Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman, an internationally recognized scholar, professor, Tibetan practitioner, and author, one of the most prominent and articulate voices of Buddhism in America—and certainly the most colorful—died unexpectedly on June 16, 2026, in Woodstock, New York. Almost everyone knows him as Bob, he was 84 years old.
He was honored as the Je Tsongkhapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Studies at Columbia University until his retirement in 2019. Thurman was the first endowed chair in Western Buddhist studies. It was far from the only first. He was the first American to be ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk by no less than His Holiness Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Time magazine named him one of the “25 Most Influential Americans” in 1997—just one of many honors he has received here and abroad. Although in 1967 Thurman disrobed—abandoned his monastic role—and returned to civilian life in America, he and the Dalai Lama, who were only six years his senior, remained lifelong friends. Thurman was deeply committed to the Tibetan people and their cause. “What I learned from these people changed my life forever,” he once wrote, “and I believe their culture contains an inner science that is especially relevant to the difficult times we live in. My desire is to share the deep hope for our future that they shared with me.” At the request of the Dalai Lama, Thurman co-founded the non-profit composer Richard Philip Glas with his wife, Nena, in 1987. Tibet House USA to support the preservation of Tibetan culture. He acted as the chairman of the board.
A defining moment in Thurman’s life was an accident in 1961, when he was 20 years old: he was changing a tire when the jack slipped and took out his eye. After that, he wore glass eyes, which confused many who were amazed by his intense gaze. The accident completely changed Thurman’s life. He was briefly married to Marie-Christophe de Menil, an art collector and oil heiress eight years his senior, with whom he had a daughter, Taya. (Their grandson is the artist Dash Snow.) A “deep dissatisfaction and questioning” led Thurman to drop out of college—then an undergraduate at Harvard—and embark on a pilgrimage to India. (During his senior year, he was kicked out of Phillips Exeter Academy, a prep school for his failed attempt to join Castro’s Cuban revolution, but was accepted by Harvard anyway.)
Returning from India in 1964, Thurman met Geshe Wangyal, a Kalmyk Buddhist monk from Mongolia, who became his first Buddhist teacher. In 1965, Geshe Wangyal introduced Thurman to the Dalai Lama, describing him as “a crazy American boy, very intelligent and good-hearted (though somewhat proud), who speaks Tibetan well and has learned something about Buddhism (and) wants to become a monk.” After Thurman’s ordination, the Dalai Lama met with him weekly and referred his questions about Buddhism to another teacher so that he and Thurmann could discuss “Freud, physics, and other ‘Western’ topics that interested him.” According to Thurman’s biography, he later said of this time: “All I wanted was to remain in a 2,500-year-old community of seekers of enlightenment, to be embraced as a monk. My inner world was rich, full of insights and delightful visions, and I felt lucky and privileged to have studied and tested such great teachers.”
When she returned in 1967, Thurman found it too difficult to remain a monk and disrobed. That year he married German-Swedish model Nena von Schlebrugge, former wife of Timothy Leary, and continued his studies at Harvard. He earned a master’s degree in 1969 and a PhD in 1972, then went to Amherst, where he served as professor of religion from 1973 to 1988 before taking his position at Columbia, where he remained for the remainder of his career. Revered by students and scholars alike, as Thurman became a public figure and taught to a wider audience, his popularity grew exponentially. At the time of his death, he became the most influential American-born Tibetan Buddhist.
Thurman was the author of some twenty-three books. He earned praise from his colleagues for his translations and similar scientific works Teaching of Saint Vimalakirti: Mahayana Scriptures and The Central Philosophy of Tibet: Jey Tsong Khapa A Study and Translation of the Essence of True Eloquence, but they were known and books about the Tibetan people and Tibetan art and culture. They are among his books for a wider audience The Tibetan Book of the Dead and inspiration for Buddhism in everyday life, such as Endless Life: Seven Virtues for the Good Life and Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and the Search for True Happiness. It works like Why does the Dalai Lama matter?and even a graphic style biography, A man of peacereflecting his long association with the Dalai Lama and Tibetan affairs.
As impressive as Thurman’s autobiography is, it doesn’t capture the breadth of her rich and varied life. Undoubtedly, it has always been destined for a unique journey. He was born in 1941 in New York, the son of actress Elizabeth Dean Farrar, who played a maid in Ibsen’s film. The enemy of the peopleand Beverly Reid Thurman Jr., an Associated Press editor and translator of the United Nations. Thurman’s Tibet House biography suggests that his outsized personality and flair for the dramatic may have been influenced by attending the weekly Shakespeare readings his parents held for guests such as Laurence Olivier.
In recent years, Thurman and his wife, Nena, have spent most of their time here Menla Retreat and Dewa Spatheir meditation and holistic wellness center in the Catskill Mountains of New York, offering Tibetan medicine practices and other healing modalities.
In addition to daughter Taya, Thurman has four successful adult children with Nena – actress Uma Thurman; Ganden, Executive Director of Tibet House; Dechen, actor and massage therapist; and actor-turned-realtor Mipam – as well as eight grandchildren, including Uma’s daughter Maya Hawke and son Levon Hawke, both actors.
