Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Real Happiness by Robert Thurman

Thurman has a knack for helping laymen understand the teachings and history of Buddhism while also explaining why it has taken root in the West. Thurman was the first Westerner to be ordained as a monk in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition after studying under the Dalai Lama in 1964. In this highly polished memoir he tells the story of his pupilage under His Holiness, which was a frolic in Sunday school compared to the task of integrating Buddhism into cold war America. This is an optimistic and highly satisfying discussion of how Buddhism has shaped the life of one fascinating scholar as well as the course of Western spirituality.

http://www.amazon.com/Inner-Revolution-Robert-Thurman/dp/1573227196

On November 4 2007 I was fortunate enough to attend Robert Thurman's free lecture on Buddhism and art at LACMA; I highly recommend him. The following excerpts are from his book Inner Revolution:

Internationally renowned biologist Rupert Sheldrake has a theory he calls 'morphic resonance'. Sheldrake hypothesizes that an individual's or group's actions, beliefs, and insights create resonances that make it more likely that other people, otherwise unconnected and unaware of the thoughts or occurences, will experience the same events or insights as if spontaneously on their own. If I have an insight, the theory goes, people around me are more likely to experience something similar, even if I do not tell them about it. Sheldrake's views are controversial, but they make intuitive sense, and experimental data is beginning to prove him right.

Our empirical bent leaves us incredulous in the face of this sort of possibility. Consider, however, the phenomena of radio, television, and microwave transmissions. Their signals are generated as patterns in subtle energy fields that move out in broadcast patterns which hang in the air, so to speak....The human brain is an amazingly complex transmission and receiving device...Our involvement with others does not begin with just our speech and physical movements. Each of us individually has an effect on the lives of beings around us through quiet processes going on in our minds...

In the United States we live in the first country on earth with founding documents that formally guarantee the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Yet we are miserable. We blame our malaise on circumstances - our jobs, our families - or see everything around us as the source of our unhappiness. But the question arises: Will we ever find happiness from within this frame of reference...

...While we may wake up "knowing" that we're the center of the universe, the minute we walk outside we will not encounter one single peron who agrees with us. If we could hear everyone's mind speaking out, we'd hear choruses of "It's not you, it's me! I'm the center." We are thus in a state of constant disagreement, all in the grip of that little dictator inside telling each peron that he or she is the center of the universe...

Am "I" my name? When someone calls my name, I respond with my entire being. But if my name is taken away, do I disappear? There is no name plate anywhere in my physical or mental structures on which my name can land. There seems to be a point in the throat where the vowel "I" begins to sound - but that point where "I" resonates cannot be the source of my total identity. I am not my heart, my blood, my bones, my sadness, my anger, or my laughter. I am not summed up by my parts...

bobthurmanpodcast.com