His life was devoted to bridging worlds, and to making the case that the inner transformation that Buddhism calls for is intrinsically linked to the outer transformation our world so deeply needs. He was at the forefront of explaining the revolutionary, world shattering, world creating power of Buddhism.

Brilliant, prolific, charismatic, relentless, entrepreneurial, absolutely devoted to Tibetan Buddhism and doing good, and generally causing a ruckus in the best way; Robert Thurman is the academic, trickster, rockstar, grandfather of the American Buddhist world. For a Buddhist diehard / geek / bum like myself, Robert Thurman ignited a sense of giddy hero worship.

I don’t remember when I first heard of him, but I do remember when I first held one of his books. It was 2013, I was wrapping up almost a year of study in Myanmar and China and coming off of five bitter months training qigong and tai chi in central China. Transiting home, after days of eastward train travel, I found myself awaiting a flight with two free days in Hong Kong.

Stepping off the Star Ferry (a Hong Kong ferry that shuttles commuters and tourists across Victoria Harbor) I wandered into a small bookstore. It was the first true bookstore I’d been in in almost a year. At least the first one with any English books. And also with any Buddhist Books. Blasted by both cool air conditioner air and a jolt of intellectual freedom simultaneously, the sense of relief was immense.

China is a fascinating country. To say the least. They’ve done much over the last few decades worthy of emulation and envy. It’s also ruled by a totalitarian regime, and the constant sense of suffocation that it brings is hard to describe and impossible to miss.

As one of the world’s most vocal voices against the CCP and the Chinese invasion and destruction of Tibet, and arguably the world’s greatest champion of the Dalai Lama, it says a lot about Hong Kong’s special status under the so called “one country two systems” framework that I should find Robert Thurman’s books in that store. The ever tightening noose around this special status in the years since is an undeniable tragedy, as of course is the continued destruction and subjugation of Tibet.

Over the next few days I devoured Robert Thurman’s book Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Happiness. It weaves together personal history with vast sweeps of world history, traversing political, religious, and cultural domains. It argues that what the Buddha taught and created and what his millennia-long dispensation has continued and furthered is not a meek withdrawal from the world, but rather a path of inner transformation that is intrinsically and powerfully linked to our greatest hope for positive external transformation.

It is a message that all who care about the fate of the world ought to seriously consider.

Robert Thurman summed up the thesis of Inner Revolution years earlier in an academic paper, describing the Buddhist stance as “one of total activism, an unswerving commitment to complete self-transformation and complete world-transformation” (Thurman, 1983, p. 19).

Those are powerful words. I’ve returned to them over and over again. They form the bedrock of my world view and my life. In short, enlightenment is a social and political project, not simply a personal one. Robert Thurman was able to give voice to a bubbling intuition I’d long felt.

Years later, this belief in the deep value of Buddhist practice as a tool of cultural and political transformation would manifest through Dharma Gates, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit devoted to sharing contemplative practice with young adults (18–35) through donation-based retreats and programs. Dharma Gates was founded by myself and handful of others wanting to bring rigorous Buddhist practice forward to help counter the forces of nihilism and despair so prominent among young people, and train a generation of powerful, kind, clear leaders. Deep in its DNA is the idea of total activism. Dharma Gates is one organization among many that were empowered, boosted, clarified, and inspired by the pioneering work of Robert Thurman.

Upon returning to New York City, I began devouring Robert Thurman’s other work and eventually attending a weekly evening series he was leading at Tibet House. I would sit in those lectures with a mix of fascination and bewilderment. His mind was so agile, so educated, so steeped in Buddhism, so broad and so deep at the same time that it was dizzying yet captivating to follow. Careening from Manjushri, Nagarjuna, and multi-headed wrathful deities, to Walt Whitman and Alan Ginsberg, to incisive critique of Donald Trump, to stories of the Dalai Lama circa 1965 and on. It was always a roller coaster. A kaleidoscope of Western and Eastern, ancient and modern. Even when I’d read the text we were exploring I still expected to actually understand only a small percent of what he was saying.

I would sit there stunned, confused, enlivened, inspired. Loving it.

In February of 2018 I sent a cold email asking Bob Thurman if he’d be the advisor for my capstone in the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program at UPENN.

He wrote back not even half an hour later.

Sure, Miles. Great studies you;ve done with Alan, and now back doing

psych. Excellent! I’ll try to help, as long as I do;thave to travel down

there, but we can meet on skype or zoom.

BEst

TBobT

My capstone on Monasteries of the Future was the most ambitious writing project I’d ever undertaken at the time, and his support was a critical source of inspiration and encouragement throughout.

His public writing, his help on my capstone, and the inspirational vision he offered to Dharma Gates were three of the ways he impacted me most directly. But there are many, many other diffuse ways he has sent ripples through my life and of course through the world. I’ll highlight two.

One is through his friendship with the Dalai Lama. Bob arrived in Dharamshala in 1964, already speaking Tibetan and intent on ordaining as a monk. He described weekly conversations with the Dalai Lama where His Holiness “asked me questions about Freud, Plato, Jefferson, the United States Constitution, democracy, automobiles, airplanes, and nuclear physics,” and recalls wondering “about liberty and freedom in the context of American society. Liberty to do what? To pursue happiness? Were we really happy? Were we really free?” (Thurman, 1999, p. 8).

It’s easy to forget now that only a few decades ago, Tibetan Buddhism was barely known outside of Tibet and the Tibetan diaspora in India and the collaborative dialogue between Buddhism and science was virtually non-existent. I imagine many seeds being sown as these two brilliant, devoted men formed friendship and understanding through wide-ranging conversation. Opening worlds to each other which would in time open worlds to countless others.

Another way Robert Thurman touched me is through the creation of Tibet House. Tibet House is a library and event space in lower Manhattan devoted to the preservation of Tibetan culture. It is a large beautiful space, filled with art, hosting an endless stream of events representing not just Tibetan religion and culture, but Buddhism and contemplative practice more widely. Broad and ecumenical. Generous. Whether it was Bob’s talks, the eight-week Cultivating Compassion Course, or the Nalanda Institute lectures I attended there, or the Day-long Dharma Gates fundraiser and educational event Tibet House hosted just three weeks ago, the space was a watering hole and nexus of connection to people and ideas that have changed my life incalculably.

A space like Tibet House doesn’t just exist. It exists because someone like Robert Thurman had the gumption and the drive and the vision and the will to put the idea forward and raise the funds necessary to create it.

There’s no use emulating the sheer firepower of Robert Thurman’s mind. Most of us can never run as fast as Usain Bolt no matter how hard we train. But, his spirit of adventure and of friendship, his love of learning, his commitment to relentless creative output. Proactively sowing good seed after good seed without knowing what will become of them. Living a generative, generous life to the end and doing it all with a sense of style. That can be emulated.

He didn’t have to respond to my form submission on his website years ago. He didn’t have to keep posting on his Substack till not even a week before he died. And yet he did. Just as he did so much else. As far as I can tell he lived with the Bodhisattva spirit of endless service.

The work of Dharma Gates, my writing here on Substack, everything I do as a therapist, and just my life generally is imbued, influenced, and impacted by the spirit of what Bob articulated and shared over a lifetime. Thank you for that transmission. Thank you for the way you’ve touched my life and the lives of countless others. May the goodness you embodied flow forward in an endless cycle.

Guided Meditation on the Flow of Goodness:

The guided meditation that accompanies this piece starts with the great teachers who have helped us, then moves those people we know who have helped, and on to the countless unknown people who have helped us in ways large and small. We take this flow of goodness and support and then let it feed our own intention to act in the world with benevolence and goodness. It starts with the positive ripples w'e’ve been beneficiaries of and leads on to encouraging us to be positive ripples for others.

You can find a selection of Robert Thurman’s teachings, talk interviews, etc here. Please reply in the comments section with any of your favorites or any of your own reflections on his life and what he brought to you / the world.

TEACHINGS

References:

Thurman, R. A. (1983). Guidelines for Buddhist social activism based on Nāgārjuna’s” Jewel Garland of Royal Counsels”. The Eastern Buddhist, 16(1), 19-51.

Thurman, R. A. (1999). Inner revolution: Life, liberty, and the pursuit of real happiness. NewYork, NY: Riverhead Books.

She’s incredible.

Besides training as an interfaith minister Ayya Santussika spent almost a decade training periodically at Buddhist monasteries in Thailand while still living the lay life. She eventually ordained in 2005. Her teachers read like a who’s who of the titans of the Thai Forest tradition, particularly the Ajahn Chah lineage, including western monks like Ajahn Jayasaro, Ajahn Pasanno, and Ajahn Brahm and Thai monks like Ajahn Anan, Ajahn Dtun, and Luang Ta Maha Boowa.

On top of her deep training she took on leadership helping to build a community of nuns in California. As the cherry on top she is a mother of two and former software engineer. These experiences give her an earthy relatability that allow her to connect with lay people with a particularly high level of precision and compassion.

Whatever it is, I found her mp3s a few years back and have been enamored with the clarity, depth, and love apparent in her teachings. In this meditation she leads us on an exploration of mindfulness of breathing and the body with an emphasis on letting go, curiosity, and kindness.

I’ve listened to this one dozens of times. The value of a nun who has actually done her homework is that her meditations reward such re-listening. I hope you enjoy this gem of a person and gem of a teaching.

(Guide meditation)

Before you press play, I want to share a method that I’ve been using to engage audio dharma over the last few years. It’s been extremely helpful for me.

After I left a period of about five years of solitary retreat and time at various monasteries and practice centers. I found myself living in upstate NY. Working as a therapist, dating, building a company, trying to keep my 1930’s house from crumbling, and just generally adjusting to lay life. I began to experiment with a new style of practice.

I was way more tired and distracted than I was during the periods of pure solitude and 10+ hrs a day of meditation that had characterized my twenties. Dharma teachers who I once hung on every word of, now went in one ear and out the other. I found a hack which helped me stay connected to voices of wisdom and that I could use even amidst long, chaotic days.

I’d lie down on the couch or the floor, play music through Spotify and overlay a guided meditation or dharma talk on iTunes. By tinkering with the volume on each of the apps I could get it to net out where I could hear both clearly. The lying down and the music were the spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. They made the whole experience just enough more engaging and pleasurable that I could actually listen to my favorite teachers again. It was such a relief to have found a way back in.

Structurally I also liked a few things about this set up. First of all, relaxation is absolutely crucial to developing deep states of meditation. Certainly alertness is important as well, but I think most modern people are wound extremely tight and need some serious space and time to unwind. The Buddha himself did list lying down as one of four valid postures of meditation (alongside sitting, standing, and walking). Lying there, attending to my breath and inviting relaxation, was both exactly what my overwrought system needed AND was helping me to cultivate the breath and body awareness that are foundational to the Buddhist practice I’d been trained in.

The music served a few important functions. Alternately sitting for clients and being sat for by guides during psychedelic journeys over many years showed me the power of music to help people traverse their bodies and minds in pursuit of clarity and healing. The right music is a conduit that helps direct the mind and offers a sort of raft for awareness to ride the currents of emotion. It can both trigger deeper states of calm and also support emotive awareness and flow. Is silent meditation irreplaceable, yes. Is meditating with music a powerful practice, yes. Both, I believe are true.

The music also served the function of keeping my attention from drifting into an exclusive focus on somatic experience, or collapsing into the inner realms of thought. To hear music requires us to maintain auditory awareness. Thus if you can maintain focus on the music, you by default maintain focus on the words of the teacher as well. They are both, after all, coming in through the same auditory channel.

Sure, sitting silently is the gold standard for meditation. The upright posture carries a wakefulness that is likely impossible to mimic in the supine position. And the silence offers unique opportunities for inner peace and coherence. Listening to dharma without any overlay and upright is the classic method of listening to dharma and well worth the effort. But there are other effective and powerful methods too, and lying down and overlaying music is one of them. This way of practicing has been a great gift to me and I hope it might be of benefit to you as well.

Here’s a playlist that I’ve found pairs eerily well with a whole range of talks and meditations.

Curious what you discover as you practice. And if you have playlists that work for this kind of listening, please share them, I’m always on the lookout for new ones.

His name is Gil.

Gil Fronsdal.

I’ve been in love before. Many times. Thích Nhất Hạnh, Ajahn Brahm, Ayya Santussikā, to name a few. This sort of love isn’t a zero sum game. It’s not monogamy. It’s not “hey, you stay away from my girl!”

When I fall in love with a dharma teacher, all I want to do is get up on the mountain top with a megaphone and yell about it so the whole world can hear. Hopefully as many people as possible rush in and find some in it for them. An important thread on this Substack is sharing the best Dharma I can find, is promoting voices of wisdom

LINK to Voices of Wisdom, my introductory article on this topic.

When the right teacher finds you, it’s a sweet, sweet feeling. Someone speaking to your soul. Speaking truth, kindly, firmly, clearly. Inviting out the best in you.

I love learning. Especially about breathing. I love new tips. New angles. New insights. New approaches. I love tackling the same simple practice over and over again. I love how the more I learn about breathing, the more I feel I’m just getting started.

When I stumbled upon Gil’s seventy-three-part course (yup you heard that right, seventy three parts) on mindfulness of breathing, I felt the thrill of a receding horizon, of a journey without end. With a ridiculous number of practice under my belt, here I am like a little kid on the first day of school, brand new notebooks in my backpack, a Batman lunch box in my hand, butterflies in my stomach.

Gil, you make me feel young again!

Seriously though, I was thrilled to find and now to share this Dharma gem (Mindfulness of Breathing — Ānāpānasati).

I like a lot of things about this course. First of all, I like Gil. He’s been at it for a long time, practicing intensively since 1975. He’s got some range in his background having trained in the Vipassanā, Zen, and Theravāda traditions. Seems to have gotten around without skipping around. If you get the difference. He’s also a scholar. Personally I’m a big fan of the scholar practitioner combos. He’s also kind, at least that’s what I gather from having my ear to the ground in the Dharma world as best I can, and intuit from the timbre of his voice.

The structure of this course is excellent. Each part has both a ten minute talk and a thirty minute guided meditation. This provides didactic clarity and also experiential depth. Any authentic practice requires the right mix of cognitive and embodied and this course has that built in. It was originally offered to his community once a week over the course of more than a year so it’s targeted at a sophisticated serious audience, which I think helps create a good context for Gil’s rigor to shine through.

I also find it’s dense with info, so much so that I originally thought I’d work through it at the rate of one part per day, but I’ve found myself repeating them over and over before going to the next one. Not a single one has gone by where I haven’t found at least one new, helpful, tidbit. Often many!

Deliberate practice, the kind that underlies true skill development across domains, works when we chunk bigger skills into smaller, manageable ones. This is true whether you’re learning chess, piano, or basketball. Breathing and meditation are no different. It’s easy to just sit around meditating, sort of hoping that things will change, Gil’s course helps us take a more proactive and empowered approach. Each session gives you something specific to work with, something small enough to actually digest and hold. These are the conditions under which deep learning happens.

I’m gonna work this one through to the end. I welcome you to join me, to go on your own journey! I I’d be stunned if you regret any amount of engagement you undertake.

I bet that you won’t come away from it thinking, “damn, I wish I’d really NOT dug into learning mindfulness of breathing from a living legend, that was waste of my precious human life.”

I hope you’ll tell me how it is. I hope you’ll tell us how it is. Comment about your experience, what’s of benefit? What’s moving you? What’s helping? Where are you stuck? Where are you skeptical? Where are you inspired? What’s clarifying? Bring it on. Learning works better together. Post the meditations or talks that are moving you and what’s moving you about them.

Before you go, if you like, take a minute and breath, we’ll use the seventeen words that form the spine of this Substack…

“Attend to your breath with an attitude of kindness and allow it to move freely and easily.”

Go for it, actually do it.

For the next two breaths, draw attention into your breath.

Kindly. Inviting greater ease and freedom….

If that mini practice had any positive impact on you, if you have any curiosity about deepening it, consider checking out the Gil mega course on mindfulness of breathing.

During my first year-long solitary retreat, I found myself at twenty four, in a small off grid cabin deep in the mountains of northern New Mexico. No email, no phone, no internet, no magazines, no novels, my media diet was carefully restricted to support the retreat experience. Looking for something to buttress and inform the ten plus hours of meditation I was doing everyday, I listened to about an hour-long Dharma talk each afternoon.

These talks formed the backbone of an educational project unlike any I’d ever undertaken. Day after day, I absorbed talks by Buddhist adepts, often a monk or a nun, explaining various elements of the path, of the practice, of the Dharma (the Buddha’s teachings). Their voices, like water nourishing a plant, began to seep into my being. The four noble truths, the nature of karma, the ins and outs of mindfulness of breathing, the types of hindrances that arise on the path, the fruits of practice, the deep potential of the mind, core concepts, terms, and practices of Buddhism began to imprint deep inside me. It was within this context that I began to really absorb the Dharma. I felt it penetrating by bones… rewiring my world view, my nervous system, my heart.

As a unifying framework there are few grander, more thorough, more beautiful, and more compassionate than Buddhism. I was a sponge just absorbing all the goodness. It wasn’t only the words, but it was who was speaking them and how they were spoken. A voice doesn’t only carry words, it’s a deep bodily event conveying emotion, personality traits, and nervous system states. It carries a lifetime of history including detailed information as varied as cultural norms and personal attachment patterns. The somatic awareness or lack thereof of the speaker transmits through the chest, throat, and diaphragm relaying information about how embodied someone truly is. In the subtle tones and tremors, in the openness, groundedness, and warmth or withdrawal, tension and shakiness we read congruence, or incongruence and respond deeply to how words are spoken.

In this world the loudest voices are rarely the wisest. So much of what we get is just soundbites and manipulation. People build huge followings by saying the right things, but it’s backed by nothing but air. The monks and nuns I was listening to on the other hand had devoted their lives to practice and study. And all of that deep study and practice transmitted through their voices. Their voices were backed by spiritual gold.

Every few months I would trudge to the main cabin, fire up the generator and spend an afternoon downloading new talks over a tenuous satellite connection. I found there were vast libraries of Dharma talks, with the best teachers in the world freely sharing huge troves of talks. I developed a deep love of these individuals and the generosity and thoroughness with which they were sharing a lifetime (perhaps more) of learning.

Like a collector of fine wine I began to fill my cellar with particularly great vintages. I’ve always wanted to share these voices with the world. To help amplify them. To make them more accessible. Towards this end I’m going to start a running list of some of my favorite Dharma talks and guided meditations, some of them from my years of solitary retreat, some from more recently.

To kick off, I want to introduce you to someone whose voice was one of the first to truly land for me, Ajahn Sucitto, a monk in the Thai Forest tradition. In the late 1800s a small group of monks became disenchanted with the monastic institutions, feeling they’d become corrupt and distant from practice. They took off into the then wild hinterlands of Thailand, the majestic and dangerous forests of the northeast. There they braved malarial swamps and wild tigers, amongst other hazards, devoting themselves to intensive meditation practice, often remaining in solitude for long stretches, months or years.

The tradition is known for its rigor and back to basics attitude with a strong adherence to traditional monastic discipline. Ajahn Sucitto does a beautiful job of conveying the rigor while also holding a profoundly gentle and self-compassionate stance. He also focuses on the somatic elements of practice encouraging practitioners to learn to work with the visceral unfolding.

I’ve returned to this talk (Handling the Demon) more times than I can count. In it, Ajahn Sucitto describes how the thoughts, tensions, and emotional reactions we mistake for ourselves are not who we are, they’re patterns. Automatic, impersonal, and ultimately releasable. Freedom comes from recognizing that compulsive patterns are not who one is and gently releasing them, often through simple anchors like breathing and bodily awareness. His description of letting go as a holding process planted seeds connecting the dots between trauma and meditation that would, many years later germinate as I began to explore psychotherapy.

https://dharmaseed.org/talks/14905/

I hope it lands for you the way it landed for me, not just as cognitive information, but as something that can begin to rearrange things deep down inside. More to come. Share with anyone you think might be ready, help amplify the good stuff.