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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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Huston Smith
Age: 97 †
Born: 1919
Born: May 31
Died: 2016
Died: December 30
Philosopher
Professor
Soochow
Huston Cummings Smith
First
Devised
Techniques
Actual
Rational
Technique
Answers
Koan
Experience
Triggering
Firsts
Millennia

More quotes by Huston Smith

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The self is too small an object for perpetual enthusiasm.
Huston Smith
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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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I'm not a chauvinist. I'm a universalist. I think that God imploded, like a spiritual big bang, to launch the eight civilizations that make up recorded history and the religions in those civilizations.
Huston Smith
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Daily the world grows smaller, leaving understanding the only place where peace can find a home.
Huston Smith
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...the only thing that continues is the consequences of our action.
Huston Smith
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Walnuts have a shell, and they have a kernel. Religions are the same. They have an essence, but then they have a protective coating. This is not the only way to put it. But it's my way. So the kernels are the same. However, the shells are different.
Huston Smith
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I simply wanted to experience the presence of this man who had revolutionized my understanding. After a while we sat in silence, gazing at the barren canyon walls. And the mute desert seemed to carry on our conversation for us.
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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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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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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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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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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I think it matters almost infinitely that we practice one of the authentic religions. But if you mean does it make any difference which. The answer is no, as long as each is followed with equal intensity, sincerity, dedication.
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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When there are miles to go before we sleep, altered traits are more important than altered states.
Huston Smith
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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.
Huston Smith
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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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God is defined by Jesus but not confined to Jesus.
Huston Smith
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Swami Ashokananda was a brilliant and accomplished spiritual teacher in the West.
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