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Huston Smith

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Huston Smith


Born
in Suzhou, China
May 31, 1919

Died
December 30, 2016

Website


Smith was born in Suzhou, China to Methodist missionaries and spent his first 17 years there. He taught at the Universities of Colorado and Denver from 1944–1947, moving to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri for the next ten years, and then Professor of Philosophy at MIT from 1958–1973. While at MIT he participated in some of the experiments with entheogens that professor Timothy Leary conducted at Harvard University. He then moved to Syracuse University where he was Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Philosophy until his retirement in 1983 and current emeritus status. He now lives in the Berkeley, CA area where he is Visiting Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California ...more

Average rating: 4.16 · 66,845 ratings · 3,203 reviews · 138 distinct worksSimilar authors
The World's Religions

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Buddhism: A Concise Introdu...

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The Religions of Man

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Why Religion Matters: The F...

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Tales of Wonder: Adventures...

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Cleansing the Doors of Perc...

4.04 avg rating — 247 ratings — published 2000 — 10 editions
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Forgotten Truth: The Common...

really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 217 ratings — published 1992 — 10 editions
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The Soul of Christianity: R...

3.89 avg rating — 213 ratings — published 2005 — 20 editions
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Islam: A Concise Introduction

3.76 avg rating — 145 ratings — published 1958 — 2 editions
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Beyond the Post-Modern Mind...

4.25 avg rating — 97 ratings — published 1982 — 20 editions
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Quotes by Huston Smith  (?)
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“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, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Liberation Through Understanding the Between

“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
tags: love

“The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.”
Huston Smith, Beyond the Post-Modern Mind: The Place of Meaning in a Global Civilization

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