OUR HYPERLINKED WORLD

Commercial interests with their advertising industry do not want people to develop contentment and less greed.  Military interests in economic, political, ethnic or nationalist guises, do not want people to develop more tolerance, nonviolence and compassion. And ruling groups in general, in whatever sort of hierarchy, do not want the ruled to become too insightful, too independent, too creative on their own, as the danger is a threat that they will be insubordinate, rebellious, and unproductive in their alloted tasks. Robert Thurman

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Robert Thurman holds the first endowed chair in Buddhist Studies in the West, the Jey Tsong Khapa Chair in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies. After education at Philips Exeter and Harvard, he studied Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism for almost thirty years as a personal student of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He has written both scholarly and popular books, and has lectured widely all over the world. His special interest is the exploration of the Indo-Tibetan philosophical and psychological traditions with a view to their relevance to parallel currents of contemporary thought and science. Columbia University, Department of Religion

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Robert Thurman won the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Prize in June of 2007. In addition to that and the accomplishments listed in his Columbia University bio above, he writes for BeliefNet and cofounded Tibet House in New York, which is dedicated to preserving Tibetan culture. One of his more recent books is Why the Dalai Lama Matters, subtitled “His Act of Truth as the Solution for China, Tibet, and the World.”

In the video below, the acceptance presentation for the TED Prize, Dr. Thurman talks about our hyperlinked world. He describes a world in which we can know anything at any time. This means that we are always aware of the suffering of others and cannot ignore our inter-relatedness. We cannot ignore the misery of others. He suggests that this is in effect a mass enlightenment and a step toward Buddhahood. J.D.

Video posted to YouTube by TEDtalksDirector.

Photo credit ~ Robert Thurman courtesy of Tenzin Nyima licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic via Wikipedia. The lotus illustration below is from PD Clipart.org.