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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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Huston Smith
Age: 97 †
Born: 1919
Born: May 31
Died: 2016
Died: December 30
Philosopher
Professor
Soochow
Huston Cummings Smith
People
Language
Use
Speak
Idioms
Thought
Idiom
Persons
Spanish
Person
Chinese
Take
Express
Different
Religion

More quotes by Huston Smith

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...but with my clamoring ego solidly in place, I considered the title, 'Memories of a Failed Nobody'.
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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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.
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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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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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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What is sickness? What is health? Both are distractions. Put them both aside and go forward.
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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'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall see God' suggested to me a heavenly welfare program for the meek. Today that saying reveals an astute insight into egotism, about how those with swollen pride or vanity cannot see anything larger than themselves.
Huston Smith
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We become compassionate not from altruism which denies the self for the sake of the other, but from the insight that sees and feels one is the other.
Huston Smith
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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.
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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Swallow your pride and admit that we all need help at times.
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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Swami Ashokananda was a brilliant and accomplished spiritual teacher in the West.
Huston Smith
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...the only thing that continues is the consequences of our action.
Huston Smith
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In order to live man must believe in that for which he lives.
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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The first koan do not have rational answers. They are techniques devised over the millennia for triggering an actual experience.
Huston Smith