Huston Smith quotes - page 4

What are the ingredients of the most creatively meaningful image of human existence that the mind can conceive? Remove human frailty--as grass, as a sigh, as dust, as moth-crushed--and the estimate becomes romantic. Remove grandeur--a little lower than God--and aspiration recedes. Remove sin-the tendency to miss the mark--and sentimentality threatens. Remove freedom--choose ye this day!--and responsibility goes by the board. Remove, finally, divine parentage and life becomes estranged, cut loose and adrift on a cold, indifferent sea. With all that has been discovered about human life in the intervening 2,500 years, it is difficult to find a flaw in this assessment. (Huston Smith)
Traditionally, every Chinese was Confucian in ethics and public life, Taoist in private life and hygiene, and Buddhist at the time of death, with a healthy dash of shamanistic folk religion thrown in along the way. As someone has put the point: Every Chinese wears a Confucian hat, Taoist robes, and Buddhist sandals. In Japan Shinto was added to the mix. View quote
Huston Smith
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. View quote
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. View quote
Huston Smith
It's often difficult for us to act compassionately, but sacred art eases the difficulty by ennobling us. View quote
Huston Smith
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. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
Huston Smith
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. View quote
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. View quote
Huston Smith
Pure science - this vision of the universe as 15 billion light years across - I am bedazzled and awed by 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. View quote
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. View quote
Huston Smith
What a curious portrait this is for the supposed founder of a religion. The Old Boy didn't preach. He didn't organize or promote. He wrote a few pages on request, rode off on a water buffalo, and that was it was far as he was concerned. View quote
Huston Smith
A second arresting feature of Jesus' language was its invitational style. Instead of telling people what to do or what to believe, he invited them to see things differently, confident that if they did so their behaviour would change accordingly. This called for working with peoples' imaginations more than with their reason or their will. View quote
Huston Smith
It is obtuse to confuse Hinduism's images with idolatry, and their multiplicity with polytheism. They are 'runways' from which the sense-laden human spirit can rise for its "flight ofthe alone to the Alone. View quote
Huston Smith
And it is here that India's mind boggling variety links up to her infmite soul... India includes so much because her soul being infmite excludes nothing. It goes without saying that the universe that India saw emerging from the infmite was stupendous. View quote
Huston Smith
All human thought proceeds through words, so if words are askew, thought cannot proceed aright. When Confucius says that nothing is more important than that a father be a father, that a ruler be a ruler, he is saying that we must know what we mean when we use those words. But equally important, the words must mean the right things. Rectification of Names is the call for a normative semantics--the creation of a language in which key nouns carry the meanings they should carry if life is to be well ordered. View quote
Huston Smith
He [Jesus] could have been that [a healer and exorcist]--indeed, he could have been "the most extraordinary figure in ... the stream of Jewish charismatic healers," as the same New Testament scholar goes on to say--without attracting more than local attention. What made him outlive his time and place was the way he used the Spirit that coursed though him not just to heal individuals but -- this was his aspiration -- to heal humanity, beginning with his own people. View quote
Huston Smith
A loving human being is not produced by exhortations, rules, and threats. Love only takes 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. View quote
Huston Smith