Huston Smith Quotes

What is Zen? Simple, simple, so simple. Infinite gratitude toward all things past; infinite service to all things present; infinite responsibility to all things future.

We are free when we are not the slave of our impulses, but rather their master. Taking inward distance, we thus become the authors of our own dramas rather than characters in them.

In India there was a sense of time that does not tick with modern clocks, just as there is a knowledge that is not gained through science and empirical experiments. In the modern West knowledge is of objective, finite particulars in historical time. India recognizes that kind of useful information: it calls it "lower knowledge." Higher knowledge (paravidya) proceeds differently, or rather it doesn't proceed at all but enters history full-blown on the morning of a new creation.

You subtract Christianity from Huston Smith, and there is no Huston Smith left.

The New Age movement looks like a mixed bag. I see much in it that seems good: It's optimistic; it's enthusiastic; it has the capacity for belief. On the debit side, I think one needs to distinguish between belief and credulity.

In nature, the emphasis is in what is rather than what ought to be.

Without attention, the human sense of wonder and the holy will stir occasionally, but to become a steady flame it must be tended.

Hinduism advises such people not to try to think of God as the supreme instance of abstractions like being or consciousness, and instead to think of God as the archetype of the noblest reality they encounter in the natural world.

It has been estimated that one third of our Western civilization bears the mark of its Jewish ancestry.

God has to speak to each person in their own language, in their own idioms. Take Spanish, Chinese. You can express the same thought, but to different people you have to use a different language. It's the same in religion.

And it was from a Hindu, Swami Satprakashananda with his Christmas talks on "Jesus Christ, the Son of God," that I received the strongest confirmation - by an outside examiner, as it were - of Jesus's divine nature.

Seen through the eyes of faith, religion's future is secure. As long as there are human beings, there will be religion for the sufficient reason that the self is a theomorphic creature - one whose morphe (form) is theos - God encased within it. Having been created in the imago Dei, the image God, all human beings have a God-shaped vacuum built into their hearts. Since nature abhors a vacuum, people keep trying to fill the one inside them.

I simply wanted to experience the presence of this man who had revolutionized my understanding. After a while we sat in silence, gazing at the barren canyon walls. And the mute desert seemed to carry on our conversation for us.

If we take the world's enduring religions at their best, we discover the distilled wisdom of the human race.

Just as a man carrying on his head a load of wood that has caught fire would go rushing to a pond to quench the flames, even so will the seeker of truth, scorched by the fires of life - birth, death, self-deluding futility - go rushing to a teacher wise to the ways of the things that matter most.

In the post-individualistic era, science and spirituality will become allies, and human beings will realize a vast potentiality now only dimly felt.

I grew up taking it for granted that missionaries were what American boys grew up to be.

Science is empirical, all about physical senses that tell us about the world. But physical senses are not the only senses we have. Nobody has ever seen a thought. Nobody has ever seen a feeling. And yet thoughts and feelings are where we live our lives most immediately, and science cannot connect with that.

The scientific method is nearly perfect for understanding the physical aspects of our life. But it is a radically limited viewfinder in its inability to offer values, morals and meanings that are at the center of our lives.

Reserved as he [Confucius] was about the supernatural, he was not without it; somewhere in the universe there was a power that was on the side of right.

I am very orthodox in thinking that Jesus acted in his life the way God would have acted if God had assumed human form.

Swallow your pride and admit that we all need help at times.

The single destination of sanctity could admit of so many different avenues leading to it.

You can never get enough of what you don't really want.

Emerson argued that "the whole secret of the teacher's force lies in the conviction that men are convertible, and they are. They want awakening, [and for that purpose they need teachers] to get the soul out of bed, out of her deep habitual sleep." That

I'm not a chauvinist. I'm a universalist. I think that God imploded, like a spiritual big bang, to launch the eight civilizations that make up recorded history and the religions in those civilizations.

Pure science - this vision of the universe as 15 billion light years across - I am bedazzled and awed by it.

At the center of the religious life is a peculiar kind of joy, the prospect of a happy ending that blossoms from necessarily painful ordeals, the promise of human difficulties embraced and overcome.

Suffering led the Buddha to enlightenment, and it may cause us, against our will, to grow in compassion, awareness, and possibly eventually peace.

The Chinese began with the assumption that the group is the fundamental unit of reality. Individuals? Sure, we can factor them out from their groups, but let us not think that they as individuals have any viability apart from their group.

In mysteries what we know, and our realization of what we do not know, proceed together; the larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder. It is like the quantum world, where the more we understand its formalism, the stranger that world becomes.

But with my clamoring ego solidly in place, I considered the title, 'Memories of a Failed Nobody'.

Exclusively oral cultures are unencumbered by dead knowledge, dead facts. Libraries, on the other hand, are full of them.

So always, if we look back, concern for face-to-face morality, and its modern emphasis on justice as well, have historically evolved as religious issues.

The faith I was born into formed me.

The disciples of Jesus found themselves thinking that if divine goodness were to manifest itself in human form, this (he) is how it would behave ... he invited people to see differently instead of telling them what to do or believe ... he located the authority of his teaching in his hearer's hearts, not in himself or God-as-removed.

Walnuts have a shell, and they have a kernel. Religions are the same. They have an essence, but then they have a protective coating. This is not the only way to put it. But it's my way. So the kernels are the same. However, the shells are different.

Daily the world grows smaller, leaving understanding the only place where peace can find a home.

The Buddha is in me, the Buddha is in you. Live up to it.

The point of the story is that the universe is one gigantic Wishing Tree, with branches that reach into every heart. The cosmic process decrees that sometime or other, in this life or another, each of these wishes will be granted - together, of course, with consequences.

When I read the Upanishads, which are part of Vedanta, I found a profundity of worldview that made my Christianity seem like third grade.

Water is patient; it can stagnate and let itself be coated with scum if need be. It is as gentle as the morning's dew. It is non-confrontational, even respectful, in circumventing the rocks in a stream. It makes room for everything that enters its pools. It accommodates by assuming the shape of any vessel it is poured into. And it is humble, seeking always the lowest level. Yet along with - or rather because of these adaptive, yielding properties, it is ultimately irresistible; it carves canyons out of stone.

A religion made up solely of heightened religious experiences would not be a religion at all ... The major religious traditions address the mysteries (with or without entheogens), but they have other business to do: widen understanding, give meaning, provide solace, promote loving-kindness, and connect human being to human being.

I am profoundly moved and persuaded by the near-death experience.

Never during its pilgrimage is the human spirit completely adrift and alone. From start to finish its nucleus is the Atman, the god-within ... underlying its whirlpool of transient feelings, emotions, and delusions is the self-luminous, abiding point of the transpersonal god. As the sun lights the world even when cloud-covered, "the Immutable is never seen but is the Witness; it is never heard but is the Hearer; it is never thought but is the Thinker; it is never known but is the Knower. There is no other witness but This, no other knower but This." from the Upanishad

The proper response to a great work of art is to enter it as though there were nothing else in the world.

If my opinion that substance requires a true unity were founded only on a definition I had formulated in opposition to common usage, *then the dispute would be only one of words*. But besides the fact that most philosophers have taken the term in almost the same fashion, distinguishing between a unity in itself and an accidental unity, between substantial and accidental form, and between perfect and imperfect, natural and artificial mixtures, I take things to a much higher level, and setting aside the question of terminology, *I believe that where there are only beings by aggregation, there aren't any real beings*. For every being by aggregation presupposes beings endowed with real unity, because every being derives its reality only from the reality of those beings of which it is composed, so that it will not have any reality at all if each being of which it is composed is itself a being by aggregation, a being for which we must still seek further grounds for its reality, grounds which can never be found in this way, if we must always continue to seek for them. I agree, Sir, that there are only machines (that are often animated) in all of corporeal nature, but I do not agree that *there are only aggregates of substances, there must also be true substances from which all the aggregates result.

We must, then, necessarily come down to the atoms of Epicurus and Cordemoy (which are things you reject along with me), or else we must admit that we do not find any reality i

I don't have any fear of death. I do, however, have an inordinate fear of becoming dependent on other people. To me, that's the severest test, not death.

No one in human history has given as much thought to the interweaving of altered states of consciousness and religion as I have.

All -isms end up in schisms.

Practice giving things away, not just things you don't care about, but things you do like. Remember, it is not the size of a gift, it is its quality and the amount of mental attachment you overcome that count. So don't bankrupt yourself on a momentary positive impulse, only to regret it later. Give thought to giving. Give small things, carefully, and observe the mental processes going along with the act of releasing the little thing you liked. (53)
(Quote is actually Robert A F Thurman but Huston Smith, who only wrote the introduction to my edition, seems to be given full credit for this text.)

Science can prove nothing about God, because God lies outside its province.

Conversation can be as mutually incomprehensible as foreign languages. We need the different and complementary perspectives of the various yogas - and ideally of all religions - not only to reach God but to reach each other.

The game can be won or lost, but not the player himself. If he has worked hard, he has improved his game and indeed his faculties; this happens in defeat fully as much as in victory. As the contestant is related to his total person, so is the finite self of any particular lifetime related to its underlying Atman.

The modern period adds social ethics to religions agenda, for we now realize that social structures are not like laws of nature. They are human creations, so we are responsible for them.

What a strange fellowship this is, the God seekers in every land, lifting their voices in the most disparate ways imaginable to the God of all life. How does it sound from above? Like bedlam, or do the strains blend in strange ethereal harmony? Does one faith carry the lead or do the parts share in counterpoint and antiphony where not in full throated chorus?
We cannot know. All we can do is to listen carefully and with full attention to each voice in turn as it addresses the divine.

I think it matters almost infinitely that we practice one of the authentic religions. But if you mean does it make any difference which. The answer is no, as long as each is followed with equal intensity, sincerity, dedication.

Ancient wisdom and quantum physicists make unlikely bedfellows: In quantum mechanics the observer determines (or even brings into being) what is observed, and so, too, for the Tiwis, who dissolve the distinction between themselves and the cosmos. In quantum physics, subatomic particles influence each other from a distance, and this tallies with the aboriginal view, in which people, animals, rocks, and trees all weave together in the same interwoven fabric.

Only while they are conforming their actions to the model of some archetypal hero do the Arunta feel that they are truly alive, for in those roles they are immortal. The occasions on which they slip from such molds are quite meaningless, for time immediately devours those occasions and reduces them to nothingness.

The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.

God enters our lives when through our creative interchanges we make history more just.

Like a magnetic compass turning north, I always tried to head in the direction of the better, which is the direction to God ... the directions that appeared to lead away from Christianity led me deeper into it.

When there are miles to go before we sleep, altered traits are more important than altered states.

The most powerful moral influence is example.

Among the languages of American Indians there is no word for 'art,' because for Indians everything is art.

Whether things turn out for the better depends on what we do. We ought not spend our time masterminding the future, but recognize our marching orders: to do the best we can for history and the planet.

The only power that can effect transformations of the order (of Jesus) is love. It remained for the 20th century to discover that locked within the atom is the energy of the sun itself. For this energy to be released, the atom must be bombarded from without. So too, locked in every human being is a store of love that partakes of the divine- the imago dei, image of god ... And it too can be activated only through bombardment, in its case, love's bombardment. The process begins in infancy, where a mother's initially unilateral loving smile awakens love in her baby and as coordination develops, elicits its answering smile ... A loving human being is not produced by exhortations, rules and threats. Love can only take root in children when it comes to them- initially and most importantly from nurturing parents. Ontogenetically speaking, love is an answering phenomenon. It is literally a response.

sharpened edge of a razor, hard to traverse, A difficult path is this - the poets declare!2 Science

Sex is the divine in its most available epiphany.

The notion that Western religions are more rigid than those of Asia is overdrawn. Ours is the most permissive society history has ever known - almost the only thing that is forbidden now is to forbid - and Asian teachers and their progeny play up to this propensity by soft-pedaling Hinduism's, Buddhism's, Sufism's rules.

Religion teaches us that our lives here on earth are to be used for transformation.

Science is like a flashlight in the hands of people living in a huge balloon. They can illuminate anything in the balloon, but cannot shine it outside the balloon to see where it is floating - or if it is floating at all.

Built into human makeup is a longing for a 'more' that the world of everyday experience cannot requite.

Every society and religion has rules, for both have moral laws. And the essence of morality consists, as in art, of drawing the line somewhere.

When historians look back on our century, they may remember it most, not for space travel or the release of nuclear energy, but as the time when the peoples of the world first came to take one another seriously.

No individual is solely reflective, emotional, active, or experimental, and different life situations call for different resources to be brought into play. Most people will, on the whole, find travel on one road more satisfactory than on others and will consequently tend to keep close to it; but Hinduism encourages people to test all four and combine them as best suits their needs.

Historical figures lose their center when they become anxious over the outcome of their actions.

Imagine a man besottedly in love: he won't waste time speculating whether other women equally merit his affection.

As human beings we are made to surpass ourselves and are truly ourselves only when transcending ourselves.

Everything I do for my private wellbeing adds another layer to my ego, and in thickening it insulates me more from God. Conversely, every act done without thought for myself diminishes my self-centeredness until finally no barrier remains to separate me from the Divine. The

Poetry is a special use of language that opens onto the real. The business of the poet is truth telling, which is why in the Celtic tradition no one could be a teacher unless he or she was a poet.

The only thing that continues is the consequences of our action.

It's often difficult for us to act compassionately, but sacred art eases the difficulty by ennobling us.

First of all, my persuasion is what really breeds violence is political differences. But because religion serves as the soul of community, it gets drawn into the fracas and turns up the heat.

I am critical of modernity giving science and technology a blank check as if it were the fountain of all truth. That is not true. And I think I may have introduced a word which has now caught on quite a bit, scientism. Science is good. It simply reports a discovery.

After his great awakening, the Buddha continued to meditate and to devote himself to others; otherwise his vision would have receded into a pleasant memory.

The crisis that the world finds itself in as it swings on the hinge of a new millennium is located in something deeper than particular ways of organizing political systems and economies.

To find meaning in the mystery of existence is life's final and fascinating challenge.

I've spent the last 50 years or so steeping myself in the world's religions, and I've done my homework. I've gone to each of the world's eight great religions and sought out the most profound scholars I could find, and I've apprenticed myself to them and actually practiced each faith.

Heaven and earth are my inner and outer coffins. The sun, moon, and stars are my drapery, and the whole creation my funeral procession. What more do I want?