Quote

A possession can't make you happy.

Robert Thurman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Make
Possession
Happy

More quotes by Robert Thurman

Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Greed, the desire to incorporate, is magnified and fed back to produce the pretan realms, just as hate creates the hells.
Robert Thurman
Image
The person who is tormenting the Tibetans feels they have to get rid of the Tibetans in order to be happy.
Robert Thurman
Image
First of all, no self doesn't mean there is no self, haha. So the no problem is jumped at a little too fast I'm afraid. Especially in American culture where people tend to be materialistic philosophically. I don't mean running to the mall, but philosophically, you see?
Robert Thurman
Image
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
Image
Struggling with the world and having the problem of you vs. the world is a really big problem. You're going to lose because the world is so much bigger than you, and longer lasting.
Robert Thurman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
They [Chinese] will need a sympathetic intercessor with other people in the world to avoid conflict and create trust, and of course, Dalai Lama would be ideal. In another ten years from now though, he won't have the time to be really effective for them. They're truly wasting their time not using him now.
Robert Thurman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Hate poisons your life.
Robert Thurman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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