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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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Huston Smith
Age: 97 †
Born: 1919
Born: May 31
Died: 2016
Died: December 30
Philosopher
Professor
Soochow
Huston Cummings Smith
Look
Concern
Wells
Issues
Well
Modern
Looks
Justice
Always
Religious
Historically
Face
Evolved
Faces
Emphasis
Back
Morality

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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.
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If you are drilling for water, it's better to drill one 60-foot well than 10 6-foot wells.
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Daily the world grows smaller, leaving understanding the only place where peace can find a home.
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The Sufis say there are three ways to know fire - by hearing it described, by seeing it, or by being burned.
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Built into human makeup is a longing for a 'more' that the world of everyday experience cannot requite.
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After his great awakening, the Buddha continued to meditate and to devote himself to others otherwise his vision would have receded into a pleasant memory.
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I've spent the last 50 years or so steeping myself in the world's religions, and I've done my homework. I've gone to each of the world's eight great religions and sought out the most profound scholars I could find, and I've apprenticed myself to them and actually practiced each faith.
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Reserved as he [Confucius] was about the supernatural, he was not without it somewhere in the universe there was a power that was on the side of right.
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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.
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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.
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...the single destination of sanctity could admit of so many different avenues leading to it.
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In order to live man must believe in that for which he lives.
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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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I am profoundly moved and persuaded by the near-death experience.
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The first koan do not have rational answers. They are techniques devised over the millennia for triggering an actual experience.
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What is sickness? What is health? Both are distractions. Put them both aside and go forward.
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Institutions are not pretty. Show me a pretty government. Healing is wonderful, but the American Medical Association? Learning is wonderful, but universities? The same is true for religion... religion is institutionalized spirituality.
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Not only is the destiny of the individual bound up with the entire Church it is responsible for helping to sanctify the entire world of nature and history.
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I would not say that ethical behavior is not possible for the atheist or agnostic. It is. A couple of pretty good examples are Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre. However, I will have to say that if we take the human lot as a whole, these two men must be seen as exceptions.
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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.
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