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.
因学识渊博、热情洋溢地致力于增进西方对藏传佛教的理解，罗伯特·瑟曼被誉为“达赖喇嘛在美国的代言人”。他于周二在纽约州伍德斯托克的家中去世，享年84岁。
His daughter, the actress Uma Thurman, confirmed the death.
他的女儿、演员乌玛·瑟曼证实了他的死讯。
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.
瑟曼被公认为美国首屈一指的藏传佛教专家。他曾是一名佛教僧侣，达赖喇嘛亲自为他授戒，并对他进行部分培训。后来，他获得了哈佛大学的印度学博士学位，并在阿默斯特学院和哥伦比亚大学任教。
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.
他撰写、编辑并翻译了20多本关于佛教的书籍。其中一些译作是流传了几个世纪的经典，面向学者和高级修行者；另一些则是面向广大公众，销量颇佳，例如《内在革命——生命、自由和对真正幸福的追求》（Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Happiness，1998年）。
As the 1970s counterculture embraced Eastern religious ideas, and Buddhism in particular, Dr. Thurman pushed for a historically grounded, intellectually rigorous understanding of the tradition.
随着20世纪70年代的反文化运动开始接受东方宗教思想，尤其是佛教，瑟曼致力于推动人们对这一传统建立基于历史且严谨的学术认知。
2005年，瑟曼与妻子内娜及女儿乌玛·瑟曼合影。“他从未停止过对世界各个方面的探索，”乌玛·瑟曼女士说。EVAN AGOSTINI/GETTY IMAGES
“His translations went to the depths of the sophistication of the Tibetan exploration of consciousness,” David Kittay, a former student of Dr. Thurman’s at Columbia who now teaches religion there, said in an interview. “Yet he could explain it so anyone could get it.”
“他的翻译深入探究了藏传佛教在探索意识方面的那种复杂与精妙，”瑟曼博士在哥伦比亚大学的昔日学生、现于该校教授宗教学的大卫·基泰在接受采访时说。“然而，他却能用所有人都能听懂的方式将其解释清楚。”
Tall, sturdily built and with a shock of reddish-blond hair, he brought an infectious energy to the many lectures and conferences he organized around Buddhism and the plight of Tibet under Chinese rule.
瑟曼身材高大魁梧，一头浓密的红金色头发。在组织关于佛教以及西藏在中国统治下困境的众多讲座和会议时，他总能带来一种极具感染力的活力。
People were often surprised by how sociable he was, given his years as a monk.
鉴于他当了多年的僧人，人们常常对他社交方面的活跃感到惊讶。
“I don’t think he considered those to be contradictions,” Rodger Kamenetz, an expert on Buddhist-Jewish relations and the author of “Seeing Into the Life of Things: Imagination and the Sacred Encounter” (2025), said in an interview. “He viewed meditation not as quietism, but as a release of energy, and he just had great energy.”
“我不认为他觉得二者之间存在矛盾，”佛教与犹太教关系专家、《洞悉万物的生命——想象力与神圣的相遇》（Seeing Into the Life of Things: Imagination and the Sacred Encounter，2025年）一书的作者罗杰·卡梅内茨在接受采访时说。“他将冥想视为一种能量的释放，而非清静无为，而他恰恰拥有巨大的能量。”
In 1972 he founded the American Institute of Buddhist Studies at Columbia; the organization translates and preserves classical Indian Buddhist texts.
1972年，瑟曼在哥伦比亚大学创立了美国佛教研究所；该组织致力于翻译和保存古印度佛教经典。
In 1987, at the Dalai Lama’s request, he and his wife, Nena, joined the actor Richard Gere and the composer Philip Glass in founding Tibet House U.S., a sort of cultural consulate in Manhattan for the Tibetan nation. Dr. Thurman later served for decades as its president.
1987年，应达赖喇嘛之邀，他与妻子内娜以及演员理查·基尔、作曲家菲利普·格拉斯共同创立了美国西藏之家，该机构位于曼哈顿，相当于藏民族的某种文化领事馆。瑟曼后来担任其总裁长达数十年。
He and his wife also operated a Buddhist retreat west of Woodstock, the Menla Retreat and Dewa Spa.
他和妻子还在伍德斯托克西部经营一家名为“门拉静修中心与德瓦水疗”的佛教静修所。
“My father was a magnificent, charismatic, passionate, curious, alive, vibrant human being,” Ms. Thurman said. “He never stopped investigating the world in all its facets. He was obsessed with the power of compassion.”
“我的父亲是一个非凡的人、他富于魅力、激情洋溢、求知若渴、生机勃勃且充满活力，”乌玛·瑟曼说。“他从未停止从各个层面去探索这个世界。他对慈悲的力量着迷不已。”
瑟曼博士与达赖喇嘛，摄于2011年。他曾师从这位藏传佛教精神领袖，并向达赖喇嘛讲授弗洛伊德心理学、核物理学及其他西方思想。TAYLOR HILL/GETTY IMAGES
Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman was born on Aug. 3, 1941, in Manhattan. His parents — Beverly Thurman, a journalist, and Elizabeth Dean Farrar, an actress — hosted regular salons in their home; Robert once read lines alongside Laurence Olivier, one of their guests.
罗伯特·亚历山大·法拉尔·瑟曼于1941年8月3日出生在曼哈顿。他的父母是记者比佛利·瑟曼和演员伊丽莎白·迪恩·法拉尔，他们经常在家中举办沙龙；罗伯特曾与他们的座上宾之一劳伦斯·奥利弗一起朗读过台词。
He enrolled in boarding school at Phillips Exeter Academy, in New Hampshire. He was expelled in 1958 — weeks from graduation, having already been accepted at Harvard — after leaving without permission to join Fidel Castro and his guerrilla army in Cuba. He was stopped in Florida and worked for a brief time in Mexico.
他就读于新罕布什尔州的寄宿学校菲利普斯埃克塞特学院。1958年，在距离毕业仅剩几周、且已被哈佛大学录取的情况下，他未经允许擅自离开学校，打算去古巴加入菲德尔·卡斯特罗及其游击队，因此被开除。他在佛罗里达被拦下，随后在墨西哥工作了一小段时间。
In 1959, he married Christophe de Menil, an oil heiress. In 1961, while changing a flat tire, the tire iron slipped and destroyed his left eye, a freak accident that left him questioning his own mortality.
1959年，他与石油家族继承人克里斯托夫·德·梅尼尔结婚。1961年，在更换漏气的轮胎时，轮胎扳手意外滑落，弄瞎了他的左眼。这场离奇的事故让他开始对自身生命的脆弱产生思考。
He dropped out of Harvard to travel across Asia. His wife, uninterested in his wanderings, left him. He arrived in Turkey close to broke.
他从哈佛辍学，踏上了穿越亚洲的旅程。妻子对他的流浪生活不感兴趣，便离他而去。他抵达土耳其时几乎身无分文。
“I was already by about that time like St. Francis,” he told The New York Times Magazine in 1996. “I had an empty socket, long hair and a scraggly beard. I wore black baggy Afghani pants, a T-shirt with a white shawl thrown around me and leather sandals.”
“那个时候我已经有点像圣方济各了，”他在1996年接受《纽约时报杂志》采访时说。“我一只眼睛眼窝空空，一头长发，留着稀疏的胡须。我穿着宽松的黑色阿富汗式长裤，套着T恤，披着一条白色披肩，脚上穿着皮凉鞋。”
He continued on through Iran to India, where he got a job teaching English to young reincarnated Tibetan lamas in exile. He immediately took to their beliefs and culture — “I was in heaven, because the minute I met the Tibetans, I knew they had what I wanted,” he told The Times.
他继续穿越伊朗来到印度，在那里找到了一份工作，为流亡在外的年轻藏传佛教转世活佛教授英语。他立刻就被他们的信仰和文化深深吸引——“我就像在天堂一样，因为在我遇见藏人的那一刻，我就知道他们拥有我想要的东西，”他告诉《纽约时报》。
He returned home when his father died, in 1962 but continued his pursuit of Buddhist knowledge with Geshe Wangyal, a Buddhist lama in New Jersey. Adept at languages, he learned Tibetan in a matter of months and eventually spoke it without an accent.
1962年父亲去世后，他回到家乡，但他继续跟随新泽西州的佛教喇嘛格西旺杰学习佛教知识。由于拥有语言天赋，他在几个月内就学会了藏语，最终能说一口毫无口音的藏语。
He decided to become a monk and persuaded his teacher to accompany him to Dharamshala, India, the home in exile of the Dalai Lama.
他决定出家为僧，并说服他的老师陪同他前往印度达兰萨拉，即达赖喇嘛的流亡所在地。
Dr. Thurman and the Dalai Lama became fast friends: He studied under the Tibetan spiritual leader and, in turn, gave him lessons in Freudian psychology, nuclear physics and other Western ideas.
瑟曼和达赖喇嘛很快成为好友：他师从这位西藏精神领袖，同时，他也向达赖喇嘛讲授弗洛伊德心理学、核物理学和其他西方思想。
“He would say, ‘Forget about the teaching, you can go and talk to some old lama,’” Dr. Thurman told The San Francisco Examiner in 1997. “‘But now what I want to know is how does the bicameral American constitutional system work? What is a gene, how does it work?’”
“他会说，‘别管什么教义了，你可以去和那些老喇嘛聊，’”瑟曼博士在1997年告诉《旧金山考察家报》。“‘但我现在想知道的是，美国的两院制宪政体系是怎么运作的？基因是什么，它是怎么发挥作用的？’”
2017年，瑟曼和妻子内娜。1987年，他们与演员理查德·基尔和作曲家菲利普·格拉斯共同创立了“美国西藏之家”。 ANDREW WHITE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Dalai Lama ordained Dr. Thurman but, when he returned to the United States, Geshe Wangyal persuaded him that he could better serve Buddhism by doffing his robes and becoming a professor.
达赖喇嘛为瑟曼主持了受戒仪式，但当他回到美国时，格西旺杰说服他，脱下僧袍成为教授能够更好地服务于佛教。
He returned to Harvard and, in 1972, received a doctorate in Indic studies — an interdisciplinary degree now known as Sanskrit and Indian studies. He taught at Amherst College from 1973 to 1988, when he transferred to Columbia. There, he held the first endowed chair in Buddhist studies in the West. He retired in 2019.
他重返哈佛，并于1972年获得了印度学博士学位——这是一个跨学科学位，如今被称为梵文与印度研究。他从1973年起在阿默斯特学院任教至1988年，之后转到哥伦比亚大学。在那里，他担任了西方第一个佛教研究讲席教授。他于2019年退休。
Soon after returning to Harvard, Dr. Thurman went to Millbrook, the estate in upstate New York where the psychiatrist Timothy Leary and his circle were experimenting with LSD; he was there in an attempt to get Dr. Leary to tone down the drug use.
回到哈佛后不久，瑟曼曾经前往米尔布鲁克，这是纽约州北部的一个庄园，精神病学家蒂莫西·利里和他的圈子正在那里进行LSD实验；瑟曼此行的目的是劝说利里节制使用药品。
In the kitchen, he met Nena von Schlebrügge, a model who was soon to be the ex-wife of Dr. Leary. They married in 1967.
在厨房里，他遇到了模特内娜·冯·施莱布吕格，她当时即将与利里离婚。瑟曼和她于1967年结婚。
She survives him along with their daughter Uma and three sons, Ganden, Dechen and Mipam; a daughter from his first marriage, Taya Thurman; seven grandchildren, including the actress Maya Hawke; and three great-grandchildren. Another grandchild, the artist Dash Snow, died in 2009.
他的遗属包括妻子和他们的女儿乌玛，以及三个儿子甘丹、德庆和米帕姆，以及他第一段婚姻的女儿塔亚·瑟曼、还有包括演员玛雅·霍克在内的七个孙辈，以及三个曾孙辈。他的另一个孙辈，艺术家达什·斯诺已于2009年去世。
Across his many lectures, translations and books, Dr. Thurman tried to communicate a few key ideas about Buddhism, above all that it was not just a religion in a narrow sense, but a system of ethical education.
在他众多的讲座、翻译和著作中，瑟曼试图传达关于佛教的几个核心理念，最重要的是，佛教不仅仅是狭义上的宗教，而是一种伦理教育体系。
“Buddhism is not primarily religious,” he told The Believer magazine in 2020. “It deteriorates if someone believes they will get to nirvana if they just worship the Buddha. But the Buddha was saying, ‘Worshipping me is not going to get you there; you have to do something.’”
“佛教主要并不是宗教性的，”他在2020年告诉《信徒》杂志。“如果有人相信只要供奉佛陀就能达到涅槃，那便是对佛教的曲解。但佛陀其实是在说，‘供奉我并不能让你证得涅槃；你必须付诸行动。’”
