Quotes from Huston Smith

We are limited in joy, knowledge, and being, the three things people really want.

Because this second position is powered by the hope that there may someday be a single world religion, it is well to remind ourselves again of the human element in the religious equation. There are people who want to have their own followers. They would prefer to head their own flock, however small, than be second-in-command in the largest congregation. This suggests that if we were to find ourselves with a single religion tomorrow, it is likely that there would be two the day after. p386

Oliver Wendell Holmes's way of establishing parity is appealing: "Science gives us major answers to minor questions, while religion gives us minor answers to major questions.

Our life in historical or chronological time, measuring and minding, cautious and comparing, forms the horizontal arm of the cross. Our experience of the unqualified, of inner, immeasurable time (or timelessness), is the cross's vertical pole. We live in two kinds of time or perspective simultaneously. The horizontal and the vertical are at once quite distinct and entirely overlapping, and to experience their incongruity and confluence is what it means to be human.

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.

The word my always implies a distinction between the possessor and what is possessed; when I speak of my book or my jacket, I do not suppose that I am those things. But I also speak of my body, my mind, or my personality, giving evidence thereby that in some sense I consider myself as distinct from them as well. What is this I that possesses my body and mind, but is not their equivalent?

Do not seek after truth. Merely cease to hold opinions.

You can find God in the world of everyday affairs as readily as anywhere.11

Suffering led the Buddha to enlightenment, and it may cause us, against our will, to grow in compassion, awareness, and possibly eventually peace.

people approach the goal from different directions, so there must be multiple trails to the common destination.

terms. A nation can assume that the phrase "under God

sharpened edge of a razor, hard to traverse, A difficult path is this—the poets declare!2 Science

A sharpened edge of a razor, hard to traverse, A difficult path is this—the poets declare!2 Science

He is admitting that he is trapped, which realization leads to his desperate cry that we have already quoted, "Who will rescue me from this body of death?" (Romans 14:24). In whatever words it is the cry that every alcoholic has repeated. If there is to be a liberation, it will have to come from without, or better, from above: a higher power.

To claim salvation as the monopoly of any one religion is like claiming that God can be found in this room but not the next, in this attire but not another...Truth is one: sages call it by different names.

We can cite the tribesman who pointed out that the circles in spider webs are sticky, whereas the radii are not. This means, he said, that if you wander from side to side in life you get stuck, but if you move toward its center you don't. p380

Religiously conceived, the human opportunity is to transform flashes of illumination into abiding light.

And is it true? And is it true, This most tremendous tale of all… That God was Man in Palestine And lives today in Bread and Wine.   (John Betjeman, Christman)

The only thing that is unqualifiedly good is extended vision, the enlargement of one's understanding of the ultimate nature of things.

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.

God has made different religions to suit different aspirations, times, and countries. All doctrines are only so many paths; but a path is by no means God Himself. Indeed, one can reach God if one follows any of the paths with whole-hearted devotion.

The motions of the average mind, say the Hindus, are about as orderly as those of a crazed monkey cavorting about its cage. Nay, more; like the prancing of a drunk, crazed monkey. Even so we have not conveyed its restlessness; the mind is like a drunken, crazed monkey that has St. Vitus' Dance. To do justice to our theme, however, we must go a final step. The mind is like a drunken crazed monkey with St. Vitus' Dance who has just been stung by a wasp.

There are worse kinds of infidelity than the sexual. I was living with one of the most interesting women in the world, and too often my attention was elsewhere.

For "what the soul is to the body of man," Saint Augustine was to write, "that the Holy Spirit is to the Body of Christ, which is the Church.