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Nonviolence against humans cannot take firm hold in society as long as brutality and violence are practiced toward other animals.

Robert Thurman

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Robert Thurman
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: August 4
Curator
Exhibition Curator
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
New York City
New York
Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman
Take
Animals
Long
Toward
Hold
Violence
Animal
Society
Brutality
Cannot
Practiced
Humans
Firm

More quotes by Robert Thurman

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This question, Is loving your enemy a life practice?, I like that question. It is a life practice, certainly, for everyone. It relates to the idea of, Is this a householder practice or is it a monk practice? I think it's both. Everyone has that practice.
Robert Thurman
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What makes me fully alive is anything. Really just being alive is enough.
Robert Thurman
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I think about the trends at the moment in the planet and how it looks for my grandchildren. I don't panic over it, even though rationally maybe I should. I have faith that these terrible trends will change, and they will not go to their logical conclusions of climate change, militarism, pollution, overpopulation.
Robert Thurman
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Thich Nhat Hanh is one of the greatest teachers of our time. He reaches from the heights of insight down to the deepest places of the absolutely ordinary.
Robert Thurman
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Hate poisons your life.
Robert Thurman
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The person who is tormenting the Tibetans feels they have to get rid of the Tibetans in order to be happy.
Robert Thurman
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Buddhism is all about science. If science is the systematic pursuit of the accurate knowledge of reality, then science is Buddhism, Buddhism is science.
Robert Thurman
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If your enemy is happy, then why would they be bothered to be your enemy? Being someone's enemy is no fun. It does not add to happiness.
Robert Thurman
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A possession can't make you happy.
Robert Thurman
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I think humans will find their humanity sometime, somehow.
Robert Thurman
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Imagine a culture in which everything is geared toward helping all individuals become the best human beings they can be in which individuals are driven to devoting their lives to becoming enlightened by the natural flood of compassion for others that arises from their wisdom.
Robert Thurman
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Everyone has the same life purpose, which is the quest of happiness for oneself and for others.
Robert Thurman
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If someone gets a bigger house, does that automatically make them happy? Maybe for a second. But then they worry about the bigger house and how to take care of it.
Robert Thurman
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So that's the process of understanding, and through that process, if you have a deep realization of the selflessness in regard to your absolute self, then it releases your relational self to be happily interconnected with everything in a blissful way. Then you yourself have no problem in the sense of no suffering. You reach Nirvana.
Robert Thurman
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The problem in our society is the ego psychology and conventional wisdom about look out for #1. That conventional wisdom thinks that love your enemy is to some a principle no one can ever live by.
Robert Thurman
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The point is that you free the ego. The ego is only a pronoun. It's a Greek first person pronoun, ergo. When you're in Greece you say, Ergo wants to take a bus, and you don't mean your ego wants to take a bus, like some big entity, you only mean I want to take a bus.
Robert Thurman
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The better teachers recognize that by freeing yourself of the rigid ego identity habit, you actually strengthen the resilient, flexible, creative ego, and you then can be more effective in helping others, and creative in whatever work you do.
Robert Thurman
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The most important enemy for everyone is their own illusion that makes them unrealistic or exaggerates their sense of self-importance in the world. Ironically, you're the super secret enemy. Whether lay or householder, everyone has that internal enemy.
Robert Thurman
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Actually there's a very bad trend in some cults about how Guru's are supposed to be mean to their students, and there are some who revel in this and are abusive.
Robert Thurman
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Take the example of people who are being most unrealistic - people who are beating monks to death and torturing them. Why shouldn't you be angry or hate that person? Well, the person who is doing that is very unhappy. They are being ordered by a higher-up.
Robert Thurman