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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
Long
Toward
Hold
Violence
Animal
Society
Brutality
Cannot
Practiced
Humans
Firm
Take
Animals

More quotes by 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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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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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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You should never be ashamed of the suffering you've been through.
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The Buddhists think that, because we've all had infinite previous lives, we've all been each other's relatives. Therefore all of you, in the Buddhist view, in some previous life ... have been my mother - for which I do apologize for the trouble I caused you.
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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The understanding of it [absolute] is very important as a beginning point. Then you can use meditation, further reasoning, long-term familiarity etc., you can use all kinds of methods to deepen this understanding and to have it counter the instinctual sense of being an absolute you.
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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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
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A possession can't make you happy.
Robert Thurman
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You have to be responsible for yourself, refer to yourself, develop yourself, help others, whatever it may be. So we shouldn't have an idea that the whole thing is to shatter ones ego.
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 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 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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Greed, the desire to incorporate, is magnified and fed back to produce the pretan realms, just as hate creates the hells.
Robert Thurman
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When all is lost, when all is let go of, when all is abandoned what you are left with is an ocean of bliss. What you emerged with what you are is an ocean of bliss. Your cells and atoms and brain and bones and blood stream all of it is bliss.
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