Robert Thurman

Robert A.F. Thurman earned his BA, MA and PhD at Harvard, and in 1965 became the first American ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk by the Dalai Lama. He later returned to lay life and built an academic career, teaching at Amherst College before holding Columbia University's Je Tsongkhapa Professorship of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies, the first endowed chair in Buddhist studies in the West, and translated texts including the Vimalakirti Sutra and The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

In 1986 he co-founded Tibet House US with his wife Nena, Richard Gere and Philip Glass, and through it established the Menla Retreat & Dewa Spa in Phoenicia, New York. Robert Thurman died on June 16, 2026, at age 84 (confirmed independently via Wikipedia); Menla continues to run retreats in his honor, but no further teaching engagements led by him exist.