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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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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
Conventional
Society
Ego
Problem
Psychology
Ever
Principle
Live
Thinks
Look
Principles
Looks
Enemy
Love
Thinking
Wisdom

More quotes by Robert Thurman

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A lot of people, after seeking a bit, have some experience, and sometimes will believe they're enlightened. One has to be careful about that. Especially Americans, who are very external stimulus oriented. When they have some type of deep inner experience, often they think that was the ultimate experience.
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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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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I think humans will find their humanity sometime, somehow.
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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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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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 could then use the dream to learn more about yourself, others, the world, and the nature of life. You can come awake in the matrix and realize you're the one in your own dream. People on the spiritual path can do that, thus they can avoid wasting the whole night, and use it in a developmental, nice way.
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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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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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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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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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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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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You take up energy towards someone because you think loving your enemy doesn't just mean caving into your enemy. It means first of all liberating yourself.
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 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