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With mind distracted, never thinking, Death is coming, To slave away on the pointless business of mundane life, And then to come out empty--it is a tragic error. (116) trans by Robert Thurman

Huston Smith

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Huston Smith
Age: 97 †
Born: 1919
Born: May 31
Died: 2016
Died: December 30
Philosopher
Professor
Soochow
Huston Cummings Smith
Business
Distracted
Death
Mindfulness
Away
Error
Come
Tragic
Mind
Errors
Trans
Never
Slave
Robert
Thinking
Empty
Mundane
Life
Coming
Pointless

More quotes by Huston Smith

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It must have been providence that directed Joel Morwood to dig in the right place, for he struck a lode of pure gold, as wide (comprehensive) as it is deep (profound). What he mined from that lode is a spiritual treasure.
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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
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God is defined by Jesus but not confined to Jesus.
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Exclusively oral cultures are unencumbered by dead knowledge, dead facts. Libraries, on the other hand, are full of them.
Huston Smith
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If Rumi is the most-read poet in America today, Coleman Barks is in good part responsible. His ear for the truly divine madness in Rumi’s poetry is really remarkable.
Huston Smith
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Built into human makeup is a longing for a 'more' that the world of everyday experience cannot requite.
Huston Smith
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The first koan do not have rational answers. They are techniques devised over the millennia for triggering an actual experience.
Huston Smith
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God enters our lives when through our creative interchanges we make history more just.
Huston Smith
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Practice giving things away, not just things you don't care about, but things you do like.
Huston Smith
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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
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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
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In mysteries what we know, and our realization of what we do not know, proceed together the larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder. It is like the quantum world, where the more we understand its formalism, the stranger that world becomes.
Huston Smith
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Swallow your pride and admit that we all need help at times.
Huston Smith
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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.
Huston Smith
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The object of pilgrimage is not rest and recreation – to get away from it all. To set out on a pilgrimage is to throw down a challenge to everyday life.
Huston Smith
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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
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If human life is to survive on this planet, the old dualistic worldview, with people on one side and the environment on the other, must yield to a new vision that connects us with everything else and leads us to care for and take responsibility for it.
Huston Smith
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A nation can assume that the addition of the words under God to its pledge of allegiance gives evidence that its citizens actually believe in God whereas all it really proves is that they believe in believing in God
Huston Smith
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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. Its the same in religion.
Huston Smith
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Imagine a man besottedly in love: he won't waste time speculating whether other women equally merit his affection.
Huston Smith