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 Read Quote
Whether things turn out for the better depends on what we do. We ought not spend our time masterminding the future, but recognize our marching orders: to do the best we can for history and the planet. Huston Smith Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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. Huston Smith Read Quote
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 Read Quote
At the center of the religious life is a peculiar kind of joy, the prospect of a happy ending that blossoms from necessarily painful ordeals, the promise of human difficulties embraced and overcome. Huston Smith Read Quote
Exclusively oral cultures are unencumbered by dead knowledge, dead facts. Libraries, on the other hand, are full of them. Huston Smith Read Quote
I’ve spent the last 50 years or so steeping myself in the world’s religions, and I’ve done my homework. I’ve gone to each of the world’s eight great religions and sought out the most profound scholars I could find, and I’ve apprenticed myself to them and actually practiced each faith. Huston Smith Read Quote
I am critical of modernity giving science and technology a blank check as if it were the fountain of all truth. That is not true. And I think I may have introduced a word which has now caught on quite a bit, scientism. Science is good. It simply reports a discovery. Huston Smith Read Quote
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 Read Quote
