I am now into hour 40 of a more than 100 hour recorded course on the Avatamsaka Sutra.  Also known as the “Buddha Garland” sutra, it was written around the second century CE and is a monumental work (1800 pages) of monumental significance in Buddhist philosophy.  While I could (and sometime will) write a post on that philosophy, what matters for today is the guy who’s reading me the entire 1800 pages:  the great Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman who passed away last week.

Thurman was such a major figure in making Buddhism mainstream in American culture that it’s worth reflecting a moment on him and his entire generation.

These days images of the Buddha are everywhere.  You find him appearing touting mindfulness on your Instagram account, a statue of him might be hiding in your friend’s garden and you will certainly find him lurking as the omnipresent patron-saint of any spa you visit. 

But when I was a kid back in the 1970s the only time someone like me saw the Buddha was when I went to a Chinese restaurant (and that tended to be the smiling chubby version of him not the beatific meditating version).  While many Asian Americans had long been practicing Buddhism here, for the rest of us Buddhism was something covered in a couple of pages in your 9th grade World History textbook.

But as the 70s turned into the 80s and onward the appearance, recognition and influence of Buddhism skyrocketed.  The story of how that happened is rich and complex but like all good stories it needed some colorful central characters. 
Thurman was a colorful character.

He was a big man physically and he filled whatever space he was in with big energy.  Born in 1941 he got his PhD from Harvard in Sanskrit in 1972.  On his way to this achievement, Thurman also tried to join Castro’s army in the late 1950s and later lost an eye in “an accident involving a racecar and a carjack”.   This kind of mythic backstory was fitting for a guy who approached his position as one of the foremost western scholars of Tibetan Buddhism with an irrepressible enthusiasm that mesmerized audiences.  

Thurman wasn’t just a scholar though.  He was a practitioner too.  One of the early westerners to visit the Tibetan exile community in India, he was ordained by the Dalai Lama in 1965 as the first western monk in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.  Eventually he becomes a professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University.  By combining the precision of a scholar with the compassion of a monk and the exuberance of an American, Thurman’s became the entry point into Buddhism for multiple generations of westerners. 

Also, he was the father of actress Uma Thurman who starred in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill so thank you Prof Thurman for that too.

Thurman’s passing gives us a moment to reflect not just his own life and efforts. It’s also a moment to consider the efforts of entire generation who accomplished the extraordinary task of translating one culture’s worldview into another. 

The history of Buddhism is its 2500-year march East.  Born with the Buddha (the prince Siddhartha Gautama) in 2500 BCE, over the centuries it moved to Tibet, to Indochina, to China, to Korea and finally to Japan.  Buddhism changed - and was changed by - each new culture it contacted.  Zen, for example, was a Japanese take on Chan which was a Chinese take on Indian Buddhist practice.
Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s it became America’s turn. 

First came a number of remarkable teachers who traveled from India or Asia to begin teaching.  Then came a people like Robert Thurman who make the trip in the other direction either physically or as students of those immigrant teachers.  In that way Buddhism began finding an audience in the 1970s. 

At first it was just post-hippie counter cultural stuff.  But as the decades passed Buddhism - in popularized forms such as “mindfulness” - began showing up in everything from pop culture references like the Matrix to corporate wellness programs.  While self-described Buddhists still make up a small fraction of the population now (just 1.3 percent), it represents one of the one of the faster-growing religious demographics in the country. But more important than people actually calling themselves “Buddhist”, what really matters is that broad cultural awareness which has grown since the 1970s.

So, as I move into hour 61 of listening to Bob Thurman’s remarkably energetic and enthusiastic reading of the Avatamsaka Sutra (he was about 80 when he recorded all 100+ hours) I am grateful.  He was a force of nature in both his scholarship and his teaching.  The question his passing leaves for us is straightforward. 
What happens to Buddhism in America now?

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PS If you have specific questions or issues you want me to address leave a comment on the website or email me at [email protected]

PPPS I could not get this proof-read so please excuse typos etc.

— Adam Frank 🚀