06/17/2026
Professor Robert Alexander Farrar (Bob) Thurman was widely regarded as America’s foremost scholar of Tibetan Buddhism and a tireless advocate for the Tibetan people and their culture. He held a Ph.D. from Harvard University and the Jey Tsong Khapa Chair in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University—the first endowed chair in Buddhist Studies in the West. A prolific author whose books brought Tibetan Buddhist thought to a broad readership, he was also co-founder and president of Tibet House New York and the American Institute of Buddhist Studies, and a recipient of the Padma Shri award. In 1997, Time magazine named him one of its 25 Most Influential Americans. Professor Thurman was an FPMT Registered Teacher in the Senior Teachers in the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition category. He remained active in his work for Tibet House and Menla, his retreat center in the Catskills, up until his death.
Ven. Roger Kunsang shares, “Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Bob Thurman had a long relationship going back to the 1970s with many meetings filled with lots of laughter– joking and then serious discussions on teachings, texts, and Tibet.”
Professor Thurman first met Lama Thubten Yeshe in 1978 in Delhi, where Nick Ribush arranged a lunch at the Imperial Hotel. Lama Yeshe shared with him a vision: to translate all volumes of the Tibetan Tengyur into English. The Tengyur comprises over 3,600 treatises on the “liberating arts and sciences”—too vast for any single person to translate in a lifetime. Years later, in 2011, Professor Thurman led the monumental effort to begin the translation of the Tengyur collection into English, Chinese, Hindi, and other languages through the American Institute of Buddhist Studies at Columbia University Press, as the Treasury of the Buddhist Sciences series. He taught at several FPMT centers and contributed articles to Mandala magazine. In August 2015, he welcomed Lama Zopa Rinpoche to Tibet House during Rinpoche’s visit to New York City.
🙏Please pray that Robert A.F. (Bob)Thurman may never ever be reborn in the lower realms, may he be immediately born in a pure land where he can be enlightened or to receive a perfect human body, meet the Mahayana teachings and meet a perfectly qualified guru and by only pleasing the guru’s mind, achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible.
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Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman passed away on June 16, 2026, at the age of eighty-four, at his home in Woodstock, New York. Professor Robert Alexander Farrar (Bob) Thurman was widely regarded as America's foremost scholar
