Huston Smith Quotes & Sayings

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. — Huston Smith

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

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

It must have been providence that directed Joel Morwood to dig in the right place, for he struck a lode of pure gold, as wide (comprehensive) as it is deep (profound). What he mined from that lode is a spiritual treasure. — Huston Smith

Science makes major contributions to minor needs, Justice Holmes was fond of saying, adding that religion, however small its successes, is at least at work on the things that matter most. — Huston Smith

It remained for the twentieth century to discover that locked within the atom is the energy of the sun itself. For this energy to be released, however, 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, it is sometimes called. And it too can be activated only through bombardment, in its case love's bombardment — Huston Smith

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. — Huston Smith

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. — Huston Smith

Detachment from the finite self or attachment to the whole of things - we can state the phenomenon either positively or negatively. When it occurs, life is lifted above the possibility of frustration and above ennui - the third threat to joy - as well, for the cosmic drama is too spectacular to permit boredom in the face of such vivid identification. — Huston Smith

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. — Huston Smith

Swami Ashokananda was a brilliant and accomplished spiritual teacher in the West. — Huston Smith

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

Religion is the call to confront reality; to master the self. — Huston Smith

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

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

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. — Huston Smith

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. — Huston Smith

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. — Huston Smith

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

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. — Huston Smith

God is defined by Jesus but not confined to Jesus. — Huston Smith

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

A nation can assume that the addition of the words "under God" to its pledge of allegiance gives evidence that its citizens actually believe in God whereas all it really proves is that they believe in "believing" in God — Huston Smith

Love is the movement within life that carries us, that enables us, that causes us to break out of what Alan Watts calls the "skin-encapsulated ego." Without love, we are self-centered, but love enables us to move the center of our lives outside our ego. Therefore it expands our lives and, needless to say, enriches it. Any human being would give anything to love or be loved. When it really happens, it is like heaven on earth. — Huston Smith

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. — Huston Smith

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. — Huston Smith

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

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. — Huston Smith

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

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. — Huston Smith

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? — Huston Smith

All -isms end up in schisms. — Huston Smith

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. — Huston Smith

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. — Huston Smith

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

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

There are wonderfully intrinsic moments when life makes sense, and doubts are banished as irrelevant in those moments. Of course, we can't stay in that state. We're not here to be blissed out all the time. — Huston Smith

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. — Huston Smith

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

We are a blend of dust and divinity. — Huston Smith

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

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

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

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. — Huston Smith

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. — Huston Smith

Such power as I possess for working in the political field has derived from my experiments in the spiritual field. — Huston Smith

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. — Huston Smith

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

Entheogens are not to be lightly trifled with ... However, if taken with the right attitude and in the proper setting, psychoactive drugs may produce religious experiences ... it is far less clear that they can produce religious lives. — Huston Smith

Might we begin then to transform our passing illuminations into abiding light? — Huston Smith

The faith I was born into formed me. I come from a missionary family - I grew up in China - and in my case, my religious upbringing was positive. Of course, not everyone has this experience. I know many of my students are what I have come to think of as wounded Christians or wounded Jews. — Huston Smith

Renaissance men who knew something about everything that was to be known disappeared several centuries ago. Students now face a plethora of compartmentalized fields of knowledge. Uninstructed as to how they connect, students are given no sense of the whole, if indeed their instructors think a seamless fabric of knowledge exists. — Huston Smith

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

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. — Huston Smith

Today we do not live under a sacred canopy; it is marketing that forms the backdrop of our culture. The message that advertising dins into our conscious and unconscious minds is that fulfillment derives from the things we possess. — Huston Smith

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 — Huston Smith

If Rumi is the most-read poet in America today, Coleman Barks is in good part responsible. His ear for the truly divine madness in Rumi's poetry is really remarkable. — Huston Smith

The faith I was born into formed me. — Huston Smith

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. — Huston Smith

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.) — Huston Smith

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

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. — Huston Smith

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. — Huston Smith

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

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

I had assumed that Bush's seemingly inflexible policy to support Sharon was for political reasons of his getting elected. But as to whether he really believes his actions are going to hasten the day of the final conflict, I do not know. — Huston Smith

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

For all we know, the larger part of the motive for trying to expand science is not self-serving; it is merely mistaken. The idealistic element in it is its desire to achieve in the understanding of man what science has achieved in the understanding of matter. Its mistake is in not seeing that the tools for the one are of strictly limited utility for the other, and that the practice of trying to see man as an object which the tools of science will fit leads first to underrating and then to losing sight of his attributes those tools miss. (The mere titles of B.F. Skinner's "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" and Herbert Marcuse's "One-Dimensional Man" will, in opposite ways, suffice.) If it be asked, "But what did the nonscientific approach to man and the world give us?" The answer is: "Meaning, purpose, and a vision in which everything coheres — Huston Smith

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. — Huston Smith

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 — Huston Smith

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. — Huston Smith

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

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

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. — Huston Smith

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. — Huston Smith

Not only is the destiny of the individual bound up with the entire Church; it is responsible for helping to sanctify the entire world of nature and history. — Huston Smith

If human life is to survive on this planet, the old dualistic worldview, with people on one side and the environment on the other, must yield to a new vision that connects us with everything else and leads us to care for and take responsibility for it. — Huston Smith

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. — Huston Smith

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 — Huston Smith

The Sufis say there are three ways to know fire - by hearing it described, by seeing it, or by being burned. — Huston Smith

Beware of the differences that blind us to the unity that binds us. — Huston Smith

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

Rationalism and Newtonian science has lured us into dark woods, but a new metaphysics can rescue us. — Huston Smith

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. — Huston Smith

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

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. — Huston Smith

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. — Huston Smith

We all carry it within us: supreme strength, the fullness of wisdom, unquenchable joy. It is never thwarted, and cannot be destroyed. — Huston Smith

Plato described ordinary life as unthinking, lived in a dim cave of shadowy reflections, but said that it is possible to leave the cave and see things in sunlit clarity as they actually are. — Huston Smith

Modern science agrees that the universe consists of vibrations, but sound is more than vibration. Distinct from white noise, sound is vibrations in harmonic proportions, and from the billions of vibrations that are possible, the universe shows a startling, overwhelming preference for the few thousand that make harmonic sense.This is because the One, from which all things issue, is beautiful. — Huston Smith

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. — Huston Smith

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. — Huston Smith

We are born in mystery, we live in mystery, and we die in mystery.
— Huston Smith

Yesterday and today and tomorrow are not an arrow that shoots from past to present to future; rather all tenses, and sleeping and waking, mix and cohabit in an atemporal duration beyond clocks and calendars. The Aboriginal world began long ago when the Ancestors sang in Dreamtime the cosmic rhythms that give shape to the things we see, and it is the beginning right now, when a living Tiwi sings the Dream songs that continue, or are, the world. — Huston Smith

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

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. — Huston Smith

Most of the book deals with things we already know yet never learn. — Huston Smith

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

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. — Huston Smith

If it is possible to be homesick for the world, even places one has never been and knows one will never see, this book is the child of such homesickness. — Huston Smith