CHILDREN in NSW may soon become the happiest children in Australia because they are learning ethics at school, renowned Buddhist scholar and friend of the Dalai Lama Dr Robert Thurman says.
Learning about the value of patience, tolerance and altruism will help them evolve into beings of higher consciousness and perhaps curb the materialist thinking that leads to what he calls the “Terminal Lifestyle”.
“What I call the Terminal Lifestyle comes from believing that everything ends when we die,” he says. “Life is meaningless. We are alone in the universe and at death we become nothing."
"Madness comes from the world view that life is like a terminal disease and day by day we move towards death," he says. “It renders everything you do ultimately meaningless. It’s a huge cop-out.”
But Columbia University's Professor of Indo-Tibetan Studies, whose daughter is the actor Uma Thurman, does encourage people to follow their bliss and he practices what he preaches.
Uma's mother and Dr Thurman's first wife was a supermodel. Dr Thurman's life and thoughts reflect all the contradictions which face young people today.
“People should be teaching kids to control their minds,” says Dr Thurman, who makes his first trip to Australia next month for the Happiness and Its Causes conference in Sydney.
"We have to get people to develop common sense and not let them be brainwashed," he says.
As a young man, the son of Associated Press editor Beverly Reid Thurman, dropped out of Harvard to go to Tibet to become a Buddhist monk.
Now he's a strong advocate for an independent Tibet and close friend of the Dalai Lama.
"We (The West) abdicate our responsibility to build up the moral character of our students, that's generally universal," says Dr Thurman, whose daughter stars in some of the most morally ambiguous violent blockbusters ever made such as Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill series.
Yet he says violence should be discouraged. Happiness is an attitude which proper spiritual or ethical instruction can encourage.
At 17, on a dare, he and a friend ran away from school to try to enlist in the Cuban Revolution - this happened before the Cuban missile crisis which saw the introduction of a US ban on its citizens traveling to Cuba which continues to this day.
Luckily, the teenagers from the exclusive and very right-wing school called Philips Exeter Academy failed to make it to Cuba because the recruiters thought they were a bit too wet behind the ears.
Looking back, Thurman says he is proud to have had the courage of his convictions but thinks Castro turned out to be a "dreadful character".
Their romantic notions about revolution started from reading the poetry that the now-ailing Communist leader wrote while hiding out in the mountains as a young man.
The whole New Age philosophy of living in the moment can only make sense if you believe "the message" of James Cameron's Avatar that everything is connected and life goes on after death, Dr Thurman says.
Again this sounds a little contradictory, given his comments about not brainwashing people, but Dr Thurman admires the film not only because of its message but because it's fun.
He says it's good to stand up for ideals but it's also necessary to have fun to be happy.
"Non-violence begins at home," he says. "Be nice to the dog. Ask yourself: 'How am I living?'
"How violent have you been this morning?"
He believes that one of the deepest forms of fundamentalist blind faith is materialism which cannot bring happiness.
People are happy when they believe that they matter and they have purpose.
Happiness is being able to find joy in small things - besides an iPod - like stopping to pet the dog.
The Professor says the creation of ABC3, a public television station exclusively dedicated to children, is a sign of more evolved thinking in Australia.
Even Star Wars creator George Lucas could not convince politicians in the United States to do the same thing a decade or so ago when new bandwidth was being sold off, Dr Thurman says.
About 15 years ago, George Lucas went to then-President Bill Clinton to beg him to create an education TV channel for the United States.
“They were dishing out bandwidth to big corporations and George rushed to Washington and got to see Clinton. He got nowhere,” Dr Thurman says.
Clinton told him that the higher up a politician is the less power they actually have because they’re more indebted to corporate America which means their ability to perform acts of public benefit is compromised.
“George was very frustrated,” Dr Thurman says.
Thurman argues with the Dalai Lama over his plans for a democratic Tibet. He’s concerned that Tibet’s spiritual leader does not understand the intricacy that not only thwarts democracy but also is at odds with the Buddhist ethic.
“In Congress, politicians (who are supposed to represent their electorates) are for sale,” he says. “I’m totally for democracy, don’t get me wrong, but we need to change the electoral system.”
Thurman thinks that the electoral cycle should be shorter so that politicians don’t have their snouts in the trough too long.
“I feel that there should be more control over corporate access to children’s minds because these corporations are so powerful,” he says.
“When I see a healthy young kid sitting around totally focused starting at a tiny screen exercising only his thumbs and not taking the time to pet the dog or go out and run around all I want to do is jar them out of it and make them go for a walk.”
The introduction of ethics in schools is in line with the Dalai Lama's idea of teaching secular ethics - common values to all religions - generally.
Dr Thurman will speak at the Happiness and Its Consequences conference on May 5-6.
Dr Thurman is the Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist studies at Columbia University’s Religion Department, President of Tibet House and author of Why the Dalai Lama Matters.
