Huston Smith
Theologian
1919-05-31
Quotes by Huston Smith
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Muhammad adhered meticulously to the charter he forged for Medina, which - grounded as it was in the Quranic injunction, Let there be no compulsion in religion (2:256) - is arguably the first mandate for religious tolerance in human history.
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Sex is the divine in its most available epiphany.
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Most of the book deals with things we already know yet never learn.
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Institutions are not pretty. Show me a pretty government. Healing is wonderful, but the American Medical Association? Learning is wonderful, but universities? The same is true for religion... religion is institutionalized spirituality. — Mother Jones November/December 1997.
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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
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With mind distracted, never thinking, Death is coming,To slave away on the pointless business of mundane life,And then to come out empty--it is a tragic error. (116)trans by Robert Thurman
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With mind distracted, never thinking, Death is coming,To slave away on the pointless business of mundane life,And then to come out empty--it is a tragic error. (116)trans by Robert Thurman
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Institutions are not pretty. Show me a pretty government. Healing is wonderful, but the American Medical Association? Learning is wonderful, but universities? The same is true for religion... religion is institutionalized spirituality. — Mother Jones November/December 1997.
Read quote -
Muhammad adhered meticulously to the charter he forged for Medina, which - grounded as it was in the Quranic injunction, Let there be no compulsion in religion (2:256) - is arguably the first mandate for religious tolerance in human history.
Read quote -
Sex is the divine in its most available epiphany.
Read quote -
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
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Most of the book deals with things we already know yet never learn.
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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.
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You subtract Christianity from Huston Smith, and there is no Huston Smith left.
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Swallow your pride and admit that we all need help at times.
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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.
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When the scientific method came into being, it gave us a new window on the truth; namely, a method by laboratory-controlled experiments to winnow true hypotheses from false ones.
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When I read the Upanishads, which are part of Vedanta, I found a profundity of worldview that made my Christianity seem like third grade.
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