Huston Smith

Huston Smith
Born	Huston Cummings Smith (1919-05-31)May 31, 1919 Suzhou, China
Died	December 30, 2016(2016-12-30) (aged 97) Berkeley, California, United States
Occupation	Author and professor of religious studies
Known for	Author of The World's Religions
Spouse(s)	Kendra Smith
Website	hustonsmith.net

Huston Cummings Smith (May 31, 1919 – December 30, 2016) was a religious studies scholar in the United States. His book The World's Religions (originally titled The Religions of Man) sold over three million copies^[1][2] and remains a popular introduction to comparative religion.^[3] He died on December 30, 2016.^[4]

Life and career

Education

Smith was born in China to Methodist missionaries and spent his first 17 years there. Upon coming to the United States for education, he studied at Central Methodist University and the University of Chicago.^[5]

Religious practice

During his career, Smith not only studied but also practiced Vedanta (studying under Swami Satprakashananda, founder of the St. Louis Vedanta Center), Zen Buddhism (studying under Goto Zuigan), and Sufi Islam for more than ten years each.^[6]

As a young man, Smith suddenly turned from traditional Methodist Christianity to mysticism, influenced by the writings of Gerald Heard and Aldous Huxley. In 1947, before moving from Denver to St. Louis, Smith set out to meet with then-famous author Gerald Heard. Heard responded to Smith's letter, inviting him to his Trabuco College (later donated as the Ramakrishna Monastery) in Trabuco Canyon, Southern California. Heard made arrangements to have Smith meet the legendary author Aldous Huxley. Smith recounts in the 2010 documentary Huxley on Huxley meeting Huxley at his desert home.^[7] Smith was told to look up Swami Satprakashananda of the Vedanta Society once he settled in St. Louis. So began Smith's experimentation with meditation and association with the Vedanta Society of the Ramakrishna order.^[8] Smith developed an interest in the Traditionalist School formulated by René Guénon and Ananda Coomaraswamy. This interest has become a continuing thread in all his writings.

Due to his connection with Heard and Huxley, Smith went on to meet Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), and others at the Center for Personality Research, where Leary was research professor. The group began experimenting with psychedelics and what Smith later called "empirical metaphysics".^[9] The experience and history of the group are described in Smith's book Cleansing the Doors of Perception. During this period, Smith was also part of the Harvard Project, an attempt to raise spiritual awareness through entheogenic plants. During his tenure at Syracuse University, he was informed by leaders of the Onondaga tribe about the Native American religious traditions and practices, which resulted in an additional chapter in his book on the world's religions. In 1990 the Supreme Court ruled that the use of peyote as a religious sacrament by Native Americans was not protected under the US Constitution. Smith took up the cause as a noted religion scholar. With his help in 1994, Congress passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act amendment, providing legislative protection to a religious practice that the Supreme Court had decided lacks constitutional protection.^[10]

Smith was a practicing Christian who credited his faith to his missionary parents who had "instilled in me a Christianity that was able to withstand the dominating secular culture of modernity."^[11]

Teaching

Smith taught at the University of Denver from 1944 to 1947; then at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, for the next 10 years. He was then appointed professor and chair of the philosophy department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1958 to 1973. While there, he participated in experiments with psychedelics that professors Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (aka "Ram Dass") 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 emeritus status. At University of California, Berkeley he was visiting professor of religious studies.

Television and film

While at Washington University, Smith was the host of two National Educational Television series (NET – the forerunner of PBS): The Religions of Man and Search for America.^[12]

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.

• The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith: A Bill Moyers Special: A Personal Philosophy, 1996, PBS, DVD
• The Roots of Fundamentalism: A Conversation with Huston Smith and Phil Cousineau, 2006, GemsTone, DVD
• Death and Transformation: The Personal Reflections of Huston Smith, 2007, Fons Vitae, DVD
• The Arc of Life: Huston Smith on Life, Death & Beyond, 2012, GemsTone, DVD^[13]

Recording

In 1964, during a trip to India, Smith stayed in a Gyuto Tibetan Buddhist monastery. During his visit he heard the monks chanting and realized that each individual was producing a chord, composed of a fundamental note and overtones. He returned to record the chanting in 1967 and asked acoustic engineers at MIT analyze the sound.^[14] They confirmed the finding, which is an example of overtone singing. Smith has called this the singular empirical discovery of his career. The recording was released as an LP titled Music of Tibet,^[15][16] and later released on CD. Royalties from the sales go to support the Gyuto Tantric University.^[17]

Community engagement

Brandon Williamscraig Huston Smith 20090705 9262

Throughout his career, Smith made himself available to the communities where he resided. Toward the end of his life, while living in Berkeley, California, he participated in the Pacific Coast Theological Society at the Graduate Theological Union. He also attended local churches, including Trinity United Methodist, First Congregational Church, and Epworth United Methodist. On the occasion of publishing Tales of Wonder, in 2009 he co-convened "community conversations" at Epworth, during which he responded to questions about his life and work.^[18][19]

Awards

For his lifelong commitment to bringing the world's religions together to promote understanding, social justice and peace, Smith received the Courage of Conscience Award from the Peace Abbey in Sherborn, Massachusetts.^[20]

Smith was named to be one of the first recipients of the Order of Universal Interfaith and Universal Order of Sannyasa's Interfaith-Interspiritual Sage Award in January 2010. He received the award at his home on February 23, 2010.^[21]

The Pacific Coast Theological Society celebrated "the lifetime of achievements of Professor Emeritus Huston Smith by considering the relationship between theology, mythology, and science" in a special session in 2012. ^[22] In 2015, the society presented Smith with their Codron Prize for The World's Religions.^[23]

Quotes

• "If we take the world's enduring religions at their best, we discover the distilled wisdom of the human race."^[24]
• "Institutions are not pretty. Show me a pretty government. Healing is wonderful, but the American Medical Association? Learning is wonderful, but universities? The same is true for religion... religion is institutionalized spirituality."^[25]
• "The goal of spiritual life is not altered states, but altered traits."^[26]:97

Works

• The World's Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions, 1958, rev. ed. 1991, HarperOne, ISBN 0-06-250811-3^[27]
• Forgotten Truth: The Common Vision of the World's Religions, 1976, reprint ed. 1992, HarperOne, ISBN 0-06-250787-7^[28]
• Beyond the Postmodern Mind, 1982, reprint ed. 1989, Quest Books, ISBN 0-8356-0647-3
• The Illustrated World's Religions: A Guide to Our Wisdom Traditions,1995, HarperOne, ISBN 0-06-067440-7^[29]
• Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals, 2000, Tarcher/Putnam, ISBN 1-58542-034-4, Council on Spiritual Practices, ISBN 1-889725-03-X, Sentient Publications, ISBN 1-59181-008-6^[30]
• Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief, 2001, HarperOne, 1st ed.:ISBN 0-06-067099-1, reprint 2002: ISBN 0-06-067102-5^[31]
• Islam: A Concise Introduction, HarperOne, 2001, ISBN 0-06-166018-3^[32]
• The Way Things Are: Conversations with Huston Smith on the Spiritual Life, 2003, University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-23816-8 (cloth); ISBN 0-520-24489-3 (paper) Edited and with a Preface by Phil Cousineau
• Buddhism: A Concise Introduction, with Philip Novak, HarperOne, 2004, ISBN 0-06-073067-6^[33]
• The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition, 2005, HarperOne, 1st ed. ISBN 0-06-079478-X^[34]
• A Seat at the Table: Huston Smith in Conversation with Native Americans on Religious Freedom, 2006, University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-24439-7 (cloth) edited and with a Preface by Phil Cousineau
• Tales of Wonder: Adventures Chasing the Divine, (autobiography), 2009, HarperOne, ISBN 0-06-1154261
• And Live Rejoicing: Chapters from a Charmed Life — Personal Encounters with Spiritual Mavericks, Remarkable Seekers, and the World's Great Religious Leaders, 2012, With contributions from Phil Cousineau

References

External links

• Huston Smith official website
• Works by or about Huston Smith in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Huston Smith on IMDb