Huston Smith

Huston Smith (1919 - ) born in China to Methodist missionaries, a philosopher, most eloquent writer, world-famous religion scholar who practices Hatha Yoga. Has taught at MIT and is currently visiting professor at the Univ. of California at Berkley. Smith has also produced PBS series. He has written various books, The World's Religions, "Science and Human Responsibility", and "The Religions of Man".

He found in Vedantic Hinduism what he described as: "a profundity of a worldview that made my Christianity look like third grade."

(source: Philadelphia Inquirer Section: Faith - By David O'Reilly Sunday, June 18, 2000).

He was "perfectly content" with Christianity until the Vedanta came into his life some five decades ago. "When I read the Upanishads, I found a profundity of a world view that made my Christianity seem like third grade."

(source: Rediff.com - 'Religions are like human beings).

"Men and women that are lining the Bathing Ghats are all Hindus, but how different they are. But India looked past their bodies into their minds where she found the prolificness of the infinite exploding like a Roman candle.

No other civilization saw, appreciated, and classified so precisely the full spectrum of human personality types…an achievement that has earned for India – the title of the world’s introspective psychologist. The key to this psychological perceptiveness is her recognition to the extent to which people will differ and the degree to which these differences are to be respected.

The stages of life - The kind of person and way we approach God – affective – loving him, reflective person – by knowing him, active person – by serving him, contemplative – by meditating. All four of this way to yoga – union reach the same summit – which you follow depends on your spiritual temperament. Side of the mountain – which you start climbing. Hinduism’s cosmology was prodigious in scope and depth, but India did not stop there. She went on to advance what was probably the most daring hypothesis man has ever conceived. We are ourselves are the infinite, the very infinite from which the Universe proceeds. Everything in Hinduism works to drive the point home.

(source: The Mystic's Journey - India and the Infinite: The Soul of a People – By Huston Smith).

Here are Smith's views on Symbols and Idols of Hinduism:

"Enter Hinduism’s myths, her magnificent symbols, her several hundred images of God, her rituals that keep turning night and day like never-ending prayer wheels. It is obtuse to confuse Hinduism’s images with idolatry, and their multiplicity with polytheism. They are 'runways' from which the sense-laden human spirit can rise for its "flight of the alone to the Alone". Even village priest will frequently open their temple ceremonies with the following beloved invocation:

O Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations:

Thou art everywhere, but I worship you here;

Thou art without form, but I worship you in these forms;

Thou needest no praise, yet I offer you these prayers and salutations,

Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations.

“The invisible excludes nothing, the invisible that excludes nothing is infinite – the soul of India is infinite.”

“Philosophers tell us that the Indians were the first ones to conceive of a true infinite from which nothing is excluded. The West shied away from this notion. The West likes to form, boundaries that distinguish and demarcate. The trouble is that boundaries also imprison – they restrict and confine.”

“India saw this clearly and turned her face to that which has no boundary or whatever.” “India anchored her soul in the infinite seeing the things of the world as masks of the infinite assume – there can be no end to these masks, of course. If they express a true infinity.” And It is here that India’s mind-boggling variety links up to her infinite soul.”

“India includes so much because her soul being infinite excludes nothing.” It goes without saying that the universe that India saw emerging from the infinite was stupendous.”

While the West was still thinking, perhaps, of 6,000 years old universe – India was already envisioning ages and eons and galaxies as numerous as the sands of the River Ganga. The Universe so vast that modern astronomy slips into its folds without a ripple.”