06-18-2026, 01:41 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-18-2026, 05:58 AM by HereOnThePrimalEdge.)
Robert Thurman died unexpectedly on June 16th. A scholar and teacher of Tibetan studies, he was a semi regular visitor to the temple in Wood Valley. He loved Big Island and planned to move to Waimea. I don’t have all the details right now, I’ll add later. If anyone else has info or links please post.
Some may also know him as actress Uma Thurman’s dad.
Here’s a post from Wood Valley’s Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/MeltdowninTibet...434252987/
Robert Thurman, whose erudite, exuberant efforts to expand the West’s understanding of Tibetan Buddhism earned him a reputation as “the Dalai Lama’s man in America,” died on Tuesday at his home in Woodstock, N.Y. He was 84.
His daughter, the actress Uma Thurman, confirmed the death.
Widely considered the foremost expert on Tibetan Buddhism in the United States, Dr. Thurman was a former Buddhist monk who had been ordained and partly trained by the Dalai Lama himself. He later earned a doctorate in Indic studies from Harvard and taught at Amherst and Columbia.
He wrote, edited and translated more than 20 books on Buddhism. Some of them were centuries-old texts intended for scholars and advanced practitioners; others, like “Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Happiness” (1998), were written for the broader public and sold briskly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/us/ro...-dead.html
If you have Instagram (I don’t) you can find some Wood Valley temple posts when he visited.
Some may also know him as actress Uma Thurman’s dad.
Here’s a post from Wood Valley’s Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/MeltdowninTibet...434252987/
Robert Thurman, whose erudite, exuberant efforts to expand the West’s understanding of Tibetan Buddhism earned him a reputation as “the Dalai Lama’s man in America,” died on Tuesday at his home in Woodstock, N.Y. He was 84.
His daughter, the actress Uma Thurman, confirmed the death.
Widely considered the foremost expert on Tibetan Buddhism in the United States, Dr. Thurman was a former Buddhist monk who had been ordained and partly trained by the Dalai Lama himself. He later earned a doctorate in Indic studies from Harvard and taught at Amherst and Columbia.
He wrote, edited and translated more than 20 books on Buddhism. Some of them were centuries-old texts intended for scholars and advanced practitioners; others, like “Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Happiness” (1998), were written for the broader public and sold briskly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/us/ro...-dead.html
If you have Instagram (I don’t) you can find some Wood Valley temple posts when he visited.
