Bob Thurman Who?

Journalist Peter Aronson recalls his early encounters with Buddhism:

Everyone’s story of how they “met the Dharma” could be made to extend back many years, finding all the little threads and clues and bits that cause the paths of our lives to intersect or merge with the Dharma path. In my case, the real turning point was when I saw some Tibetan monks giving a performance in 1996… I liked the fact that, as they explained, they were praying for the happiness of all sentient beings, not just for Buddhists. I found that very refreshing. They also didn’t pressure me or want to talk with me about my personal relationship with Buddha. They seemed… happy.

After the performance, I decided I wanted to help support the monks and thought perhaps I’d buy a t-shirt. I didn’t really like the t-shirts, though, so I started browsing through the books. I came across one called Kindness, Clarity and Insight with a photo of a strangely dressed, shaven-headed man on the cover – the Dalai Lama. It said he’d won the Nobel Peace Prize, so I thought, “Okay, if they gave him the Nobel Peace Prize, he can’t be a cult leader. He must have something interesting to say.” I bought the book, and that was it. I was hooked. I couldn’t put it down. You’ve probably heard this from so many people, but it all made sense to me.

“Of course,” I thought. “I want to develop compassion, I want to learn how to be kind!” We all think we’re good people, I suppose, but at that moment I realized I hadn’t really been as good a person as I’d believed. And here was an instruction manual that was so clear, so logical.

When I learned that the Dalai Lama was going to be at Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, about eight hours from where I was living, I had to meet him. So I called up and asked if they’d let me attend, but they told me it was a private interfaith monastic dialogue, closed to the public.

“How about letting me attend as a journalist?” I asked. They said only if I had an assignment.

Though I tried and tried, I couldn’t interest any news outlets. NPR, which I was reporting for regularly at that time, had already assigned the story to someone else. So the day before the conference started I called up and left a message at the Catholic monastery: “Tomorrow I’m going to get in my car and drive eight hours to get there, because I really want to attend. If you want to turn me away after driving all that way, turn me away.”

Fortunately, they didn’t turn me away. And though they initially said I could only stay for the opening press conference, I was ultimately allowed to stay for the whole thing. It was quite an intimate gathering, just a couple hundred people in a room.

I was quite ignorant about Buddhism at the time. It was only months later, as I read more, that I began to learn that the people I was spending time with, sharing silent meditation and lunches with were spiritual luminaries. One particular example of my complete and utter lack of knowledge: At the press conference, a middle-aged man with short, wavy, light brown began his question to the Dalai Lama by introducing himself:

“Your holiness – Robert Thurman from Shambala Sun magazine.” (I didn’t get the joke at the time.)

The Dalai Lama chuckled and said, “Ah, Shambhala!”

The next morning, sharing a table with that same man over breakfast at the local inn, I asked him (I still both laugh and cringe at this memory), “So, you write for Shambhala Sun. Are you a full-time journalist?”

Robert A.F. Thurman (the first Westerner to have become a Tibetan Buddhist monk, student and close associate of the Dalai Lama, renowned Buddhist scholar, translator and author, Jey Tsong Khapa Chair Of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University and the man dubbed “the most visible and charismatic exponent of Tibetan Buddhism in America” two months earlier in the New York Times – not to mention being Uma’s dad) smiled and replied with exemplary humility, “Well, actually I teach college.”