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" 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. "

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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. "

Huston Smith

Ending

Life

Happy

" 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. "

" In order to live man must believe in that for which he lives. "

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

Huston Smith

Dark

Woods

" God is defined by Jesus but not confined to Jesus. "

" 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. "

" The faith I was born into formed me. "

Huston Smith

Born

I Was Born

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

" 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

Family

Faith

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

" The most powerful moral influence is example. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Religion is the call to confront reality; to master the self. "

" 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

Thinking

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

Huston Smith

Art

Difficulty

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Swallow your pride and admit that we all need help at times. "

" Pure science - this vision of the universe as 15 billion light years across - I am bedazzled and awed by it. "

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

" 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

" 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. "