America's first Tibetan monk champions a message of peace
                                        by Daniel B. Wood
                                   Christian Science Monitor
                                 Vol. 89 No. 135  1997.06.09
                                                  P.4
                         Copyright by Christian Science Monitor

       Robert Thurman talks nonviolence, tolerance to receptive ears

Dateline: SANTA BARBARA, CALIF.

Robert Thurman has been called the Billy Graham of American Buddhism, the
Florenz Ziegfeld of the Tibetan cause, and a dharma-thumping evangelist of
Eastern thought to the West. (He also happens to be father to actress Uma.)

New York-born, he was the first American to be ordained as a Tibetan monk,
in 1965. In recent years, he has become the West's preeminent lecturer,
writer, and translator of Buddhist texts. Through books, lectures, a
cultural embassy known as Tibet House New York, and as scholar at Columbia
University, Mr. Thurman trumpets his message: "The Tibetans could save
civilization."

"In general, Tibetan society consists of people who feel the purpose of
human life is to open your own powers of understanding, not just produce
something for some collectivity," he said in an interview at a seaside
resort here. "The goal is to produce yourself as a higher form of being
than when you started."

Thurman is in California to promote that message at an international
conference on peacemaking, expanding on workshops that Tibet's spiritual
leader, the Dalai Lama, has given in America since 1979. The conference is
being held today through Wednesday, June 11, at Bill Graham Civic
Auditorium in San Francisco. Nobel Peace Prize laureates - Dalai Lama,
Rigoberta Menchu, and Jose Ramos-Horta - as well as other well-known
speakers - Alice Walker, Maxine Hong Kingston, Dolores Huerta - will
address ways to cultivate patience, compassion, and tolerance amidst social
conflicts.

Thurman says that such objectives have been the purpose of the Himalayan
kingdom for millennia, as seen through a national priority on monastic
education and the development of ritual and festival arts. This has
resulted in a country that - despite 50 years of persecution by Chinese
forces - remains one of the most spiritually focused on earth.

"They were inner-world adventurers of the highest daring to the furthest
frontiers of consciousness itself," he says, "the Tibetan equivalent of our
astronauts."

An `education nation'

The life ideal, Thurman says, is to cultivate powers of justice,
lovingkindness, and creativity. The idea runs counter to the "barbarous
mixture" of industrialization, consumer-capitalism, and imperial militarism
that thrives elsewhere.

"They became what I call a true education nation, elevating compassion to
the highest rank of virtues," Thurman says. "They demilitarized, adjusted
their life to perfect balance, and in the last 300 years have become expert
at helping people become civilized."

Thurman is a ubiquitous and vocal warning scout to the outer threats faced
by Tibet.

Since China invaded, occupied, and annexed Tibet beginning in 1949, more
than 1 million Tibetans have been killed, he points out. More than 6,000
monasteries have been destroyed, while language and customs are being
targeted for oblivion as China tries to assimilate the sprawling country.

Thurman's crusade to spotlight the Tibetan cause have won him widespread
praise.

"Without doubt, Robert Thurman has become the preeminent scholar of Tibetan
Buddhism in the West," says Dr. B. Alan Wallace, lecturer in Tibetan
studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "Because of his
charismatic erudition and speaking ability, he draws thousands to his
message ... that this culture is not only utterly unique and remarkable,
but terribly imperiled."

Thurman's path to activism stretches over four decades.

After an accident, Thurman left Harvard University in 1959 to wander
through India, Turkey, and Iran as a mendicant searching for spiritual
solace. He returned to America after his father's death and studied with an
American lama, learning the Tibetan language in 10 weeks. Because of
Thurman's talent and zeal, the lama ("teacher") introduced him to the Dalai
Lama, who ordained him.

He eventually left the monkhood to pursue an academic career. Now the Jey
Tsong Khapa professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia
University, Thurman is best known for an anthology of key Buddhist texts
"Essential Tibetan Buddhism" (HarperCollins), and "The Tibetan Book of the
Dead."

As president of Tibet House New York, one of several Tibetan cultural
societies worldwide, Thurman sponsors seminars and conferences such as the
current one in San Francisco. He was also behind the recent establishment
of a chair for Tibetan studies at the University of California, Santa
Barbara.

Tibet's future

Thurman is sanguine about the Tibetan situation. "I feel the signs are ripe
both within China and the US for a major change in Tibet's fortunes," he
says. The passing of Deng Xiaoping this year is important, he says, because
Deng was among those leaders who originally invaded Tibet. "Other leaders
of that generation will soon be gone, and that could bode well for Tibet,"
he says.

For the Tibetans to have survived their current occupation, including a
refugee population of about 100,000 that lives in neighboring India,
explodes two major misconceptions about Buddhism that linger in the West,
Thurman says.

"Many Westerners still think that Buddhists sit on their cushions too long
and deny the world," he says. "But the Tibetans' ability to survive 50
years in the wilderness without crumbling, while keeping their ascetic
agricultural lives intact, shows they are fully grounded, worldly people."

PHOTO (COLOR): ROBERT THURMAN: Now a professor at Columbia University, he
says Tibetans have much to teach about reducing conflict., DANIEL B. WOOD