Essays on World Religion

by Huston Smith, M. Darrol Bryant (Editor)

Huston Smith is revered in the world's spiritual community as an ecumenical sage of the twentieth century. From considerations of individual identity to reflections on humanity's broadest religious and philosophical venturings, he has bravely explored the deep connections among world spiritual traditions for over thirty years. The nineteen essays collected in Huston Smith: Essays on World Religions span the career and chart the intellectual journey of this groundbreaking thinker. Originally published in journals of very small circulation, this work has never been available to general readers before. Smith writes with erudition and a warm personal style on such varied phenomena as the psychedelic experience of soma and the vedic religion, the supernatural as it appears to the Chinese intelligentsia, spiritual discipline in Zen training, the simultaneous octave sung by a single Tibetan monk, and the West's obsession with a dichotomy between God and man. This collection provides an intimate glimpse into the development of an extraordinary mind. The guiding motive of Huston Smith's life and work has been to tenaciously bridge the gap between diverse cultural realities and a single transcendent reality. In this collection's new and engaging foreword, he discusses this approach to a truly global perspective on the spiritual life of humankind. Editor M. Darrol Bryant illuminates the backgrounds of Smith's life and thought in an insightful introduction.

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction

290 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1992

About the author

Smith was born in Suzhou, China to Methodist missionaries and spent his first 17 years there. He taught at the Universities of Colorado and Denver from 1944–1947, moving to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri for the next ten years, and then Professor of Philosophy at MIT from 1958–1973. While at MIT he participated in some of the experiments with entheogens that professor Timothy Leary conducted at Harvard University. He then moved to Syracuse University where he was Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Philosophy until his retirement in 1983 and current emeritus status. He now lives in the Berkeley, CA area where he is Visiting Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

During his career, Smith not only studied, but practiced Vedanta Hinduism, Zen Buddhism (studying under Goto Zuigan), and Sufism for over ten years each. He is a notable autodidact.

As a young man, Smith, of his own volition, after suddenly turning to mysticism, set out to meet with then-famous author Gerald Heard. Heard responded to Smith's letter, invited him to his Trabuco College (later donated as the Ramakrishna Monastery) in Southern California, and then sent him off to meet the legendary Aldous Huxley. So began Smith's experimentation with meditation, and association with the Vedanta Society in Saint Louis under the auspices of Swami Satprakashananda of the Ramakrishna order.

Via the connection with Heard and Huxley, Smith eventually experimented with Timothy Leary and others at the Center for Personality Research, of which Leary was Research Professor. The experience and history of the era are captured somewhat in Smith's book Cleansing the Doors of Perception. In this period, Smith joined in on the Harvard Project as well, an attempt to raise spiritual awareness through entheogenic plants.

He has been a friend of the XIVth Dalai Lama for more than forty years, and met and talked to some of the great figures of the century, from Eleanor Roosevelt to Thomas Merton.

He developed an interest in the Traditionalist School formulated by Rene Guenon and Ananda Coomaraswamy. This interest has become a continuing thread in all his writings.

In 1996, Bill Moyers devoted a 5-part PBS special to Smith's life and work, "The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith." Smith has produced three series for public television: "The Religions of Man," "The Search for America," and (with Arthur Compton) "Science and Human Responsibility." His films on Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, and Sufism have all won awards at international film festivals.

His latest DVD release is The Roots of Fundamentalism - A Conversation with Huston Smith and Phil Cousineau.