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" The faith I was born into formed me. "
Huston Smith
Born
Me
I Was Born
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" 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. "
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" 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
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Launch
God
" 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. "
Huston Smith
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" Religion is the call to confront reality; to master the self. "
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" 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. "
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" Swallow your pride and admit that we all need help at times. "
Huston Smith
Help
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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. "
Huston Smith
Political
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" 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. "
Huston Smith
Religion
Thought
God
" 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. "
Huston Smith
Play
History
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" 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
Life
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I Am
" 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
World
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Live
" In my town, I had only one adult American male role model: my father. I grew up taking it for granted that missionaries were what American boys grew up to be. "
Huston Smith
Father
American
Up
" Rationalism and Newtonian science has lured us into dark woods, but a new metaphysics can rescue us. "
Huston Smith
Dark
Woods
Us
" 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
History
Religion
Much
" It is commonly said and known that each civilization has its own religion. Now my claim is that if we look deeper, the different civilizations were brought into being by the different revelations. "
Huston Smith
Own
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Civilization
" You subtract Christianity from Huston Smith, and there is no Huston Smith left. "
Huston Smith
Smith
Left
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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. "
Huston Smith
Truth
Window
Us
" In order to live man must believe in that for which he lives. "
Huston Smith
Order
Man
Live
" 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
Look
Back
Justice
" I grew up taking it for granted that missionaries were what American boys grew up to be. "
Huston Smith
Up
American
Missionaries
" I happen to be a Christian. I was brought up and drenched in that. 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
Christian
Up
Thinking
" In nature, the emphasis is in what is rather than what ought to be. "
Huston Smith
Nature
Than
Emphasis
" 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
Understanding
Values
Life
" 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
Think
See
Good
" 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
I Am
Truth
Science
" God is defined by Jesus but not confined to Jesus. "
Huston Smith
Defined
God
Jesus
" Human intelligence is a reflection of the intelligence that produces everything. In knowing, we are simply extending the intelligence that comes to and constitutes us. We mimic the mind of God, so to speak. Or better, we continue and extend it. "
Huston Smith
God
Us
Mind
" 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. "
Huston Smith
Art
Rules
Drawing
" 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
Different
Way
Shells
" 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
Ethics
Now
Nature