Having just celebrated 48 years of marriage with Mary Ann, I was delighted to see Penelope Green's article in The New York Times about the fifty-year marriage of Buddhist scholar and activist Robert Thurman and former model Nena von Schlebrugge. As professor of Indo-Tibetan studies at Columbia University and the president of Tibet House USA, he is promoting a biography in graphic-novel form of the Dalai Lama called "Man of Peace." Thurman hopes it will appeal to millennials. The Tibetan leader ordained Thurman as a Tibetan monk, the first known Westerner to take the necessary 253 vows.

Thurman and his wife took marriage vows despite the fact that they were once voted by their friends as the couple least likely to succeed. They built their own house in Woodstock, New York, where they still live. Ms. Thurman offers two keys to a lasting and mindful marriage:

"If you share a spiritual outlook, 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, you have to take turns, so that no one partner becomes dominant in the relationship."


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