Huston Smith
Huston Smith
Huston Cummings Smithis a religious studies scholar in the United States. His book The World's Religionshas sold over two million copies and remains a popular introduction to comparative religion...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTheologian
Date of Birth31 May 1919
CountryUnited States of America
earth transformation used
Religion teaches us that our lives here on earth are to be used for transformation.
healing government association
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.
mean thinking dedication
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.
spiritual goal life-is
The goal of spiritual life is not altered states, but altered traits
art world great-work
The proper response to a great work of art is to enter it as though there were nothing else in the world.
christianity found third-grade
When I read the Upanishads, which are part of Vedanta, I found a profundity of worldview that made my Christianity seem like third grade.
islands wonder shoreline
As known unknowns become known; unknown unknowns proliferate; the larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.
blessed pride vanity
'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall see God' suggested to me a heavenly welfare program for the meek. Today that saying reveals an astute insight into egotism, about how those with swollen pride or vanity cannot see anything larger than themselves.
eras allies spirituality
In the post-individualistic era, science and spirituality will become allies, and human beings will realize a vast potentiality now only dimly felt.
dust divinity
We are a blend of dust and divinity.
religious teaching loss
One reason education undoes belief is its teaching of evolution; Darwin's own drift from orthodoxy to agnosticism was symptomatic. Martin Lings is probably right in saying that more cases of loss of religious faith are to be traced to the theory of evolution ... than to anything else.
art law essence
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.
heart eye faith-religion
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.
near-death near-death-experience moved
I am profoundly moved and persuaded by the near-death experience.