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We are free when we are not the slave of our impulses, but rather their master. Taking inward distance, we thus become the authors of our own dramas rather than characters in them.

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
Rather
Master
Free
Slave
Become
Thus
Character
Distance
Dramas
Drama
Impulses
Masters
Authors
Characters
Inward
Taking
Impulse

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Human intelligence is a reflection of the intelligence that produces everything. In knowing, we are simply extending the intelligence that comes to and constitutes us. We mimic the mind of God, so to speak. Or better, we continue and extend it.
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...but with my clamoring ego solidly in place, I considered the title, 'Memories of a Failed Nobody'.
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As human beings we are made to surpass ourselves and are truly ourselves only when transcending ourselves.
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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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God is defined by Jesus but not confined to Jesus.
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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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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.
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Swami Ashokananda was a brilliant and accomplished spiritual teacher in the West.
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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.
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My body was born into the - baptized in the Methodist church, and it will be buried in the Methodist Church. Meanwhile, I have a soul. And my soul cannot be confined to any human institution.
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The crisis that the world finds itself in as it swings on the hinge of a new millennium is located in something deeper than particular ways of organizing political systems and economies.
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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 Zen? Simple, simple, so simple. Infinite gratitude toward all things past infinite service to all things present infinite responsibility to all things future.
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It has been estimated that one third of our Western civilization bears the mark of its Jewish ancestry.
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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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In order to live man must believe in that for which he lives.
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As known unknowns become known unknown unknowns proliferate the larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.
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...the only thing that continues is the consequences of our action.
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The self is too small an object for perpetual enthusiasm.
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Poetry is a special use of language that opens onto the real. The business of the poet is truth telling, which is why in the Celtic tradition no one could be a teacher unless he or she was a poet.
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