Free Online Course: Robert Thurman’s Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism (Recorded at Columbia U)

Image by Won­der­lane, via Flickr Com­mons

Today you can be a fly on the wall at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, and lis­ten to Robert Thur­man’s lec­tures on “The Cen­tral Phi­los­o­phy of Tibet.” Thur­man is, as his own web­site right­ly describes him, a “world­wide author­i­ty on reli­gion and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty,” and an “elo­quent advo­cate of the rel­e­vance of Bud­dhist ideas to our dai­ly lives.”  A “lead­ing voice of the val­ue of rea­son, peace and com­pas­sion,” he was “named one of Time magazine’s 25 most influ­en­tial Amer­i­cans.” And, in case you’re won­der­ing, he’s also Uma Thur­man’s dad.

The audio above comes from a course taught by Prof. Thur­man at Colum­bia, and it’s based on his book The Cen­tral Phi­los­o­phy of Tibet. The course “explores the philo­soph­i­cal thought of Indo-Tibetan Bud­dhism, both in the intel­lec­tu­al set­ting of ancient India and Tibet and in the con­text of the cur­rent glob­al phi­los­o­phy.” You will find the course added to our ever-grow­ing list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Note: There are 13 lec­tures in total, each run­ning almost two hours. The audio play­er above should stream through them all. The first 30 sec­onds are a lit­tle muf­fled, but then things improve. The lec­tures are host­ed by Archive.org.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bud­dhism 101: A Short Intro­duc­to­ry Lec­ture by Jorge Luis Borges

Leonard Cohen Nar­rates Film on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Fea­tur­ing the Dalai Lama (1994)

The His­to­ry of the World in 46 Lec­tures From Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger Talks Phi­los­o­phy with a Bud­dhist Monk on Ger­man Tele­vi­sion (1963)

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