The person who is tormenting the Tibetans feels they have to get rid of the Tibetans in order to be happy.
Robert ThurmanMore than whether you live or die, it's how you are living or dying that is important.
Robert ThurmanYou feel so happy about that, that you feel loving towards these poor being who are suffering in their separateness, and their alienation Then have the problem of how to help them get free, because just by your knowing that they're essentially free, that doesn't free them. Just by your being blissful, it doesn't release them from their knot of separation and false self absolutization.
Robert ThurmanWithin our own society, we jail more prisoners than any other country in the world, 85 percent of them people of nonwhite races — red, black, brown, and yellow. We are one of the few nations that still indulge in the death penalty for increasing numbers of these prisoners. We must become mindful of these negative things, since we need not support these actions of our nation to be affected negatively by their evolutionary impact, unless we mentally, verbally, and ultimately physically, disassociate ourselves from them.
Robert ThurmanEvery time you have a big blast-out experience you think that's the ultimate-everything, and of course it isn't, although you can get hints. The key however, is not to take those hint experiences to be the ultimate experience. There always needs to be a balance. For example, when you find something, by having some experience, you always want to keep looking because there could be more to it.
Robert ThurmanThe saying "no self, no problem" probably comes from Zen. In their cultures, where Buddhism is kind of taken for granted, as well as karma, causality, former and future life, and the possibility for becoming enlightened, then it's safe to skirt the danger of nihilism, which would be, I don't exist because Buddha said I have no self, and therefore I have no problem because I don't exist. That would be a bad misunderstanding. But in those cultures, it would not be as easy to have that understanding as it would be here in the west, where we really are nihilistic.
Robert Thurman