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As human beings we are made to surpass ourselves and are truly ourselves only when transcending ourselves.

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
Truly
Inspirational
Human
Humans
Made
Surpass
Transcending
Beings

More quotes by Huston Smith

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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.
Huston Smith
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What is Zen? Simple, simple, so simple. Infinite gratitude toward all things past infinite service to all things present infinite responsibility to all things future.
Huston Smith
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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.
Huston Smith
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As known unknowns become known unknown unknowns proliferate the larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.
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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Entheogens are not to be lightly trifled with... However, if taken with the right attitude and in the proper setting, psychoactive drugs may produce religious experiences. ...it is far less clear that they can produce religious lives.
Huston Smith
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When I read the Upanishads, which are part of Vedanta, I found a profundity of worldview that made my Christianity seem like third grade.
Huston Smith
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I have a body and I have a soul. And my body belongs to the faith - in fact, the church - into which it was born, the Methodist Church.
Huston Smith
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The goal of spiritual life is not altered states, but altered traits
Huston Smith
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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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The Sufis say there are three ways to know fire - by hearing it described, by seeing it, or by being burned.
Huston Smith
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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.
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.
Huston Smith
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In nature, the emphasis is in what is rather than what ought to be.
Huston Smith
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If you are drilling for water, it's better to drill one 60-foot well than 10 6-foot wells.
Huston Smith
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It would be good if we bore one another's burdens.
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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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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God is defined by Jesus but not confined to Jesus.
Huston Smith
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Rationalism and Newtonian science has lured us into dark woods, but a new metaphysics can rescue us.
Huston Smith