Robert Thurman On 'why The Dalai Lama Matters'

You were ordained in 1965 as a Buddhist monk by the Dalai Lama, but you later abandoned that life. What changed your mind?

I had been living as a monk for about two or three years before I was ordained — and my old Mongolian teacher said, "Don't formally ordain because you won't stay." He knew I was totally sincere in wanting to stay, but he just knew the circumstances, which I didn't. In Tibetan society it is considered very easy and very much a privilege to be a monk. But people don't often leave it, and there is a big stigma attached to leaving it. So the old lama said, "Don't do it." He even told the Dalai Lama, "This boy is very sincere, and he wants to be a monk just so he can study more, but it is not a good idea."

When I got back to America from India, we were in the throes of the Vietnam War protests, the civil rights movement. All my friends from college were out there, either getting beaten up in the South marching with Martin Luther King or they were stoned or they were in fact fighting the war and running to Canada, and it was a really turbulent time. I got restless and wanted to be more of an activist. And I soon discovered that there was no support in our society at that time for anybody to be a Buddhist monk. It was considered a complete cop-out — people thought you must be crazy. I had no way of representing the wonderful ideas and practices I had discovered, and so, sure enough, I decided to offer back my robe because I recognized I had made a mistake.

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