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Book: The World's Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions
Quotes of Book: The World's Religions: Our
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  1. Huston Smith _ The World's Religions: Our

    The creative quietude of philosophical Taoism means to align one's daily life to the Tao, to ride its boundless tide and delight in its flow…and to perfect a life of wu wei- pure effectiveness and creative quietude {supreme activity and supreme relaxation.} We are nurtured by a force that is infinitely subtle, infinitely intricate; it is a consummate gracefulness born from an abundant vitality that has no need for abruptness or violence. One simply lets the Tao flow in and flow out again until all Life becomes a Dance in which there is neither feverishness or imbalance. Water is the closest parallel to the Tao and the prototype of wu wei. It is supple, strong, and sensuous; and it adapts and supports and buoys and erodes.
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  2. Huston Smith _ The World's Religions: Our

    In samadhi, the mind continues to think, but of no thing. This does not mean that it is thinking of nothing, that it is a total blank. It has perfected the paradox of seeing the invisible. It is filled with that which is "separated from all qualities, neither this nor that, without form, without a name.
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  3. Huston Smith _ The World's Religions: Our

    The motions of the average mind, say the Hindus, are about as orderly as those of a crazed monkey cavorting in its cage. Nay, more; like the prancings of a drunk, crazed monkey. Even so we have not conveyed its restlessness; the mind is like a drunken crazed monkey who has been stung by a wasp. What if the mind could be turned from a ping-pong ball into a lump of dough, which when thrown sticks to a all until deliberately removed? Would not its power increase if it could be thus held in focus? Would not its strength be compounded, like the strength of a light bulb when ringed by reflectors? A normal mind can be held to a reasonable extent by the world's objects. A psychotic mind cannot; it slips at once into uncontrollable fantasy. What if a third condition of mind could be developed, as much above the normal mind as the psychotic mind is below it, a condition in which the mind could be induced to focus protractedly on an object to fathom it deeply? This concentration is the sixth step of raja yoga.
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  4. Huston Smith _ The World's Religions: Our

    Raja yoga with asanas {poses and breathing} is a way of leading the inquirer to direct personal experience of the "beyond that is within." Its method is willed introversion, one of the classic implements of creative genius in any line of endeavor. Its intent is to drive the psychic energy of the self to its deepest part to activate the last continent of the true self
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  5. Huston Smith _ The World's Religions: Our

    The last is the worship of God in innumerable forms. Each is a symbol that points to something beyond; and as none exhausts God's actual nature, the entire array is needed to complete the picture of God's aspects and manifestations. But though the representations point equally to God, it s advisable for each devotee to form a lifelong attachment to one, so only then can its meaning deepen and its full power become accessible. The ideal form for most people will be one of God's incarnations, for God can be loved most readily in human form because our hearts are already attuned to loving people. Many Hindus readily acknowledge Christ as an incarnation as well as Rama, Krishna, and the Buddha. Whenever the stability of the world is seriously threatened, God descends to address the imbalance.
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  6. Huston Smith _ The World's Religions: Our

    The bhakta's approach include repeating God's name, as in praying without ceasing "keep the name of the Lord spinning in the midst of all your activities." Washing or weaving, planting or shopping, imperceptibly but indelibly these verbal droplets of aspiration soak down into the subconscious, loading it with the divine.
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  7. Huston Smith _ The World's Religions: Our

    All the basic principles of Bhakti yoga are richly exemplified in Christianity. From the Hindu point of view, Christianity is one great brilliantly lit highway toward God, not greater than other paths, but more clearly marked. On this path God is conceived differently than in jnana yoga, where the guiding image was of an infinite sea of being underlying the waves of our finite selves. This sea typified the all-pervading Self, which is a much within us as without.
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  8. Huston Smith _ The World's Religions: Our

    How can such a love for Being be engendered? The things for the world clamor for our affection so incessantly that it may be marveled that Being who can neither be seen nor heard can ever become their rival. 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 confused 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.
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  9. Huston Smith _ The World's Religions: Our

    We have seen that psychology has accustomed us to the fact there is more to ourselves than we suspect. Like the eighteenth century European view of the earth, our minds have their own darkest Africas, their unmapped Borneos, their Amazonian basins. Their bulk continues to await exploration. Hinduism sees the mind's hidden continents as stretching to infinity. Infinite in being, infinite in awareness, there is nothing beyond them that remains unknown. Infinite in joy, too, for there is nothing alien in them to mar their beatitude.
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  10. Huston Smith _ The World's Religions: Our

    We need to approach this question of being not only spatially, but also in terms of time. Our everyday experience provides a wedge for doing so. Strictly speaking, every moment of our lives is a dying; the I of that moment dies, never to be reborn. I endure through the moments-experiencing them, without being identical with any of them in it singularity. Hinduism carries this notion a step further. It posits an extensive self that lives successive lives in the way a single life lives successive moments.
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  11. Huston Smith _ The World's Religions: Our

    What if the interests of the self were expanded to the point of approximating a God's eye view of humanity? Seeing all things under the aspect of eternity would make one objective toward oneself, accepting failure as on a par with success in the stupendous human drama of yes and no, positive and negative, push and pull. Personal failure would be as small a cause for concerns as playing a loser in a summer theater performance. How could one feel disappointed in one's own defeat if one experienced the victor's joy as also one's own; if one's competitor's success was enjoyed vicariously? Instead of crying impossible, we should perhaps content ourselves with noting how different this would feel from life as it is usually lived, for reports of the greatest spiritual geniuses suggest they rose to something like this perspective
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  12. Huston Smith _ The World's Religions: Our

    For what is a human being? A body? Certainly, but anything else? A personality that includes mind, memories, and propensities that have derived from unique trajectory of life experiences? This, too, but anything more? Some say no, but Hinduism disagrees. Underlying the human self and animating it is a reservoir of being that never dies, is never exhausted, and is unrestricted in consciousness and bliss. The infinite center of life, this hidden self, or Atman, is no less than Brahman, the Godhead.
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