18 before going 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.
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. 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. In India he taught English to exiled tulkus (Tibetan lamas) in Dalhousie 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. 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.
Thurman then worked towards his Ph.D. in Sanskrit Indian Studies from Harvard, which he obtained in 1972. The same year, Thurman founded the American Institute of Buddhist Studies at Columbia. 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 November 2025, Thurman gave a talk organized by the Office of Tibet, London, and Enacting Peace in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, hosted by Chris Law, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Tibet to celebrate the Dalai Lama's 90th birthday.
Personal life
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.
Thurman then met Nena von Schlebrügge at her then-husband's Timothy Leary's home. Von Schlebrügge later divorced Leary, and subsequently married Thurman in 1967. Thurman had to renounce his monk status (which required celibacy) to marry Von Schlebrügge. Robert and Nena Thurman had four children, including Ganden, who is executive director of Tibet House US, actress Uma Thurman, Dechen, and Mipam.
Thurman was the father of five children and grandfather to eight grandchildren. Through his daughter, Taya, his grandson was the artist Dash Snow. He also has a great-granddaughter through Snow. Through his daughter Uma and her husband Ethan Hawke, his grandchildren are actors Levon Hawke and Maya Hawke.
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.
Death
Thurman died at his home in Woodstock, New York, on June 16, 2026, at the age of 84. Following his death, the Dalai Lama said: "Bob lived a meaningful life and has left behind a legacy that will continue to inspire future students of Tibetan Buddhism and culture for generations to come."
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Legacy
In their obituary of Thurman, The New York Times called him the "leading interpreter of Tibetan Buddhism" with a reputation of being the Dalai Lama's "man in America". Thurman was noted for being the first Westerner Tibetan Buddhist monk ordained by the Dalai Lama. Rolling Stone credited Thurman for his mission of preserving Tibetan culture through his Tibet House institution.
Thurman was 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." 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.