New York couple’s 50-year relationship rooted in Buddhist faith

WOODSTOCK, N.Y. — The lawn goldfish — to borrow Ganden Thurman’s name for his parents’ three temple dogs — were trailing Nena Thurman in a wheezing cortege.

Nena Thurman’s husband, Robert, a Buddhist scholar and activist, made his way down the twisting stairs of their idiosyncratic handmade house, and the two settled into a well-worn sofa, the dogs strewed on the floor.

Robert Thurman, professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist studies at Columbia University and president of Tibet House US, a cultural institution that is 30 years old this year, has a book to promote, a biography in graphic-novel form of the Dalai Lama called “Man of Peace.”

Dense with East Asian history, it’s not quite “Persepolis” or “Fun Home,” but it is a thrill to come upon cartoon versions of hometown political figures such as Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein and Barack Obama (you’ll even find Whoopi Goldberg near the end, in a hilarious panel in which the Dalai Lama praises her dreadlocks and she praises his bald pate).

Nonetheless, its contemporary exposition is one Robert Thurman hopes will newly popularize the exiled Tibetan leader’s life story among millennials.

As one of the Dalai Lama’s most famous — and oldest — Western pals, Thurman remains his best and most passionate apologist. And the two have made a curious bet to live until the year 2048 to see the Tibetan cause through.

The publication of the graphic novel, which Thurman wrote with William Meyers and Michael G. Burbank, marks the latest example of the long and successful family business that is the Robert and Nena partnership. They will celebrate their half-century anniversary in July, although the former model, now 76, and the former monk, now 75, were once voted by their friends as the couple least likely to succeed.

In 1965, Thurman was just 23 when he was introduced to the Dalai Lama, then 29. A crackerjack linguist, Thurman had learned Tibetan in 10 weeks, and the two became, as the Dalai Lama liked to say, “talking partners.” 

The Tibetan leader was interested in interrogating Thurman about Freud and other thinkers in the contemporary Western canon; Thurman was eager for the Dalai Lama’s insights into the dharma. The older man ordained the younger as a Tibetan monk, the first known Westerner to take the necessary 253 vows.

Nena and Robert Thurman met in the kitchen at Millbrook, the New York estate given to her then-husband, Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and their followers by scions of the Mellon family. She was there to persuade Leary to sign their divorce papers; Robert Thurman was there to persuade Leary to stop taking so many drugs — although he, too, had indulged in a bit of hallucination. 

Thurman wasn't looking his best: He had thrown kerosene on a brush fire and his face was covered in soot. He had given up being a monk, and the hair on his shaved head had just begun to grow in.

Yet Robert Thurman “had all kinds of answers and interesting questions and new ideas,” Nena Thurman said.

“Life is full of serendipitous happenings," she said. "It’s like a skateboard is hovering just outside your door. You can close the door, or you can jump on and take the ride.”

Nena Thurman had a small inheritance, which the couple used to buy 9 acres on a hill in Woodstock for $7,000. They cleared the land and put up a few tents and a tepee. Then Robert Thurman had a commission to translate a Tibetan sutra, and he saved $3,000 to build a house, Nena Thurman said, “which was enough to either hire people and dig a cellar, or buy lumber. We decided to buy the lumber.”

They named the place Punya House — punya means “merit” in Sanskrit — although Nena Thurman’s brother, recruited on weekends to work, called the cellar he was digging the Gulag. 

Inspired by Buckminster Fuller, a hero of Robert Thurman’s, he topped the cabin with a geodesic dome built from shingles and plexiglass. But it leaked badly. And the couple needed more rooms for their four children: Ganden, Dechen, Uma and Mipam. So Robert Thurman took it down and built a second floor.

The home is filled with deity-tchochtkes, as Robert Thurman called the house army of Buddhas and other Indo-Tibetan figurines.

On the second floor, beams were painted with lotus flowers and other so-called lucky signs.

In an anteroom is a wall of 500 or 600 Tibetan sutras, each wrapped in a bright-orange cloth, that Robert Thurman has promised the Dalai Lama he will translate. Finally, up another twisting staircase, a 16-sided bedroom is overseen by a fearsome, gilded figure with 16 feet.

“I call it the terminator exterminator,” he said, “because it’s a fierce symbol of overcoming death.”

He explained how the theory of relativity is expressed in the 16 emptinesses that are the core of Buddhist teachings.

“The relative universe means there is no absolute container,” he said. “And so we are empty of any isolated, separated identity, if you follow me. We are a complete nexus of interrelatedness, which means there is nothing to do but improve.”

Nena Thurman, meanwhile, had some tips for a successful marriage.

“If you share a spiritual outlook,” she said, “it’s an area you can return to when you are having your petty struggles, which are nonsense compared to what you really care about.

"On a practical note," she added, "you have to take turns, so that no one partner becomes dominant in the relationship.”

Ganden Thurman had another theory about his parents, gleaned from reading about some early work at the MIT Media Lab having to do with interactivity, and the essential elements of human conversation.

“Turns out it’s a high degree of mutual interruptibility,” he said. “You had to have a high tolerance for that in my family. There were always a lot of ideas — and grudges, too — pouring forth. Being somewhat social oddballs who were often left to our own devices, we became, as people who are marooned together often do, a little funky.”