Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman (yes, he is the father of Uma) was named one of Time magazine's 25 most influential people in 1997. Here's why: Thurman has a knack for helping laymen understand the teachings and history of Buddhism while also explaining why it has taken root in the West. Thurman was the first Westerner to be ordained as a monk in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition after studying under the Dalai Lama in 1964. In this highly polished memoir he tells the story of his pupilage under His Holiness, which was a frolic in Sunday school compared to the task of integrating Buddhism into cold war America. This is an optimistic and highly satisfying discussion of how Buddhism has shaped the life of one fascinating scholar as well as the course of Western spirituality. --Gail Hudson


From Library Journal
The first American Tibetan Buddhist monk, Thurman currently teaches at Columbia and was chosen by Time as one of the 25 most influential people of 1997. What's more, actress Uma Thurman is his daughter. Here, he argues that we can now complete the inner revolution begun in the East when the West was industrializing.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Thurman, author of Essential Tibetan Buddhism (1996), was the first Westerner to be ordained in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. He briefly describes his studies in India under the Dalai Lama's direction in the mid-1960s and his subsequent realization that without a Tibetan Buddhist community, he could not be a monk in the U.S. So he chose the next best thing, academia, and became a renowned Buddhist scholar. He is now convinced that we are entering a time of spiritual growth and that Buddhism is integral to this movement toward enlightenment. As he expounds on this observation, he places Buddhist thought firmly within historical and scientific contexts, explaining that Buddhism is not a religion but a scientific "elucidation of causation" and that learning to be free from self-obsession and negative emotions is the first step in a spiritual awakening. Thurman's lucid teachings infuse the concepts of liberty and happiness with cosmic significance and do much to illuminate the reasons for Buddhism's blooming in the West. Donna Seaman


From Kirkus Reviews
A renowned scholar of Tibetan Buddhism issues a popular appeal to the West to refashion its inner life according to Buddhist enlightenment teachings. For Thurman, Tibetan Buddhism is life philosophy, object of study, and worthy cause; he practices it, teaches it (at Columbia University), and promotes it through Tibet House, an advocacy group for the Chinese-occupied nation. His latest book introduces the history and teachings of Tibetan Buddhism to those unfamiliar with it and urges Westerners to appropriate five of its central ideas: individual spiritual development, nonviolence, spiritual education, social altruism, and democracy. Thurman envisions an evolutionary entry into these ideas--the inner revolution of the title--that will complement the West's outward, technological revolution. What distinguishes this book from others on Buddhism is the pains it takes to connect personal enlightenment to social ethics, especially in the chapters on the ancient Indian king Ashoka and the Dalai Lamas of Tibet. Thurman underscores the role of institutions in the moral life of societies, and provocatively casts monasticism and militarism as mirror-image competitors for the soul of nations. But he is sometimes careless. He aggrandizes when he suggests that spiritual developments in 14th-century Tibet precipitated the European Renaissance; generalizes unfairly when he identifies the West's inner life with its declining Christian monastic traditions; and tells only half the story when he celebrates the equality of women in Buddhism's religious past (the tradition records the Buddha's initial resistance to orders of nuns; their advocate was the Buddha's undersung disciple Ananda). Still, for readers new to Tibetan Buddhism, Thurman makes an impassioned and engaging guide. The more deeply curious will want to consult his introductory anthology of Tibetan texts, Essential Tibetan Buddhism (1995). (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
The New York Times calls him "America's number one Buddhist." He is the co-founder of Tibet House New York, was the first American Tibetan Buddhist monk, and has shared a thirty-five-year friendship with the Dalai Lama. Now, Robert Thurman presents his first completely original book, "an inspiring guide to incorporating Buddhist wisdom into daily life" (USA Today). Written with insight, enthusiasm, and impeccable scholarship, this is not only a practical primer on one of the world's most fascinating traditions but a wide-ranging look at the course of our civilization--and how we can alter it for the better. "Part spiritual memoir, part philosophical treatise and part religious history, Thurman's book is a passionate declaration of the possibilities of renewing the world." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The New York Times calls him "America's number one Buddhist." He is the co-founder of Tibet House New York, was the first American Tibetan Buddhist monk, and has shared a thirty-five-year friendship with the Dalai Lama. Now, Robert Thurman presents his first completely original book, "an inspiring guide to incorporating Buddhist wisdom into daily life" (USA Today). Written with insight, enthusiasm, and impeccable scholarship, this is not only a practical primer on one of the world's most fascinating traditions but a wide-ranging look at the course of our civilization--and how we can alter it for the better.

"Part spiritual memoir, part philosophical treatise and part religious history, Thurman's book is a passionate declaration of the possibilities of renewing the world." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

FROM THE CRITICS

Stephen Prothero

"A specter is haunting Europe," Karl Marx wrote 150 years ago in The Communist Manifesto, "the specter of communism." Influenced by Marx's claim that religion is "the opiate of the masses," sociologists have traditionally viewed Buddhism as otherworldly, apolitical, pessimistic, socially apathetic and ethically inert -- the most powerful of religious opiates. Robert Thurman's Inner Revolution is a Buddhist manifesto that stands Marx and the sociologists on their heads. A specter is haunting America, he argues, and it's the friendly ghost of Tibetan Buddhism.

Thurman is a Buddhist Studies professor at Columbia University and, if we are to believe Time magazine, one of the 25 most influential people in America. But his real job is playing James Carville to the Dalai Lama's President Clinton. Inner Revolution is one part autobiography, two parts philosophy, three parts history and four parts spin. Here readers learn that Thurman was the first Westerner ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk, that the Buddha was great in bed, that selflessness is the key to real happiness and that Tibet is "a mandala of the peaceful, perfected universe." But Thurman's aim is not to portray Tibet as Shangri-la. It is to portray Buddhism as deeply ethical and political -- "a coup of the spirit."

Like John Dominic Crossan, who has argued that Jesus was a revolutionary, Thurman portrays the Buddha as a liberator -- a "cool hero" who initiated a "cool revolution" that radically transformed society by changing individuals first. His "politics of enlightenment" was countercultural at first, but it eventually went mainstream, finding its highest manifestation in "buddhocratic" (not theocratic!) Tibet.

As the world modernized, Thurman argues, Tibet modernized too. But while the West's modernity was "outer," Tibet's modernity was "inner." It explored inner rather than outer space, championed the spiritual over the material, sacralized rather than secularized the world, and put its trust in individuals over bureaucracies. Nonviolent and tolerant, it achieved its apogee in the monasteries of the "psychonauts" of Tibet. Militaristic modernity, Thurman concludes, has brought us to the brink of nuclear annihilation. Our challenge is to marry inner and outer modernity -- to create a global society (a "United Nations of Earth") that is both spiritually and technologically advanced.

In keeping with its manifesto style, Inner Revolution is replete with lists. There are five principles of the politics of enlightenment and four grounds for hope in the 21st century. An appendix, the book's most controversial section, propounds 10 planks in what amounts to a political platform. Here Thurman gets down to business, blasting Newt Gingrich-style Republicans (though not by name) on taxes, crime, race, religious freedom, defense spending and the environment, and endorsing abortion rights, medicinal pot-smoking, universal voter registration and higher salaries for college professors.

Although Thurman presents his book as an antidote to the materialistic modernity of the West, it is also a welcome corrective to the pop Buddhism of Madison Avenue and Hollywood. Say what you want about his specific political proposals, Thurman's vision of a kinder, gentler America merits a hearing. If nothing else, the book demonstrates that not every Tibetan lama is busy shilling something on TV. Robert Thurman may be no Jack Kennedy, but he isn't Stephen Seagal either. His manifesto deserves a thoughtful read. -- Salon

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