Bob Thurman Podcast: Buddhas Have More Fun!

In this podcast Professor Thurman discusses the role of the Buddha, Einstein & Wittgenstein in modern philosophic perspectives & scientific methods.  Using humorous stories & close translation of Tibetan Buddhist texts Robert Thurman discusses the impossibility of objective reality , and the influential role of the subject in a relational object’s status. Continues with a discuss...

Professor Thurman discusses the progression in theories of relativity in the west from Einstein to Wittgenstein, and shows how the Buddha set forth a perhaps more complete version of the same insight 2500 years earlier with what was later called “ the royal reason of relativity . “ Podcast includes an introduction to emptiness , non-duality and the Buddha’s radical and blissful d...

In a reading of Nāgārjuna’s Jewel Rosary (Ratnāvalī), Professor Thurman discusses the skillful paths of evolutionary action performed by body, speech, and mind, presenting that these paths of evolutionary actions shape an individual’s personal evolution or devolution in an evolutionary matrix similar to that of Darwin but, adding to it voluntary individual evolution through infinite mu...

In this podcast Professor Thurman discusses the Buddhist Twelve Links of Relativistic Origination it’s perspectives on Bliss , Causation, Theism, Kingship , Ignorance, Emptiness & nirvana. Includes an introduction to David B. Gray’s Translation of “ The Cakrasamvara Tantra (The Discourse of Sri Heruka) Śrīherukābhidhāna: A Study and Annotated Translation ” Published by...

In this podcast Professor Thurman examines the modern scientific perspective on reincarnation (the Buddhist Belief in Past & Future Life), the work of Hermann von Helmholtz on the vital principle and their context within Western religious doctrine. Analyzing the idea of non-existence after death and prior to conception, Robert A.F. Thurman discusses the requirement to re-calibrate one’s...

In the debut episode of the Bob Thurman Podcast Professor Thurman talks about his formative years & his own introduction to Buddhism. Includes personal stories about meeting Geshe Ngawang Wangyal a Kalmyk-Mongolian lama at his Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center Labsum Shedrub Ling in Central New Jersey in the 1960's. Recorded at the 2014 Translation & Transmission Conference hosted by the Ts...