[[learn from the perennial philosophy of Aldous Huxley? Jules Evans

What can we learn from the perennial philosophy of Aldous Huxley? | Aeon Essays

Perennial philosophy

Aldous Huxley argued that all religions in the world were underpinned by universal beliefs and experiences. Was he right?

Aldous Huxley in 1958. Photo by Philippe Halsman/Magnum

Jules Evans  is a research fellow at the Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary University of London. 

He is co-editor, with Tim Read, of the book Breaking Open: Finding a Way Through Spiritual Emergency (2020).

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3,400 words

Edited by  Nigel Warburton

When I was a teenager, I came across Aldous Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy (1945). I was so inspired by its array of mystical jewels that, like a magpie, I stole it from my school’s library. I still have that copy, sitting beside me. Next, I devoured his book The Doors of Perception (1954), and secretly converted to psychedelic mysticism. It was thanks to Huxley that I refused to get confirmed, thanks to him that my friends and I spent our adolescence trying to storm heaven on LSD, with mixed results. Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy has stayed with me through my life. He’s been my spirit-grandad. And yet, in the past few years, as I’ve researched his life, I find myself increasingly arguing with Grandad. What if his philosophy isn’t true?

The phrase ‘perennial philosophy’ was first coined by the Renaissance humanist Agostino Steuco in 1540. It referred to the idea that there is a core of shared wisdom in all religions, and to the attempt by Marsilio Ficino’s Neoplatonist school to synthesise that wisdom into one transcultural philosophy. This philosophy, writes Huxley, ‘is immemorial and universal. Rudiments of the perennial philosophy may be found among the traditionary lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions.’ 

As Huxley argues, there is a lot of agreement between proponents of classical theism in Platonic, Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Jewish philosophy over three main points: 

• God is unconditioned eternal Being, 
• our consciousness is a reflection or spark of that, and 
• we can find our flourishing or bliss in the realisation of this.

But what about Buddhism’s theory of anatta, or ‘no self’? 

Huxley suggests that the Buddha meant the ordinary ego doesn’t exist, but there is still an ‘unconditioned essence’ (which is arguably true of some forms of Buddhism but not others). 

I suspect scholars of Taoism would object to equating the Tao with the God of classical theism. 

As for ‘the traditional lore of primitive peoples’, I’m sure Huxley didn’t know enough to say.

Still, one can see striking similarities in the mystical ideas and practices of the main religious traditions. The common goal is to overcome the ego and awaken to reality. Ordinary egocentric reality is considered to be a trancelike succession of automatic impulses and attachments. The path to awakening involves daily training in contemplation, recollection, non-attachment, charity and love. 

When one has achieved ‘total selflessness’, one realises the true nature of reality. There are different paths up the mystic mountain, but Huxley suggests that the peak experience is the same in all traditions: a wordless, imageless encounter with the Pure Light of the divine.

How do we know it’s worth following this arduous path? We have to take the great mystics’ word for it. Huxley writes: ‘the nature of this one Reality is such that it cannot be directly and immediately apprehended except by those who have chosen to fulfil certain conditions, making themselves loving, pure in heart, and poor in spirit.’ However, we can try the first steps up the mountain and see what sort of empirical results we get.

Whatever else it is, The Perennial Philosophy is an extraordinary work of synthesis, and it injected a global spirituality into mainstream Western culture. Huxley condemned the ‘theological imperialism’ that appreciates only Western texts, and introduced many readers to now-familiar non-Western teachings – the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, the teachings of the Buddha, Zhuang Zi, Rumi. Still, it’s quite an idiosyncratic selection of quotes. There’s a lot of Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism, and plenty of male Christian mystics, but hardly any female mystics, only one line from Jesus, and no quotes from the Quran. In what sense, then, is it universal?


Although Huxley wrote that the perennial philosophy is ‘immemorial and universal’, his book was a product of a particular time and place. In the first half of his life, Huxley was known as an irreverent mocker of religion, ‘the man who hates God’ as one newspaper put it. He was the grandson of Thomas Huxley, a renowned Victorian scientist who ridiculed Christian superstitions and suggested that evolutionary science could be something like a new religion.

Huxley’s cynical exterior broke down in the 1930s. He could no longer handle living in a materialist, meaningless universe. But rather than convert to Christianity, as peers such as T S Eliot did, he turned to the scientific spirituality of his friend Gerald Heard, the BBC’s first science journalist. Heard thought that psychology and other sciences could provide an empirical evidence base for spiritual techniques such as meditation. This empirical spirituality (my phrase) appealed to Huxley.

He and Heard became leading figures in the pacifist movement of the 1930s. But they abruptly abandoned hope in Europe, and moved to Los Angeles in 1937. For a while they, along with the novelist Christopher Isherwood, became prominent members of the Vedanta Society of southern California (Vedanta is a form of Hindu mysticism). They were nicknamed ‘the mystical expatriates’ by another such expat, Alan Watts. When the Second World War broke out, they faced a lot of criticism back in Britain for their ‘desertion’ to Hollywood.

Herrymon Maurer and the Tao of Quakerism – Quaker Theology

Herrymon Maurer and the Tao of Quakerism – Quaker Theology

Herrymon Maurer and the Tao of Quakerism

by Anthony Manousos

“When I first read Herrymon’s version of the Tao The Ching, I was bowled over,” recalls Steve Penningroth, a biochemist from Princeton University. “What struck me was the commentary. Without it I was lost. Herrymon’s commentary helped me because I had the sense that he was on to something and that he grasped the problems of the world from a non-dogmatic, spiritual and loving perspective.”

“The book changed my life in many ways,” says Glenn Picher, who was 24 years old and had just been graduated from Princeton University when he first encountered Herrymon and his Tao The Ching. “Herrymon had the voice of a prophet. Being a political radical at the time, I found the jeremiad aspect of this work very attractive.”

Even though many twentieth-century Quakers have been drawn to Taoism, 1 Herrymon Maurer’s Tao The Ching is the only book-length work by an American to explore Taoism from a Quaker/Hasidic (or as Herrymon would say, “prophetic”) perspective. (The work of the Korean Friend Ham Sok Hon also deals with Taoism, but from a very different perspective.)

Herrymon’s interest in Taoism and China was lifelong and deep. From 1938-41, during the Sino-Japanese War, Herrymon taught English in West China, where he first became acquainted with Taoism and experienced first-hand the brute facts of modern combat.2 Deeply impressed by Chinese culture and spiritual wisdom, he wrote a fictionalized life of Lao Tzu in 1943.

Herrymon also had broad-ranging experience in the business world and among Quakers. He was on the staff of Fortune magazine from 1942-45, and afterwards was a contributing writer until 1968. He wrote articles that appeared in Fortune, Life, Reader’s Digest, the old Commentary, the New Leader, and other magazines. He wrote books on topics ranging from Gandhi to big business that were published in Britain, France, Japan, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, and the United States. He also edited a book and wrote a pamphlet for Pendle Hill, a Quaker study center, and was known and respected by “weighty” Quakers, such as Anna and Howard Brinton.

After a lifetime of intense and sometimes compulsive seeking, Herrymon finally achieved, in the last few decades of his life, a measure of hard-earned wisdom, tempered with deep compassion, that was of enormous help to those seeking inner peace and clarity for their lives.

I came to know Herrymon when I first began attending Princeton Meeting in 1984. At that time, Herrymon had turned seventy and had recently become a recorded minister. This distinction was lost upon me as a newcomer to Quakerism. I have since learned that Philadelphia Yearly Meeting –of which Princeton Meeting is a part –virtually gave up the practice of recording ministers nearly fifty years ago. 3 Herrymon’s ministry was considered so important, however, that Princeton Friends felt that it needed to be acknowledged.

I learned about “the Way” of Taoism and Quakerism through a small group that Herrymon helped to establish. It was called “The Surrender Group.” Around one third of its members were AA and NA (Narcotics Anonymous) “graduates”; the rest were recovering ego-holics, of whom I was (and still am) one.

The “Surrender Group” was started in the early 1970s a few years after Herrymon joined AA and turned his life around. Its format was simple: AA’s Twelve Steps were re-cast, in deference to Quaker practice, as “Ten Queries.” Each week participants would focus on a single query: “Are you willing to make Truth the center of your life?” or “Are you willing to give up compulsions and devices?” The questions were simple, but the responses were often deep and challenging. Participants were encouraged to share from their personal experience, and to help others to understand how we could in fact change our lives. I had never experienced anything quite like it before, or since.

What made the “Surrender Group” dynamic was the presence of recovering alcoholics deeply committed to spiritual transformation, and the presence of Herrymon, whose wisdom and humor pervaded the gathering.

“I don’t think I’d be here today if not for Herrymon and the Surrender Group,” says Harriet, one of the group’s original members. “When I first went to the group, I was 29 years old and had just found out that my husband was manic-depressive. Herrymon helped me get through this crisis spiritually as well as psychologically.”

****

When Herrymon died in August of 1998, his passing was deeply felt by his family and Princeton F/friends, but went mostly unacknowledged elsewhere, even in the Quaker world. Herrymon seemed very much like the low-profile Taoist sage.

When I learned of Herrymon’s death, I felt led to write about him, but found very little material to work with. I was surprised to learn that no memorial minute had been written about him. There was apparently no obituary about him even in Friends Journal.

To find out more about this man whose life was as elusive as the Tao, I decided to interview his wife Helen, who still lives in Princeton. From Helen, I gleaned a picture of Herrymon’s life and realized how little about himself he had revealed during the period that I came to know him.

In 1914 Herrymon Maurer was born in Sewickly, Pennsylvania, a small town outside of Pittsburgh. His father was a high school teacher who died in the great influenza epidemic of 1917. Herrymon was sent to Ohio to live with relatives for several years while his mother went back to school. At age seven Herrymon was sent to Pittsburgh to live with his mother and aunt, both school teachers. Herrymon met his future wife, Helen Singleton, when she was 13 years old; and they soon became friends. The Maurer household was dominated by two very strict and formidable women. In contrast, the Singletons were vivacious and easygoing. Among them Herrymon learned to dance and to appreciate the joys of life. Herrymon became best friends with Helen’s brother, as well as with Helen.

Precocious and gifted, with a penchant for sculpture as well as writing, Herrymon was accepted by Dartmouth College. During his freshman year he contracted rheumatic fever and was sent home. He spent a year in bed recovering. He eventually completed his B.A. in English at the University of Pittsburgh.

Seeking fame and fortune, Herrymon moved to New York, where he stayed at the apartment of Helen’s brother. He was soon joined by Helen, and they were married in 1937.

The newlyweds eked out a living doing various jobs, as was common during the latter days of the Great Depression. Helen had been a social worker since 1933, but she ended up working at the New York World’s Fair. Herrymon wrote advertising copy and did public relations work. Helen recalls that at one point their apartment was full of the latest girdles, complete with new-fangled zippers, about which Herrymon had to write something catchy. He hated that job.

When Herrymon was offered the chance to teach English at the University of Nan-King in Western China in 1938, he leaped at the opportunity. Helen was a bit more cautious, but went along with Herrymon’s enthusiasm and ended up teaching at Jin-Ling, a prestigious women’s university. Traveling to China was a long and arduous journey that took six weeks because of stormy weather, and the stay in war-torn China was no less challenging. It was in China that their first child, Mei-Mei (meaning “Little Sister”), was born in 1939.

China made a deep impression on Herrymon, who eventually wrote two books on the subject, The End is Not Yet: China at War (McBride, 1941) and A Collision of East and West (Regnery, 1951). He also wrote a fictionalized life of Lao-Tzu called The Old Fellow (Doubleday, 1943). The End is Not Yet describes the Sino-Japanese war with a keen journalistic eye and celebrates the dogged, down-to-earth determination of the Chi-nese in the face of Japanese aggression. The Collision of East and West is a philosophical as well as historical reflection on the “four-cornered war between China and Japan, between Japan and the United States, between Japan and Russia, and the cultu-ral and political war between China and the United States.” 4

When the Maurers moved back to the United States in 1941, Herrymon began working on these books as well as writing articles for Fortune and Commentary.

They lived for a while in Westchester county, NY, where Herrymon became a member of Chappaqua Meeting in 1943. Here his daughter Ann was born, to be followed by his son Tom in 1945. As Herrymon’s commitment to pacifism and Quakerism deepened, he wrote Great Soul: The Growth of Gandhi, which was published by Doubleday in 1948.

In 1949 he and his family went to Pendle Hill to head up the publications program. There Herrymon edited The Pendle Hill Reader, a collection of essays by Thomas Kelly, Douglas Steere, Rufus Jones, Arnold Toynbee, Howard Brinton, et al. He also edited a selection from John Woolman’s writings called Worship (Pendle Hill Pamphlet #51, 1949) and wrote a pamphlet called The Power of Truth (Pendle Hill Pamphlet # 53).

During this period Herrymon came to know personally Fritz Eichenberg, the Brintons, the Steeres, the Bacons, and numerous other Friends who passed through this unique Quaker “hotbed” for study and contemplation.

In 1950 Herrymon moved to Princeton and became one of the founding members of Princeton Meeting, when it was resuscitated after WWII. 5 There he continued to write about spiritual matters. In 1953 his cogitations on philosophy and religion, What Can I Know? The Prophetic Answer, was published. This turned out to be the last book that Herrymon published about religious matters for nearly thirty years.

Most of Herrymon’s books were written and published before he turned forty. His religious writings are full of what Yeats called “passionate intensity.” In his Pendle Hill pamphlet, The Power of Truth, Herrymon grapples with the question of the “end of the world” from nuclear holocaust. Herrymon argues that if humanity annihilates itself, it is because we have failed to heed the voices of prophets who are been warning and exhorting us to give up our self-destructive egocentrism. 6

Herrymon derides those who put their faith in social engineering or the Social Gospel–no man-made scheme or panacea will save us if there is no inward transformation. According to Herrymon, we must seek “liberation from our own lies and fears and egotism, and thus liberation from the outward pestilences provoked by inward ills. This liberation has many names. It has been called love, non-violence, non-action, pure wisdom. Gandhi gave it a new name, Satyagraha, the Power of Truth” (12). As a solution to America’s racial problems, Herrymon proposes using the same techniques that Gandhi used, thereby anticipating Martin Luther King’s non-violent Civil Rights movement by several years. 7

In Herrymon’s view, Truth is universal, and so are prophets. He sees Lao-Tsu, Isaiah, Jesus, Muhammad, George Fox, John Woolman, and Gandhi as all espousing the same universal Truth. He writes: “I am also struck to find that God as Lao-tzu, the great Chinese Taoist, encountered him is in no sharp contrast to God as the great prophets of Israel encountered him” (p. 56). Herrymon acknowledges that universal Truth may be perceived and interpreted differently because of different social and historical circumstances. 8

For Herrymon, the great prophets are eternally contemporary. He sees Quakerism and Hasidism as “most successful in preserving prophetic vitality” (p. 62). 9

Herrymon was convinced that prophets continue to live among us, often in the disguise of “ordinary people” and friends who have had direct encounters with Truth (this is a belief shared by Quakers and Hasidim). He describes such prophets as

persons of ready humor, but also of deep seriousness. Not one of them has that steady serenity of mind that makes the mystic or the saint. (The prophetic and the serene, I suspect, are not altogether compatible.) These friends may have times of joy, but they have recurrent times of anguish, tension, distaste, and sorrow. There is always the eternal conflict between the inalterably true and the world as it is; the prophetic function is always to bear conflict and anguish and turn them to use (What Can I Know?: 66)

Those who knew Herrymon will recognize this as a self-portrait, for he was a “man of sorrows” who had a wonderful sense of humor and irony, and an abiding passion for honesty and Truth.

After Herrymon’s powerfully prophetic statements, it may seem strange that he wrote no more about religion for nearly three decades. During the ‘50s and ‘60s, he worked sporadically for Fortune magazine as editor and writer. He summed up his detailed knowledge of business in Great Enterprise: Growth and Behavior of the Big Corporation (MacMillan, 1955) –a work that dispassionately treats the rise of corporatism as a fact of life, or as a force of nature, without passing judgment or offering any critique. His professional writings of this period display lucidity, but no trace of inspiration or prophesy.

What caused the prophetic fires to die out, or at least become dormant, in Herrymon?

One answer is that he suffered from chronic alcoholism as well as bouts of depression that sapped his strength and undermined his confidence, particularly in his mid-life. From the 1940s on, he tried every cure imaginable, from psychotherapy to shock therapy. Nothing seemed able to exorcize his inner demons for very long.

Because of his alcoholism and mood swings, Herrymon’s relations with his family were often strained. His wife Helen, a woman of extraordinary faith, love, and common sense, helped to keep Herrymon and the family together during these difficult times. It was Helen who saw the Dr. Jekyll in Herrymon when alcohol turned him into Mr. Hyde.

A psychiatric social worker, Helen was an associate professor at Rutgers University for many years. Her specialty was depression and schizophrenia. She worked at Carrier Clinic in Princeton as a coordinator of social services until her retirement at age 74.

“We managed to get through it,” she says, recalling Herrymon’s drinking and the dark times in her marriage, and laughing. “It was never dull.”

When drinking heavily, Herrymon could at times become belligerent and very un-Quakerly. One Saturday night he got into a fist fight at a bar and showed up the next day at Quaker Meeting wearing sunglasses to cover up his black eye. He was in his forties and the clerk of Meeting when this incident occurred.

One of the worst episodes took place when Herrymon was in his early 50s. One night, when Helen and his family were away, he drank too much and set fire to his bed, probably as a result of smoking. Severely burned, he called a family doctor, who rushed to his house at 4:00 AM and drove him to the nearest emergency ward, thereby saving his life. Herrymon was in the hospital for over six weeks with major burns, and the DTs. Helen was his constant companion from the crack of dawn until midnight. When he came to his senses, Herrymon asked Helen where she had been all those weeks.

A couple of years later, in 1965, Herrymon joined Alcoholics Anonymous. He was fifty-six years old. According to his daughter Mei-Mei, “AA was the greatest thing in his life.” Herrymon sometimes told his friends: “AA saved my life.”

In one of his last articles for Fortune, “The Beginning of Wisdom about Alcoholism” (May 1968), Herrymon writes of alcoholism as “an illness of the magnitude of heart trouble, cancer, and severe mental disorder” and lauds AA as one of the best programs for dealing with this insidious disease.

Thanks to AA, Herrymon finally stopped drinking and found a support group that helped him to regain some stability in his life. Gradually his old passion for Truth (as he liked to call it) revived. He still suffered from depression and mood swings and needed medication (and psychiatric counseling) to cope, but he no longer felt possessed by the craving for alcohol.

With a new lease on life, he started the Surrender Group, became more actively involved in his Friends Meeting, and went back to his “old loves”–the Tao The Ching, John Woolman, and Gandhi. In the mid-1970s he began working on a series of four interconnected books he called The Way of the Ways. These books reflect the major influences of Herrymon’s spiritual life: Taoism, “prophetic” scriptures (including the writings of George Fox and Martin Buber), John Woolman, and Mohandas Gandhi.

In the 1970s, Herrymon also joined the Board of Fellowship in Prayer (FIP), an organization started by Carl Evans, a retired businessman and former Presbyterian missionary in China, in 1949. Deeply disturbed by the Cold War and the threat of nuclear holocaust, Evans placed an ad in the NY Times calling for an interfaith “fellowship in prayer” to promote peace and received an enthusiastic response from Roman Catholics, Jews, Protestants, Jews, Buddhists, and others. The organization eventually received a Lilly Foundation grant, which enabled it to distribute its publications for free. Herrymon learned of FIP through his friend Paul Griffith, a novelist who became editor of FIP in 1966 and continued till his death in 1983.

The following year a young Quaker named Ed Miller became managing editor of FIP, largely through Herrymon’s efforts. Ed Miller was a bright young seeker in his late 30s, looking for a direction in his life, when he encountered Herrymon’s Tao The Ching, which was published by FIP in 1982. Reading it, Ed was astounded.

“This was the Reagan era,” recalls Ed, “and I wondered, ‘How could this guy have published this and not be in jail?’”

Ed bought up five copies to give to friends and then discovered that the author lived in Princeton. He called Herrymon, and they met at Princeton Meeting. There Ed found the spiritual community he was seeking, and a mentor.

“I became Herrymon’s surrogate son,” says Ed. “Herrymon and I had a lot of personality characteristics, and faults, in common. He helped me turn my life around.”

Herrymon’s son Tom had died tragically in 1972, at age 27.

Ed and Mary Beth became members of Princeton Meeting, participants in the Surrender Group, and frequent attenders of the Maurers’ Friday evening gatherings, which sometimes drew as many as 20-30 people–many of them young seekers like the Millers. Working for Fellowship in Prayer, Ed had the opportunity to broaden his spiritual horizons.

When I came to Princeton in 1984 after a stint as a college professor, Ed introduced me to Quakerism and eventually hired me as his editorial assistant at Fellowship in Prayer

This is when I began to study in earnest Herrymon’s Tao The Ching–a work that I found astonishing in its scope and depth. For the past twenty years, I have treasured my dog-eared copy and frequently return to it during my meditations. It remains a buried treasure, however–one that deserves to be more widely known and appreciated.

The Tao of Quakerism

What distinguishes Herrymon Maurer’s version of the Tao The Ching is its recognition that Lao Tzu belongs to a prophetic tradition that connects all religions and times. Herrymon uses the word “prophetic” to refer not to those who imagine that they can foretell the future, but rather to those who believe themselves to be called (often reluctantly) to speak on behalf of what Herrymon (and early Quakers) called the Truth.

“Truth” is not an idea or a philosophic concept, but a way of life, an attitude towards the great mystery of existence that cannot be defined or explained, but can only be experienced.

The prophet’s primary concern is 1) to warn the community that has turned away from Truth, 2) to expose the idols and false gods that prevent us from experiencing Truth, and 3) to show the dire consequences of denying Truth and the blessings that can occur when we return to Truth. The prophets of Israel decried social injustices, such as economic oppression, environmental degradation, and war, seeing them as symptoms or consequences of being out of touch with Divine Truth.

As has been noted before, Herrymon saw Lao Tzu as part of the same prophetic community as Isaiah, the Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, George Fox, John Woolman, Martin Buber, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King.

For these prophets, as well as for Herrymon, the Way of Truth was not something otherwordly or metaphysical, but something real and practical–a way of personal and social liberation and transformation.

Using a Taoist perspective, Herrymon explores a wide range of contemporary social issues and problems, from sexuality to fundamentalism, from social activism to monetary policy, from publicity-seeking to our obsession with violence and war. At the root of all our problems (and our sometimes knee-jerk responses to them) Herrymon sees self-will or addiction to self. He writes about the current state of ego-centered “conventional” society with wit, irony, and insight.

His style is more formal than that of many popular writers and is at times reminiscent of Dr. Johnson, the eighteenth-century literary and social critic. Underlying Herrymon’s formality is a deep concern for Truth born out of personal struggles. When Herrymon talks about addictive behavior, or obsession with success, or futile efforts to oppose war, he knows whereof he speaks. His satire of the self-serving peace activist is bound to make some Quakers wince:

Suppose, for example, that I have convictions on the subject of peace. I am stricken by the possibility of atomic conflagration and convinced that it is increased by armaments and the threat of war….I argue strenuously for my understanding of history, current events, and future projections. I undertake to gather large crowds of marching and shouting demonstrators, and try to win publicity for them, hopefully television publicity….I orate with emotion. I call names. I demonstrate. I instill fear. I tell other people what to do. But other people, precisely the other people whose minds I seek to alter, see clearly that what I am really seeking is the power to become a celebrity, an authority figure. (48)

The obsessive use of the word “I” is a good indication of where the speaker is really coming from. To become a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King, Herrymon suggests, we need to base our activism not on an intellectual analysis or on a personal desire to “save the world,” but rather on a deep commitment to the Way of Truth. This commitment requires giving up our ego-centered perspective and joining in a community of fellow seekers.

Herrymon sees the Tao The Ching as an antidote to one of the most pervasive problems of our time–violence. According to Herrymon, all forms of violence–from gang violence to wars and acts of terrorism–spring from attachment to self. I am apt to resort to violence — whether physical, verbal, or psychological — when I regard myself, my gang, my family, my ethnic group, my political faction, my religion, or my country as the most important thing in the universe. Non-violence springs from a recognition that my neighbor is just as important, just as sacred in the eyes of God, as I am.

The Tao The Ching has long appealed to those of pacifist tendencies. It was composed during a period of Chinese history when China was torn apart by war lords. It contains numerous passages condemning war, many of which speak to our time:

When people don’t mind death

Why threaten them with death? (174)

When armies clash,

The one that grieves wins (169).

A good soldier is not violent,

A good soldier has no wrath.

The best way to win over an enemy

is not to compete with him. (168)

Where armies are

Briars and brambles grow.

Bad harvests follow big wars.

Be firm and that is all:

Dare not rely on force.

Be firm but not haughty,

Firm but not boastful,

Firm but not proud,

Firm when necessary,

Firm but non-violent (126).

Fine weapons are tools of ill fortune;

All things seem to hate them.

Whoever has Tao does not depend on them…

Treat victory like a funeral. (127)

What others have taught, I also teach:

Men of violence perish by it. (139)

Herrymon’s commentaries link these passages with sayings by Western anti-war prophets, such as Jesus, “All they that take up the sword shall perish by the sword” (Matthew 26: 52), and Isaiah, “Your hands are full of bloodshed, wash yourselves clean, banish your evil doings from my sight, cease to do wrong, learn to do right, make justice all your aim, and put a check on violence” (Isaiah 1:15-17).

Some readers may find it objectionable that Herrymon uses the word “man” in the generic sense rather than inclusive language, but Herrymon makes it clear that Lao Tsu was opposed to patriarchy and to any form of sexism. “While Lao Tsu makes frequent use of the word man, in Chinese a generic term for human being regardless of sex,” writes Herrymon, “Lao Tzu is not patriarchal (in this he is unlike Confucius) and tends to favor the maternal. Among writers of the Bronze Age, when patriarchy completely overcame the matrilocalism of the New Stone Age, he was the one known feminist” (110). Throughout his work Lao Tzu refers to the Tao as a female (often as “the Mother”) and extols the feminine principle over the male. As the ironic Taoist sage says:

All men have their uses;

I alone am stubborn and uncouth.

But I differ most from the others

In prizing food drawn from my Mother (114).

Herrymon may be the first commentator to appreciate the important connection between Taoism and Martin Buber. Scholars are now coming to appreciate that Martin Buber was deeply interested in and influenced by Taoism, particularly the stories of Chuang-Tzu, which he translated and wrote about early in his career. 10

Being an English professor rather than a Chinese scholar by training, I can appreciate the literary value but cannot assess the scholarly worth of Herrymon’s translation. It is clear that Herrymon took pains to be as accurate and careful as possible in his translation. Chinese scholars agree that translating the Tao The Ching is extremely difficult and all translations are colored to some extent by the translator’s perspectives and biases.

The language of the original is so spare that it is often hard to translate, much less interpret. For example, the Chinese characters for Chapter 4:1 literally mean:

Tao empty and use it

seem not full.

Most translators embellish the original with metaphorical and abstract language:

“Existence, by nothing bred, /Breeds everything”: Brynner;

“The Tao is like a well:/used but never used up”: Mitchell;

“The Way is like an empty vessel,/That yet may be drawn forever”: Waley. 11

Herrymon’s only addition to the text is an exclamation point, suggesting a sense of wonder at an emptiness that is somehow the source of everything:

Tao is empty! Use it

And it isn’t used up.

Whenever possible, Herrymon keeps to the concreteness of the Chinese (for examples, he uses the Chinese idiom “ten thousand things” instead of saying “all things”). Herrymon chooses this kind of exactitude even when the results may be somewhat confusing since “existing translations attempt to make [Lao Tsu] understandable,” i.e. confirm to the translator’s interpretation of reality. Herrymon feels that such efforts thwart Lao Tsu’s purpose, which was to avoid “naming things and cogitating theories.” In other words, ambiguity is a necessary part of the Tao The Ching, as it is in life itself. In Herrymon’s view, a translator should not try to make comprehensible what may be intentionally or unintentionally obscure.

Now and then, however, Herrymon uses a Western term to translate an ambiguous Chinese phrase. For example, the conclusion of Chapter 25 reads:

Thus persons are to be looked at:

As a person,

Families as a family,

Villages as a village,

Countries as a country,

Beneath-heaven as beneath-heaven.

How do I know beneath-heaven?

By this. (151)

Herrymon translates “by this” with the Quaker term “Inward Light” and then explains in the commentary why he thinks this term is appropriate. 12

One of the appealing features of Herrymon’s translation is its aphoristic quality–an effort to capture the spirit of the Chinese original. Herrymon eliminates unnecessary pronouns and sometimes uses rhyme to make phrases incisive and memorable,

When Tao is cast aside,

Duty and humanity abide.

When prudence and wit appear,

Great hypocrites are here (Chapter 18: 194).

If the Tao can be Taoed, its not Tao.

If its name can be named, it’s not its name.

Has no name: precedes heaven and earth.

Has a name: mother of the ten thousand things.

For it is always dispassionate;

See its inwardness

Always passionate:

See its outwardness.

The names are different

But the source the same.

Call the sameness mystery:

Mystery of mystery, the door to inwardness. (Chapter 1: 93)

A major purpose of Herrymon’s terse, unembellished translation is to encourage the reader not to cogitate, but to meditate on the text–and on the Tao which inspired it.

Those who are concerned about the pervasive violence in today’s world will be challenged and inspired by Herrymon’s unique translation and commentary on the Tao The Ching. Herrymon wrote not for scholars but for “suffering and seeking human beings” (92). In his view, Tao The Ching is not an historical artifact, but a “living growing thing”–capable of opening our minds and hearts to the Way of Truth, Love, and Peace.

Notes

1. Among them was the Quaker educator and scholar Howard Brinton, who alludes to a Taoist anecdote in Friends For Three Hundred Years. Teresina Havens, a long-time practitioner of both Buddhism and Quakerism, summed up Quaker/Taoist mysticism with this telling passage from her Pendle Hill pamphlet, Mind What Stirs in the Heart:

There is in each of us a deep-flowing River. Some call it Tao or Life source, others the Indwelling Spirit, still others simply Energy. Our life rests upon It; we are carried and cradled by It, as the child by its Mother.

2. Of this experience Herrymon writes: “One day in Chengtu, after a particularly severe bombing, more than twenty wounded Chinese were carried to the lawn of the home of a Western physician. There were no facilities for blood transfusions; the shrapnel wounds were deep; and first-aid measures ensured the lives of only a few of those whose families had carried them to a place where they hoped for help. Few words were spoken. Families and friends knelt on the ground beside the forms from which life and blood were flowing. Eyes attempted to convey the feelings which tongues and lips could not phrase. A scene of suffering; a scene of death . . .”The Westerners view the scene with frustration, saying to themselves, “If we could only do something,” while the Chinese accept the realities of death, and life, with Taoist resignation. “One Chinese–a coolie dressed in a faded blue coat with a ragged towel for headgear–looked up at the physician and recognized the strain in the lines of his face. His own eyes were sorrowful beyond tears. ‘Mei-yu fat-tze, l-sen, ta sze-lo,’ he said gently and comfortingly, ‘There is no help for it, doctor; she is dead’” (The Old Fellow, p. 89-90).

3. Because Friends believe that every member of Meeting is a minister, it seemed unnecessary to single out or record an individual Friend for his or her ministry.

4. In an introduction to this book, the Chinese scholar and former Chinese ambassador Hu Shih writes: “Mr. Maurer is a thoughtful writer who interprets world events with the sympathetic understanding of the true philosopher. For he is philosopher who lives his philosophy. He is a Quaker . . . . He is deeply attracted by Lao-Tze, who taught non-resistance five centuries before Jesus of Nazareth, and by Gandhi, who achieved the great miracle of modern times in winning the independence of India by nonviolence.”

5. The town of Princeton was founded by Quakers, but after the American Revolution, their influence declined and the Princeton Friends Meeting was laid down in the late 19th century.

6. Herrymon’s tone is uncompromising and bleak: “It is essential to grasp the nature of the destruction that we may indeed bring upon ourselves: a destruction not just of evil places or of evil people, but a destruction of all places, all people. For the torment of our times, for the evil in them, for our wars, for our fears, we are all responsible. The pacifist is as responsible for war as the militarist, the doer of good works as responsible for poverty as the oppressor, the man of prayer as responsible for ignorance of Truth as the blasphemer. If but a handful among us were completely given to the light of Truth, our world could not remain sunk in torment. But there is no such handful. There is no remnant. All are responsible; each one is responsible. There is no purely personal salvation; if we do not seek to be joined in Truth with every living human person (and, in a sense, with every one who is dead) we shall be damned separately. There is no indication that the Kingdom of God is to be won by merely personal initiative” (The Power of Truth, pp. 7-8).

7. Herrymon writes that “outward arguments” and changes in laws will not alter racial discrimination: “In the South, Jim Crow is not likely to be broken down until groups of concerned Southerners systematically violate local law and custom and suffer willingly whatever injuries and wrath and mob wrath ensue” (21).

8. Herrymon writes: “I am not trying to overlook the widespread differences in outward appearances, often in basic motivations, that have kept various religions distinct. God is not changeable, but men at different times and places know him differently” (What Can I Know? p. 57).

9. “Both movements retain some strength today, Quakerism through the occasional flashing of its old prophetic light, Hassidism through the writing of the contemporary scholar, Martin Buber, a man strongly marked by the prophetic” (What Can I Know? p. 63).

10. See I and Tao: Martin Buber’s Encounter with Chuang Tsu (1996) by Jonathan Herman. Also, Chinese Tales: Zhuangzi (1991) trans. By Alex Page, with an introduction by Irene Eber.

11. See “On Translating the Tao-Te-Ching” by Michael La Forgue and Julian Pas, in Livia Kohn and Michael LaFargue, eds. Lao-tzu and the Tao-te-ching. Albany: State University of New York Press. pp. 277-293.

12. Herrymon writes: “The inwardness which Lao Tzu designates by the pronoun this is the Way by which we are taught as well as the Way upon which we journey. That is, men and women follow Light, and it is Light that informs them both about Truth and the road on which it is to be followed” (151).

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“Ham Sok Hon: Voice of the People and Pioneer of Religious Pluralism in Twentieth Century Korea; Biography of a Korean Quaker”* A Review – Quaker Theology

“Ham Sok Hon: Voice of the People and Pioneer of Religious Pluralism in Twentieth Century Korea; Biography of a Korean Quaker”* A Review – Quaker Theology

“Ham Sok Hon: Voice of the People and Pioneer of Religious Pluralism in Twentieth Century Korea; Biography of a Korean Quaker”* A Review

Reviewed by Chuck Fager

Reprinted from Quaker Theology #5, Autumn 2001

Early in the morning of Second Month 4, 1989, Kim Sung Soo learned that Ham Sok Hon had died. “When I looked at him in his coffin,” Kim writes, “I felt it was as if a part of myself had died. Faced with his death my mind began to wander through a labyrinth of reflections: Ham’s life, his death, and my own life. . . .”

    A few hours later, Kim quit his job as an engineer for the Korean National Railway. Soon he began graduate work in history and East Asian studies, which took him to England and the University of Essex. While his studies ranged widely, they had one main focus: Ham Sok Hon. His B.A. thesis considered Ham and democracy in Korea; his M.A. essay examined Ham’s melding of Taoism and Quakerism; and his doctoral dissertation brought these together with a detailed biography.

    Why was Kim so taken with Ham? He had first heard Ham speak in 1979, at one of the innumerable lectures Ham gave throughout much of his career. From that time, Kim writes, Ham “was a source of constant and lasting inspiration to me at every moment of my life . . . .” Thus this book, while a methodical piece of scholarship, is also and at heart a personal spiritual testament.

    Kim is evidently not alone in his admiration of Ham Sok Hon. The South Korean government has designated Ham as a “national cultural figure” and took formal note of the centennial of his birth in the spring of 2001. This book is also part of that centennial observance. There is a Ham Sok Hon Memorial Foundation, and – that quintessential mark of twenty-first century distinction–several pages on the World Wide Web are devoted to him and his work.

    This continuing interest in Ham is not easy to account for. Ham, notes Kim, “was a total failure in the worldly sense.” He never had a steady job for more than a few years; he wasn’t a good organizer, and did not have much in the way of a positive political program. He left his family in poverty, to be supported by his longsuffering wife.

    Furthermore, the government recognition is especially noteworthy because during later his life Ham had been imprisoned by a succession of South Korean dictators. Before that, he had been jailed by the North Korean Communists. And before that, he was locked up by Korea’s Japanese overlords.

    These imprisonments varied widely in circumstances, but had a common theme, which begins to point toward Ham’s appeal: he believed in freedom from tyranny of whatever sort; and acted on his belief. In his lifetime, he did not need to be a systematic political thinker for such a conviction to have concrete meaning, for his homeland faced a plethora of oppressors.

    First was the Japanese empire, which attempted nothing less than the obliteration of Korean identity and culture; then, after the Japanese expulsion in World War Two, Kim Il Sung installed a ruthless communist regime in Ham’s native north of the country. But when Ham, like so many others, fled to the South to escape Marxist oppression, he collided with a series of neo-fascist southern dictators, under the complaisant patronage of the United States. Waving the banner of anti-communism, these rulers’ repression scarcely knew any bounds.

    With this sad succession as both his personal and national history, it is hardly surprising that one of Ham’s major works about Korea refers to it as the “Queen of Suffering.” But the rest of the title gives us another clue to him; it is: “A Spiritual History of Korea.” One reason Ham was a “failure” in conventional political terms was because his personal concern was not with gaining worldly power, but in understanding and illuminating its spiritual and religious sources and the conflicts underlying it.

    Ham Sok Hon was, in short, a religious seeker, a student, and a teacher. The freedom he sought was only incidentally political. More basically, it was simply the necessary condition for the kind of pilgrimage toward understanding that was much of his life’s work. Yet paradoxically, in pursuit of this essentially inner freedom, and despite his lack of worldly ambitions, Ham found himself obliged to clash outwardly and repeatedly with the various political systems under which he and Korea suffered through most of his life.

    Perhaps this helps account for Ham’s appeal, not only to Kim Sung Soo but to many other Koreans: a key theme of Ham’s story as it unfolds here is that each of the different forms of despotism he faced wanted not only to control his outward behavior, but his inner life as well: the Japanese tried to erase his whole identity, along with Korean history and civilization; Kim Il Sung’s cadres imposed a rigid Stalinist cult of personality mixed with materialist dogmas; and in the South, a succession of dictators mouthed the phrases of Western constitutionalism and Christianity while censoring and repressing even the mildest forms of dissent.

    No wonder an essentially solitary spiritual pilgrimage like Ham’s, because it was carried out in public view, was repeatedly seen as posing some kind of grave political threat to these authorities. Yet while Ham was essentially a lone figure, his explorations had for many Koreans an emblematic character: in him they saw Korea struggling to regain its own identity and find its authentic voice.

    Thus the lectures he gave inspired many other dissidents who did have political skills and ambitions; the journals he published, while limited in circulation and often suppressed, shaped the thinking of many who held more formal positions in universities and the press. (One of the dissidents he affected was Kim Dae Jung, who became President of South Korea in 1998 after winning the first free election there. This change of government no doubt has much to do with the official attention now being given to Ham’s life.)

    The course of Ham’s spiritual path is both idiosyncratic and in some sense typical. He was raised with considerable Christian influence at a time when Western missionaries were seen as a progressive alternative to Japanese imperialism. He later studied in Japan, preparing to become a teacher back home. But both his theology and his career plans went awry as he moved away from missionary orthodoxy toward something called the “Non-Church” movement, and soon the school he ran was shut down by the Japanese. Thereafter he studied, wrote, lectured, and repeatedly protested for more freedom for himself and the Korean people.

    Kim Sung Soo does an admirable job of filling in the cultural and spiritual context in which Ham Sok Hon lived and worked. Korea was (and apparently is) a unique religious locale in Asia, where Protestant missionaries had unprecedented success. Yet the influence of an ancient, highly stratified and patriarchal version of Confucianism was also pervasive and, Kim argues, managed to absorb much of Korean Christianity into its authoritarian ethos.

    But alongside these strains there persisted a counterstream of Taoism, with an emphasis on individuality which made room for much more individual liberty and seeking. Ham combined study of this Taoist stream with both Christianity and the Hindu thought which Gandhi drew on for his struggle in India. Indeed, Ham translated the Bhagavad-Gita into Korean, and published a biography of Gandhi as well.

    With these influences, if Ham were American or British his turning to Quakerism would be pretty easy to understand. But the actual encounter came under very different circumstances. In 1960, by Ham’s own testimony, he “committed a sin which was totally indefensible.” Although no details are disclosed here, this infraction was evidently a love affair. Kim interviewed the woman in question, who soon afterward left Korea for the U.S., where she remained until after Ham’s death. The liaison evidently caused a scandal and many of Ham’s former students abandoned him.

    Ham wrote that he came to Friends in the aftermath of this misdeed. “It was not that I had studied about the Quakers and had decided to become one. Rather, as a man with no place to go, and as a drowning man clutching at even a piece of straw, I attended one of the [Quaker] meetings.” A small group of Koreans and Western expatriates had been holding worship in Seoul since 1958. Kim says that they “accepted Ham without condemnation as their ‘friend’ when he was longing for a friend.”

    But if a non-judgmental welcome was what first drew him to Quakers, Ham soon found theological resonance there as well. In Kim’s telling, Ham’s own religious thinking had evolved far from his early enthusiasm for missionary Christianity. His interest in Asian religions and Gandhi combined with a reaction against the way he saw the largest South Korean Christian groups being co-opted and neutralized by repressive governments. In addition, these groups were also absorbing varieties of fundamentalist theology being exported by factions within their American sponsor denominations, and Ham had no truck with such stuff. Hence he had already been pronounced a “heretic” by many of these bodies, even before his “fall” in 1960.

    Indeed, Ham was steadily becoming what American Quakers would call a “universalist” in his religious thought. As he once put it, “From the Supreme Being’s prospect there is only one way, yet from human beings’ prospect there are limitless ways. God is too big to be grasped in one religion.” Or, more personally, he compared himself to the woman at the well Jesus spoke to in John 4: “I am the Samaritan woman. I have five masters: Native religion [shamanism], Confucianism, Buddhism and the Non-Church Movement, but nothing can be master of my spirit. Now, I am a Quaker, but none will be master of my spirit.”

    Kim’s account of the evolution of Ham’s thought is full and fascinating, but difficult for a Westerner like this reviewer to evaluate fairly. In this country, we often hear the complaint that “universalist” Quakers think of religion as like a supermarket shelf, from which they pluck a can of this and a bag of that according to their changing whims.

    Whatever the truth of such jibes in this culture (not much, in my view), they are both applicable and absurd in Ham’s case: yes, he admittedly drew from a wide range of traditions; but this was hardly the result of consumerist fancies. Rather, it was the outcome of eighty years of study and struggle. Ham’s life – prison record – shows that seeking to forge a spiritual identity from the clash of cultures and faiths in his homeland was not some self-indulgent lark, but a life-and-death matter. If nothing else, this should warrant a respectful hearing of where he came out and how he got there.

    I am very grateful to Kim Sung Soo for undertaking to let American and English readers have the chance to give Ham this wider hearing. While Kim’s grasp of the vagaries of English prose is not always complete, his narrative nonetheless flows smoothly and coherently. The absence of an index is a disappointment, one of few here.

    Ham Sok Hon was a name familiar to many western Quakers of a generation older than mine; but with distance, language and time, our awareness had faded. Kim’s biography has brought Ham back to us, and to others, and we are definitely the richer for it.

NOTE: copies of this book are hard to find; check on used books sites.

A profile of Ham Sok Hon is online at: http://www.satyagrahafoundation.org/the-legacy-of-ham-sok-hon-the-korean-gandhi/

___________________________

*Ham Sok Hon: Voice of the People and Pioneer of Religious Pluralism in Twentieth Century Korea; Biography of a Korean Quaker. By Kim Sung Soo. Seoul: Samin Books, 2001. 360 pp.

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The World's Religions (Plus): Smith, Huston Amazon.com: Books

The World's Religions (Plus): Smith, Huston Amazon.com: Books

The World's Religions (Plus) Paperback – May 12, 2009

by Huston Smith  (Author)

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From the Back Cover

Huston Smith's masterpiece explores the essential elements and teachings of the world's predominant faiths, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the native traditions of Australia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.

Emphasizing the inner—rather than the institutional—dimension of these religions, Smith devotes special attention to Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Sufism, and the teachings of Jesus. He convincingly conveys the unique appeal and gifts of each of the traditions and reveals their hold on the human heart and imagination.

About the Author

Huston Smith is internationally known and revered as the premier teacher of world religions. He is the focus of a five-part PBS television series with Bill Moyers and has taught at Washington University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Syracuse University, and the University of California at Berkeley. The recipient of twelve honorary degrees, Smith's fifteen books include his bestselling The World's Religions, Why Religion Matters, and his autobiography, Tales of Wonder.

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Publisher ‏ : ‎ HarperOne; 2nd edition (May 12, 2009)

Language ‏ : ‎ English

Paperback ‏ : ‎ 448 pages

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Customer Reviews: 4.5 out of 5 stars    1,091 ratings

Huston Smith

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Biography

Huston Cummings Smith (born May 31, 1919) is among the preeminent religious studies scholars in the United States. His work, The Religions of Man (later revised and retitled The World's Religions), is a classic in the field, with over two million copies sold, and it remains a common introduction to comparative religion.

Smith was born in Soochow, China, to Methodist missionaries and spent his first 17 years there. He taught at the Universities of Colorado and Denver from 1944 to 1947, moved to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, for the next 10 years, and then served as professor of Philosophy at MIT from 1958 to 1973. While at MIT, he participated in some of the experiments with entheogens that professor Timothy Leary conducted at Harvard University. Smith 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, California, area where he is Visiting Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

During his career, Smith not only studied but also practiced Vedanta Hinduism, Zen Buddhism (under Goto Zuigan), and Sufism for over 10 years each. He is a notable autodidact.

As a young man, of his own volition after suddenly turning to mysticism, Smith set out to meet with then-famous author Gerald Heard. Heard responded to Smith's letter, invited him to 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 his 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 that 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, in an attempt to raise spiritual awareness through entheogenic plants.

He has been a friend of the XIVth Dalai Lama for more than 40 years, and has met and talked to some of the great figures of the century, from Eleanor Roosevelt to Thomas Merton.

Smith 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 five-part PBS special to Smith's life and work: The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith. Smith has also 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.

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Top reviews from the United States

Mark Canter

5.0 out of 5 stars Unsurpassed. A classic that well-deserves its high status.

Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2015

in 2009 I wrote a letter to Huston Smith telling him that in my teens I had taken a course on world religions at Boston University and the professor had used as textbook Smith’s “The Religions of Man” (now titled “The World’s Religions”). I told Smith that I had recently become an adjunct professor of world religions at FSU and that after examining a dozen textbooks I could not find one that came even close to the beauty and understanding Smith conveys in clear and eloquent prose in “The World’s Religions.” Therefore, I chose to use his book as the textbook for all my comparative religion classes. Smith wrote back that my letter had arrived on his 90th birthday and he said, "I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday present!”

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Jeremy David Stevens

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Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2018

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“Six aspects of religion surface so regularly as to suggest that their seeds are in the human makeup.” (Chapter III, p. 92 50th Anniversary Edition)

I actually found that sentence buried in the chapter on Buddhism, as a short setup for a line of reasoning much less important than I thought such a statement merited. There’s so much to unpack in such a short sentence like that one that it’s hard to move past it and keep reading. An assertion like that really needs its own chapter.

So there are two elements to this statement. The first is the six aspects, and that is fairly straight forward (although the author goes on to assert that Buddhism is a rarity in that it doesn’t initially embrace such concepts).

These are the six aspects of religion that surface regularly, according to Huston Smith:

Authority

Ritual

Speculation

Tradition

Grace

Mystery

I’ll accept the six aspects as they are so we can move to the second element of the assertion. These six key aspects “surface so regularly as to suggest that their seeds are in the human makeup.” This second element is where it really gets interesting for me. In other words, the implication is that we come right out of the package psychologically pre-programmed with these archetypal ideas. This a concept that I’ve been looking into for a number of months now while reading Carl Jung and Jordan B. Peterson and I’ve come to accept it as the truth. In fact, Huston Smith cites Jung several times throughout the book, so it’s not surprising that he’d been reading some of Jung’s work to come to a conclusion like that.

Look for other flashes of brilliance like that throughout the book.

Just in case you read this in hopes of an actual book review, I guess I can do that, too:

The World’s Religions by Huston Smith is considered a classic in the genre by many. It’s such a respected book that it’s often used as a university textbook in World Religion classes. But this book does more than present the history and spirit of the major religions as you might expect from the title and some of the reviews. There are some very sophisticated and thoughtful parts of the book, too.

I want to quickly address a criticism I’ve seen while looking through reviews: If you have a version that contains pictures and only a couple hundred pages, you have the abridged, illustrated version instead of the full book. I haven’t seen inside of that one but no wonder you have complaints about the sections being too brief. Do yourself a favor and go buy the genuine article. It’s over four-hundred pages and it’s quite thorough.

Final say: Overall, I don’t see how you could pass on this book if you’re the least bit interested in religion or philosophy.

RIP Huston Smith

Born: May 31, 1919

Died: December 30, 2016

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Chris

3.0 out of 5 stars Beware of possible fakes?

Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2019

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I received a copy from Amazon directly with really poor print quality. Strange issue. The cover was blurry, and the inside text was as well. I also realized once I grabbed another copy locally and looked at lots of copys, the cover's words "The World's Religions" is supposed to be raised / embossed. Mine was totally flat.

The book itself (I returned the Amazon copy) is fantastic though, so not sure if to give 1 or 5 stars.

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Ana Muñoz

1.0 out of 5 stars An Altered Perspective on Religion

Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2020

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This man like to hear the sound of his own voice. But I would not be writing to say DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK if you want a HISTORICALLY ACCURATE view on religion. Smith says it right in the beginning of the book that this is HIS TAKE ON RELIGION.

Basically, he strips any accuracy and preciseness of the history of all the religions in this book and gives you a flowery, mind-numbing version of him waxing poetic about how great they are. He skims over any details and conflicts that may have helped to shape this religion, if not neglecting them at all.

Again, DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK IF YOU WANT AN UNADULTERATED, UNFILTERED, AND ACCURATE BOOK ON RELIGION.

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MSD

5.0 out of 5 stars Moving and insightful

Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2019

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I bought this as a textbook (I'm a professor) but reread it throughout the semester to refresh my memory and get excited to teach each new chapter. It's not a traditional textbook, so students get frustrated with not being able to find a tidy list of facts. However, Smith tries to convey what is truly meaningful and beautiful about each religion, and I think he does a good job of it. And I think that's more important than memorizing history or doctrinal details.

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John

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book but why no audiobook

Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2019

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I love the book, but I struggle why this has not even been turned into an audio book. There is an audiobook that is similar in nature, but it does not do the justice that is found in this book. With having a 2 hour drive to work each day, this would be a blessing to have for this book. I have found myself coming back to this book over and over again as it has so much in it. Just wish it would be offered in an audio book format.

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NavyMom

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazingly detailed explanation of many world religions

Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2018

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This book was exactly what I was looking for. Mr. Smith doesn't just cover the basics and move on. He goes into great depth about each religion discussed. I am leading a study group on world religions, and this book is so full of information I don't have time to use it all. Well written and very readable.

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Amazon Customer

2.0 out of 5 stars Informative but....

Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2020

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This book is very informative but wordy as hell. I swear I've never disliked a person by just reading a book. It's like Smith decided to find the most complicated words in the world and combine them with unnecessary long dry passages about things that could have been said in a simple sentence. I love religious studies, yet this book make me want to jump off a cliff and meet my maker for real. This book tops the list of the worst college textbooks I've ever had the displeasure of meeting. This book should have its own SparkNotes page!!... Save yourself the headache and read Van Voorst instead.

One person found this helpful

Kindle Customer

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect For My Philospher Hubby

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 30, 2020

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My deep thinking husband loves philosophy and is self-taught on all the greats. Slogging through Nietzsche and Socrates is his idea of fun. He recently shifted into religions and has really been enjoying studying Asian and Indian religions. I bought him this book as a surprise present to give him more material to chew on. As I hoped, he LOVES it and has barely been able to put it down since I gave it to him a couple of days ago. Instead of giving a history lesson on how the major world religions came to be, this author focuses on the ways various religions attempt to satisfy the longings and concerns of the human soul. I chose this book because I like the author's focus on spiritual principles. I also like the fact that, like my husband, this author seems capable of recognizing and appreciating the kernels of Divine wisdom that all religions have to offer. Once you know who God is, you are able to see Him at work everywhere instead of getting stuck in the idea that there is only one "right" religion. My husband and I have come to the conclusion that there is no perfect religion--instead, they each have their strengths and shortcomings. I really enjoy hearing my husband's summaries of what he's gleaning from this book and would highly recommend for any serious thinkers who are open to seeing God working in a "big picture" kind of way. I also really like how this author discusses some of the less common religions in the final chapter of this book--that was a very nice bonus.

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ujidweller

5.0 out of 5 stars This book contains essential knowledge for anyone involved in intercultural relations.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 18, 2019

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This book has been not just informative but very useful for negotiating past potential misunderstandings between people of different backgrounds.

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Zazoo

1.0 out of 5 stars Waste of money and time.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 9, 2020

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Not interesting, biased opinion and not appealing to read.

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Ruud Wagenaar

5.0 out of 5 stars extended but a lttle bit complex

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 3, 2013

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As technical non-native english reader I faced many new words in English and it increased my vocabulary. I like the perspective in how this book is written, it has sometimes a narrativestyle, but is also gives a thorough background on the roots of our word religions. I find it impressive how many different religions we have on our planet and on theit own they describe their own path to enlightment. A must have for your collection if you are interested in belief systems and consciousness developments of humans.

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Richard Dryden

5.0 out of 5 stars A memorable book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 19, 2015

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This is a superb book - beautifully written and informative. It is a distillation of a lifetime's exploration of the major world religions.

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Grace

Aug 08, 2012Grace rated it really liked it

Shelves: books-to-read-again

I picked up this book thinking that this would be a good refresher, after all I'm a worldly woman who knows so much about other religions! Right? Yeah, I'm embarrassed about how smug that sounds, too. After perusing (in the truly correct use of that word) its pages, I honestly cannot believe how little I knew. And to be completely honest, I am still struggling to grasp all of the information presented by Smith.

This book is amazing. Smith readily admits that his work is not comprehensive (and really, how could it be?), but what I really appreciated was how effectively he ties in the history of each religion with its spirit. He delves into the core beliefs of each major religion, beginning with Hinduism and ending with Christianity, with a chapter at the end on the primal religions.

His parting advice to us is simply to listen. That in listening we are communicating, and in communicating we are loving. It doesn't get more beautiful than that.

It took me much longer to read than I initially assumed it would, so give yourself some time. But it was totally worth it, and I will read it again. (less)

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Tim

Jul 08, 2015Tim rated it it was amazing

Shelves: religion-comparative

I hope to have time to reflect more on this one in writing. For now, a quote:

"But we also listen to the faith of others, including the secularists. We listen first because, as this book opened by noting, our times require it. The community today can be no single tradition; it is the planet. Daily the world grows smaller, leaving understanding the only place where peace can find a home. We are not prepared for the annihilation of distance that science has effected. Who today stands ready to accept the solemn equality of peoples? Who does not have to fight an unconscious tendency to equate foreign with inferior? ...Those who listen work for peace, a peace built not on ecclesiastical or political hegemonies but on understanding and mutual concern...Understanding, then, can lead to love. But the reverse is also true. Love brings understanding; the two are reciprocal. So we must listen to understand, but we must also listen to put into play the compassion that the wisdom traditions all enjoin, for it is impossible to love another without hearing that other." (390) (less)

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Paul

Dec 19, 2009Paul rated it it was ok  ·  review of another edition

Shelves: comparative-religions

No doubt a popular book in terms of numbers of copies sold. The author is a highly respected scholar on world religions who has taught at some of the most prestigious universities in America. He also grew up in China and has imbibed the rituals of most of the religions he's studied. So why the two stars:

* Smith is a pluralist. I find this position doesn't allow for the most rigorous and critical analysis of the religious positions presented.

Indeed, I find this position ironically gives the least respect to other religions. When everyone become special and unique, no one is special and unique.

* Smith barely delves into the doctrines of the world's religions, and this is what I'm interested in leaning and knowing.

This, of course, helps out with the pluralism. If we mainly look at the moral aspects of religions, well, they seem quite similar. Confucius say nice things and Jesus does nice things too. After all, WWJD, baby!

* Smith was raised a Christian (well, a moralist), but ironically he seems to know the least about Christianity.

He reads the OT prophets as proto advocates of a social gospel, and he reads the NT like a liberal protestant.

But if that weren't enough, he tries to "defend" the trinity by comparing the triune God of the Bible water's three stages. But the good doctor fails to see that this is simply the modalist heresy.

And if that weren't enough, he misquotes the Bible more than once.

* The book is depressing, but upon reflection, uplifting. One is sad for the adherents of the other religions and the constant working they do so as to "get saved" (however that is cashed out in their particular religion). How tiring. How impossible a task.

But then the Christian reflects. Christianity is based on something it claims actually happened in history. This is Jesus, the God-man, who fulfilled the demands of the law, and then took the punishment due lawbreakers, and then rose from the dead. By faith the Christian believes that these things were done for him and he simply rests and trusts in the work of another. How utterly beautiful is the gospel of Christianity to the ears of weary sinners tired of doing what Confucius say, or bending and contorting their bodies in hopes that the yogic rituals will make them ready to enter nirvana.

I would not recommend this book for anyone who wants to take a serious looks at the beliefs of the world's religions and wants to know why the adherents of those religions find those beliefs compelling and true.

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Jamie

Jan 06, 2010Jamie rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition

Huston provides a powerful punch of wonderous delight for the world's historical religions. I was left in awestuck wonder at how beautiful, pragmatic, and well thought out information that he articluates in this excellent book. This is an unbias fact base book that adhears to the positive side that religion provides (aside from the negativity that is obviously present within every religion, he bypasses that notion and delves into the heart and soul of each practice.)

I sat on my comfy sofa feeling the flecks of Eurika moments when my Westernized lacking of the Eastern religious became known to my clear concious. For example I erronously never knew that Hinduism was in actually embodiments of God (Brahmin), and never claimed to be attached to the polytheistic concept of gods. I never knew Buddhism claimed a 'non-soul' formation rather than obtaining a diety or type of heaven. Buddhism is self expansion. However my lacking of the Eastern practices which I found finally enlightened thorough Huston, the most embarassing Western religion that I found myself quite ignorant on was Islam. I thought of Islam from what I was known from the bias media, other religion's adgendas, and through a lack of educational enlightenment. Islam was the most enlightening and inspiring for me that I had to tell the world about how 'surrendering' Islam really is. Violence towards Islam coupled with Islam's faith is quite misunderstood, and completey wrong. Of course no one is discounting that there is domestic violence in Arab countries, but on the same coin there is also domestic violence towards women in America. The secret is that American's tend to 'shovel it under the rug'.

This book will provide a strong foundational backbone for anyone interested in learning about the world's religions. There is also a special chapter towards the end that talks about early man's 'primitive' or 'tribal' religions, before man became established on this earth (during prelithic and neolithic periods). This chapter alone is worth reading this book. Also on a side note, this book goes real well with Robert Van Voorst Anthology of World's Scriptures. For Huston skims over religion's doctrines and cultural rituals, where Voorst delves more into these aspects. (less)

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Nathaniel 

Jun 17, 2011Nathaniel rated it it was ok  ·  review of another edition

The seminal inaccurate "world religions" volume for the ages. While Smith's coverage of the Judeo-Christian tradition is excellent and his treatment of Islam is adequate, he has a hard time getting away from the Middle Eastern/monotheistic perspective and allows it to color his writing. Consequently this book becomes less and less accurate the farther East he gets and the more different from the Judeo-Christian tradition the religions become. His handling of Buddhism and Taoism is particularly slipshod, coming at the traditions empirically without having truly experienced them. It's possible that he's finally remedied this in the newer editions, but the 1985 printing that I read had the same glaring holes that were in the 1960's original. This book dominated Western religious studies classes for decades, but in this globalized world its time is long past. Maybe look at the chapters on Western/Middle Eastern religions, especially if you're doing research in Judeo-Christian studies and want to build on Smith's widely-recognized work. However, any other chapters in this volume are so misleading that they are worse than useless. (less)

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Paul

May 18, 2012Paul rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition

Huston Smith's "The World's Religions" is one of the most significant books I've ever read. Smith digs underneath the rituals, theology, and cold historical facts to capture why some of these major religious traditions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity, are so deeply and meaningfully profound to billions and billions of people. One may disagree about whether any of these religious faiths speak the the absolute or partial truth regarding the meaning of our existence or reality, but each faith does speak directly to our human condition and try to sustain meaning in a world that often feels cold or hostile to us. This book is not an attempt to convert, but to appreciate the richness of traditions and thought found in religions to answer the fundamental questions posed from the very depths of our lives. Using an analogy popularized by John Hick, we are all simply people blindfolded and feeling this great elephant in the room and just trying to figure out what it is. (less)

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Jennifer Olson

Dec 28, 2014Jennifer Olson rated it it was ok  ·  review of another edition

Read this for a graduate class on Religion in Education. I think a lot of professors assign this book because it's a well-known one that covers many religions. The book works great if you want to hear Huston Smith's narrative interpretation of what the world's religions are about, however it's not so great if you actually want a good overview of world religions in order to gain some basic knowledge about them.

He makes lots of awkward comparisons with Christianity and Western culture that don't make the reading more accessible, nor really do justice to the traditions he's discussing. Half the time I can't figure out what he is talking about. In the chapter on Confucianism I find the line "Someone has ventured that in a woman's certitude that she is wearing precisely the right thing for the occasion, there is a peace that religion can neither give nor take away." Huh? In the middle of a chapter on Hinduism he starts going on for several paragraphs about C.S. Lewis. Rather than actually teaching about different traditions he gets caught up in making awkward comparisons and sweeping characterizations about each one that don't do justice to their complexity.

I left this book feeling like I could have learned so much more about world religions. (less)

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Kitap

Dec 17, 2009Kitap rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition

Shelves: religion, islam, judaism, philosophy, hinduism, daoism, christianity, confucianism, favorites, buddhism

I've always found Huston Smith insightful, lucid, and fun to read, and so I chose this as one of my course textbooks (when the previous textbook came out in a new edition—for $110!). In spite of its lack of much primary source material (which Philip Novak's collection of scriptures supplements), this is an excellent introduction to the major religions of the world, "our wisdom traditions." Smith's concise chapters describe the big religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity—as well as discussing the role of religion in the 21st century and providing tips on how to approach religions and religious diversity. The illustrations are the weakest part of the book. Some are excellent, others (like the image of Mahavira in the chapter on Buddhism) are out of place, and the heavy reliance on the paintings of Marc Chagall didn't make much sense when the religions of the world afford so much imagery. (less)

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Cappy

Jul 28, 2009Cappy rated it liked it

Shelves: theology

The book is thoroughly uneven - strong at some points (Hinduism, Buddhism, articulating the merits of the world's wisdom tradtions) and weak at others (Judaism, Tribal religions, covering the nuts and bolts of the world's religions).

"As it was, the first 'draft' of my book was delivered to a television audience, and the director of the series never let me forget that audience. This is not a classroom where you have a captive audience, he kept reminding me. If you lose their attention for thirty seconds they will switch stations and you won't get them back. So make your points if you must...But illustrate them immediately, with an example, an anecdote, a fragment of poetry, something that will connect your point to things your audience can relate to." (pg. xi-xii)

"What a strange fellowship this is, the God-seekers in every land, lifting their voices in the most disparate ways imaginable to the God of all life. How does it sound from above? Like bedlam, or do the strains blend in strange, ethereal harmony? Does one faith carry the lead, or do the parts share in counterpoint and antiphony where not in full-throated chorus?" (pg. 2)

"The empowering theological and metaphysical truths of the world's religions are...inspired. Institutions - religious institutions emphatically included - are another story. Constituted as they are of people with their inbuilt frailties, institutions are built of vices as well as virtues." (pg. 5)

"Science makes major contributions to minor needs, [Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes:] was fond of saying, adding that religion, however small its successes, is at least at work on the things that matter the most." (pg. 9)

"Religion is not primarily a matter of facts; it is a matter of meanings." (pg. 10)

"If we were to take Hinduism as a whole - its vast literature, its complicated rituals, its sprawling folkways, its opulent art - and compress it into a single affirmation, we would find it saying: You can have what you want." (pg. 13)

"Though in some watered-down sense there may be a religion of self-worship, true religion begins with the quest for meaning and value beyond self-centeredness. It renounces the ego's claim to finality." (pg. 19)

"A distinctive feature of human nature is its capacity to think of something that has no limits: the infinite." (pg. 21)

"Life is so filled with disappointments that we are likely to assume they are built into the human condition." (pg. 23)

"By and large, life is powered less by reason than by emotion, and of the many emotions that crowd the human heart, the strongest is love." (pg. 32)

"Work is the staple of human life. The point is not simply that all but a few people must work to survive. Ultimately, the drive to work is psychological rather than economic. Forced to be idle, most people become irritable; forced to retire, they decline." (pg. 37)

"How long can the average mind think of one thing - one thing only, without slipping first into thinking about thinking about that thing and taking off from ther on a senseless chain of irrelavencies? About three and a half seconds, psychologists tell us." (pg. 48)

Consider Shankara's invocation of "Oh Thou, before whom all words recoil." (pg. 60)

"Most people have little idea how much they secretly bank on luck - hard luck to justify past failures, good luck to bring future successes. How many people drift through life simply waiting for the breaks." (pg. 65)

"It is no accident that the only art form India failed to produce was tragedy." (pg. 72)

Consider "[Hinduism's:] conviction that the various major religions are alternate paths to the same goal. To claim salvation as the monopoly of any one religion is like claiming that God can be found in this room but not the next, in this attire but not another." (pg. 73)

"[Buddha:] was undoubtedly one of the greatest rationalists of all times, resembling in this respect no one as much as Socrates. Every problem that came his way was subjected to cool, dispassionate analysis." (pg. 88)

"Dukkha, then, names the pain that to some degree colors all finite existence...it was used in Pali to refer to wheels whose axles were off-center...A modern metaphor might be a shopping cart that we try to steer from the wrong end." (pg. 101)

"Reason's most vociferous detractors must admit that it plays at least this much of a role in human life: Whether or not it has the power to lure, it clearly holds power of veto." (pg. 106)

"Metaphysics is unavoidable. Everyone harbors some notions about ultimate questions, and these notions affect interpretations of subsidiary issues." (pg. 113)

"Some problems are posed so clumsily by our language as to preclude solution by their very formulation." (pg. 118)

"Religions invariably split." (pg. 120)

"What is the best part of the human self, its head or its heart? A popular parlor game used to revolve around the question, 'If you had to choose, would you rather be loved or respected?'" (pg. 121)

"Though Confucius did not author Chinese culture, he was its supreme editor." (pg. 154)

"There is plenty of violence in nature, but on the whole it is between species, not within them." (pg. 161)

"Individualism and self-consciousness are contagious. Once they appear, they spread like epidemic and wildfire. Unreflective solidarity is a thing of the past." (pg. 163)

"To harp exclusively on love is to preach ends without means." (pg. 167)

"Altruism is not much engendered by exhortation." (pg. 168)

"Genius does not depend upon full, self-conscious understanding of its creations...Probably all exceptional creativity proceeds more by intuitive feel than by explicit discernment." (pg. 170)

Consider that the name Muhammad "has been born by more male children than any other in the world." (pg. 224)

"From without, the Koran is all but impenetrable. No one has ever curled up on a rainy weekend to read the Koran." (pg. 233)

"God's compassion and mercy are cited 192 times in the Koran, as against 17 references to his wrath and vengeance." (pg. 237)

"Heroism is never a mass option." (pg. 253)

"Spain and Anatolia changed hands at about the same time - Christians expelled the Moors from Spain, while Muslims conquered what is now Turkey. every Muslim was driven from Spain, put to the sword, or forced to convert, whereas the seat of the Eastern Orthodox church remains in Instanbul to this day." (pg. 256)

"Every religion at some stages in its career has been used by its professed adherents to mask aggression." (pg. 257)

"Mysticism breaks through the boundaries that protect the faith of the typical believer." (pg. 264)

"Compared with the histories of Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, and Syria, Jewish history is strictly minor league." (pg. 272)

"The word sin comes from a root meaning 'to miss the mark.'" (pg. 281)

"Nobody likes moral rules anymore than they like stop lights or 'no left turn' signs." (pg. 286)

"The Prophetic Principle can be put as follows: The prerequisite of political stability is social justice." (pg. 292)

"The idea of progress - belief that the conditions of life can improve, and that history can in this sense get somewhere - originated in the West." (pg. 296)

"The idea that a universal God decided that divine nature should be uniquely and incoparably disclosed to a single people is among the most difficult notions to take seriously in the entire study of religion." (pg. 307)

"We have heard Jesus' teachings so often that their edges have been worn smooth, dulling their subversiveness." (pg. 326)

"Doctrins...seem tedious if not incredible and at times annoying." (pg. 339)

"Every people, oursleves not excepted, needs to think well of its origins; it is part of having a healthy self-image." (pg. 381)

"The worthful aspects of reality - its values, meaning and purpose - slip through the devices of science in the way that the sea slips through the nets of fishermen." (pg. 386) (less)

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Ming Wei

Dec 05, 2018Ming Wei rated it really liked it  ·  review of another edition

Shelves: read-religion-related-books

A very interesting book, from this book I learnt many things about some religions that I did not know, worth a read if you like religion related theme books. Would be an excellent choice for students at College or University for study reasons.

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Joseph Schrock

May 24, 2018Joseph Schrock rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition

I have found “The World’s Religions” by Huston Smith to be a worthwhile read. The book is highly informative about the greatly diverse religious beliefs, values, and traditions among the world’s great and not-so-great religions. I found it to be a highly engaging experience to read about the diverse ways in which human civilizations have, throughout the centuries and millennia of human history, expressed their desires to commune with the Spiritual Realm – a Realm often referred to as God. I learned a lot from reading this book, but I believe that the greatest benefit for me was the stark realization of how very different cultures can arrive at spiritual and moral values and philosophies. Not only are there awesomely great diversities within respective religions, but even more pronounced are some of the utterly different ways that the world’s religions can instruct their adherents to worship or serve the Divine.

Huston Smith has performed a valuable service in his in-depth treatments of the numerous diverse religions on our planet. Jews differ from Christians, Hindus greatly differ from both Jews and Christians, Muslims have their convictions that extend beyond the boundaries of the other Abrahamic religions, and the Buddhists, Taoists, and those of the Shinto faith subscribe to vastly different concepts of the Divine than do the Western religions.

My reading of Smith’s book has encouraged me to be very disinclined to denounce those of religions that contrast with my own traditions. Rather, an attitude of openness can be fostered and encouraged by reading such an unbiased and objectively written work. I would recommend “The World’s Religions” to anyone who believes that religion speaks powerfully to the human spirit and can help guide us toward harmony with Ultimate Reality.

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James

Dec 30, 2011James rated it liked it  ·  review of another edition

My rating should really be split into two: 5/5 for the art and 2/5 for the written content. The photographs and artworks in The Illustrated World's Religions are gorgeous, and highly illustrative of the various faiths in question. But the text is riddled with sweeping generalities. Peoples with highly different faiths and worldviews are lumped together: the final chapter, "The Primal Religions", includes Australian Aborigines, Native Americans, and various peoples of Africa and New Guinea as all constituting some amorphous religious blob, and even Jainism, a completely distinct religion, is added without clarity to the Hinduism section. The diversity present within numerous religious groups is entirely glossed over. While many of the examples are true, they do not have strong subtlety in dealing with each faith. Yet, the text does do a good job in situating the art within an appropriate religious and historical context.

All in all, a good coffee table book, if the reader considers the text as a complimentary addition to the art and not vice-versa. (less)

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Qt

Nov 15, 2007Qt rated it really liked it  ·  review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction

A very nicely-put-together book, this consists of chapters written by various authors on different facets of religion: pilgrimages, prayers, modern directions of the church, etc. My favorite part was the photos, which were of National Geographic-type quality and showed people performing various religious activities, as well as some beautiful shots of temples, churches, and scenery.

While not really something I would ordinarily just pick up to read, it was a very easy-reading book--very interesting, beautifully put together, and quite informative. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in an introduction to different religions (the chart outlining the different facets of Christianity is particularly useful!), or anyone wanting to read some religious-topic essays illustrated by beautiful photographs. (less)

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Brandon

Jun 20, 2011Brandon rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition

Shelves: owned-books, philosophy

The World's Religions is one of the most insightful introductory texts to the distinct religions in the world one will discover. It was through this book that allows me to give a one-word definition for each of the definitions; for without them I will perhaps will not remember the words, the brilliance, and social implications Smith brought into an extremely well-written eulogy of the world's religions. Whilst I continue to remain an agnostic atheist, I will have had the opportunity to qualify my own existence further just by learning more about the populations that populate the planet.

Primal Religions = First

Hinduism = Unison

Buddhism = Enlightenment

Confucianism = Living

Taoism = Flow

Islam = Surrender

Judaism = Meaning

Christianity = Rest

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Eric

Jul 01, 2009Eric rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition

Shelves: sprituality

I read this book for a World Religions class which was actually the intro class, but I took it at the end :) I didn't expect much from a 101 class, but this book really grabbed me. As Smith says in the beginning, 'There are plenty of sources dealing with the negative aspects of religions and religious strife over the years. This book focuses on the positive aspects, the ideal each religion is striving for.'

It really opened up new worlds to me, and it was a breath of fresh air to have Christianity at the end; it allowed you to see it from a broader perspective. And the photos speak as much as the words, giving you a sense of the people who practice, if only a condensed view. (less)

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Drew

Dec 26, 2016Drew rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition

Brilliant! Huston Smith, a Christian, is a child of missionaries who has lived in many parts of the world. He has taught comparative religion courses for many years. He dedicates a chapter in this book to each of the world's major religions. He deals with each religion sensitively, in depth, with generosity and with impressive insight. He points out, quoting Justice Holmes, that science makes major contributions to minor needs and that religion, however small its successes, is at least at work on the things that matter most. My world view has been broadened as a result of reading this book. (less)

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Madhuri

Apr 23, 2020Madhuri rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition

Shelves: religion, non-fiction

Reading this book was an education of the most wonderful kind. I have been trying to make sense of religion and overcoming my perception of it as merely an elaborate system of rituals. In this book I have encountered much wisdom, even the ability to see the value in the rituals and the myths. It is easier for me to recognise that my temperament was not suitable to the tradition of devotion which I assumed to be the only form of religion. It is important for me to reflect and to experiment, and it is heartening to know that there is a path to religion through that too.

I am sure I will keep coming back to this book as a guide. (less)

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Megan

Feb 21, 2009Megan rated it really liked it  ·  review of another edition

Uh, well, I kinda read this one. :) It was more dense than I am used to, it took me a long time to read and I couldn't renew it anymore at the library so I had to take it back before I finished it. I got about a 1/3 to 1/2 through it and I thought it was excellent. As one critic said, it really captures the "spirit" of major religions instead of focusing on dogma or traditions. I am considering purchasing so I can finish it and have it as a reference book. ...more

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Patrick

Sep 19, 2011Patrick rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I love this book b/c it shows religious tradition at its essence.

Judaism - The first revolutionary monotheistic religion that centers on one monotheistic God in which the whole life of a people as well as of an individual focuses on that God. I like how morality is seen as away to keep social cohesion. There are a lot of modern building blocks of society that springs from its creation:

1)Guilt - If the world created by God is good and everything in it is good, then the bad is purely a human creation.

2)individual self-empowerment = if things are bad b/c of human deeds, then man can change his work so things can be good for himself and his people

3)Private property and Capitalism = if God created things that are good and charged men as having dominion over it, then it is only natural that man would want the good stuff that God created

4)Individual choice in creation of ones life - man is a demigod

5)social justice and the rule of law = prophets were ordinary men who told the kings that they were not being loyal to YHWH and thus would be punished; thereby giving credence that no one was above God's law. Also, because Jews can change their circumstances then they have the responsibility to make society better.

6)YHWH was the first God who cares for his people and since it is one God, their loyalties are not divided

7)Moses/Exodus/10 commandments is important to the Jewish faith because it is when God gave laws to the Jewish people and its creation as a state of Israel. The is the reason it is so hard for orthodox Jews to give up the idea of Israel because the founding of its state in exile was also the founding of its people as well as its religion. Apparently before this point, there was no Israel. Jewish people believed that God's grace was shown to them by "giving" them the land of Israel and thus are God's chosen people. But in order for them to keep God's grace, they have to remain faithful to God's commandments\

8)Incidentally, the fact that Jews were not allowed to own land combined with the study and debate of Rabbinic tradition made the Jews uniquely situated through 2000 years of natural selection to take advantage of today's knowledge economy. Also, the idea of the Kibbutzim in which people toil with their hands is a direct response to Jews being forbid to own lands in Europe as well as the utopian ideal of socialism in which everyone is one in the community.

9) Another reason that it is hard for orthodox Jewish settlers to sacrifice all of Israel is the idea that the Messiah coming that will not only restore the state of Israel in its entirety but also will bring law and order to the whole world through a unified Israel. Thus, Zionism is the outgrowth of belief in the Messianic age in which the political and the spiritual mold together in creating the perfect Israel.

10) Ritual: Catholics get this from the Jews are idea the ritual is important in our religious ceremonies. Ritual molds the profane with the mundane together that is the spirit of God is suffused in our daily lives. Unlike Catholicism, Judaism's rituals the suffuses itself in holiness in their daily lives is so linked to their history thus making historical Israel basically indistinguishable from the holiness of Israel as a people. Further making it difficult for orthodox settlers to give up the land that God has given them by Divine right.

Islam - all fundamentalist from every religion should convert to Islam if they want to live according to the literal word of God. Islam itself means one's life surrender to God. Muslim believe that the Koran is the direct word of God just as Christian's believe that Jesus is God's word made flesh. Thus, fundamentalist's usually do not have room for any interpretation because the Koran is very doctrinary to enforce how Muslim should behave toward God and historical context is only incidental to the main purpose of the Koran which is to organize Muslims toward God. In the context of a chaotic world in which there was no morality and no laws, one understands how Muhammed was able to convince Arabian people that the Koran which organized the world around God's supreme word. Also Islamic fundamentalist also have a hard time separating church from state because their prophet brought order politically in a time of chaos by marrying the church with the state in Medina. What was once a strength of Islam its immutability during a time of chaos is now its greatest weakness b/c it cannot adapt to a world that is constantly changing. Apparently, the Koran is meant to be spoken in Arabic because in its spoken form it is so melodious that is it though the greatest poet have come down to speak it. It is like my preference for melody over the lyrical importance of a song.

Knowing this, how does one ask Muslim to focus on the Koranic introspective version (Sufism) instead of its socio-political bent. Obviously, there are countries (Turkey and perhaps Indonesia) that has married modernity and Islam. Perhaps this is because they are not Arab. I think this is the reason m.c. democracy in the middle east is a top priority b/c it is only through this means that we can see of our civilizations can coexist.

Muhammed to me seems to be an enlightened ruler who was needed during an age of lawlessness but that age is not this age. Also, Muhammed seems to be a person who goes into trances like other mystics of the middle age. The problem with Muhammad and Islam is not what Muhammad did during his age but the persistent belief of what his social prescription for his age works today. In fact, I think Muhammad was an enlightened ruler for his age, but does the way he did things which was enlightened by 7th century standards the way Muslim should do things now a 1,500 years later?

The good thing about Islam is that they are concerned with social justice issues too, just like Christians. But like Judaism, I am afraid their social justice issues are highly tribal and linked to their own respective religions.

Basic beliefs of Muslims:

God is not a God of love but a God of fear in his awesome being. Since Muslims are continuously conscious of the Judgement Day, they have to act righteously continuously in accordance to the Koran. There way of thinking goes like this the Fear in God leads one to surrender to his will and thus do the right thing constantly which leads to peace in oneself by knowing you are doing God's will which leads to joy. Thus, I believe Islam is the institutionalization of Christian fundamentalist conversion experience via explicit laws laid out in the Koran.

The one thing that I agree and I like about Islamic religion is its total surrender to God and the fact that it challenges its adherents towards charity. The main thing that I disagree with Islam is the seeming compulsion of these acts in the form of Islamic law.

Islamic law

1) Economics - it does not forbid capitalism but it states that people with money should give to people who do not have anything thereby having a redistribution of wealth

2)Issue of women - In Islam, marriage is the most sacred thing and philanderers are to be stoned. I guess for the time, the innovative thing is men had to take care of the women they slept with and raise their children

3)Islam is adamant on its desire for racial equality as seen in its enforcement of Mecca in which social status disappears in the eyes of God and people from all over the world commune together in Mecca regardless of nationality

4)Use of Force - jihad (the lesser) is only to be used in self-defense or to right a wrong. The problem of course is since there is a loop-hole in the Koran for war, people with political motives have used a Koranic defensive posture for terrorist bombings. This inicidentally goes against the Islamic notion that God created human beings an He sees them as good.

5) Muhammad promoted religious tolerance in his kingdom so Islamic countries should likewise respect other religions.

In the study of Islam vs. Judaism one sees why there is such a battle for Israel. Whereas Islam marries religion and the state and sees itself as God's word that should be followed on earth and thus supreme to other religions, Judaism sees Israel as part of historical Israel which was promised by God through eternity to his chosen people, the Jews. Religion should really be left out of politics when one deals with the middle east because faith in any religion is uncompromising. The reason why Islam has a hard time adapting to the world is that the Koran is an all encompassing book that institutionalize how people should behave and have faith.

I am convinced if we could get most Muslim to practice Sufism, there would be know Islam/Christian aggression. This is why the Sufi mosque close to 9/11 is a welcome one being that it is the unifying force of Islam. But seeing that Sufism seeks to unify with God and thus is esoteric and take the laws in the Koran as allegorical whereas most Muslims believe that what the Koran writes is the law that God wants Muslims to follow, I do not see mass conversion to Sufism. Maybe a better strategy is west to play up the focus of Islam to the Greater Jihad in each individual as oppose to enforcing it to general society.

CHRISTIANITY:

Like Judaism, the historical Jesus seems insignificant. After all, he came from a Jewish tribe which is one of thousands other principalities under Rome and his ministry itself only lasted 1 to 3 years. How did one man from a boonies tribe with a short ministry so effect the world that a third of the worlds population worships him now. The answer of course is that he was a social prophet who was sent to heal humanity.

Apparently Jesus and the Pharisees were closest to one another in terms of how they saw God with the difference being that Jesus emphasized total compassion toward other people whereas the Pharisees emphasized following the letter of the law above all else. Whereas Orthodox Jews and Islam emphasize written laws as a path to God, Jesus emphasized principles that can be expressed in many different ways.

I think the main reason that the Western world took to democracy and individual liberty as well as it has is because of its Christian outlook. Jesus himself questioned the utility of following the Mosiac laws and the prevailing social convention of his day when it did not impact people and make them closer to God. From his example, we get the fact that men through grass roots democracy can change his social order as well as critical thinking skills that question systems that may have worked ones but no longer work now. Unlike Islam in which its adherent has to conform to it, Christianity does mold into peoples lives because it seeks to change a person from the inside out and leaves his cultural outlook in tact.

The reason Christians think Jesus is God b/c:

1) He did good work without seeking fame for them or monetary compensation

2)His wisdom through what he says is legendary and by speaking in parables he used metaphor and peoples imagination to convey his message with central theme being God loves us unconditionally and that love in turn will naturally be shared to all. The use of engaging in imagination favors innovators and creative types which is in stark contrast to main stream Islam and Orthodox Jews with their countless laws they have to adhere to.

3)He lived with total integrity and thus hated hypocrisy as the chief sin

Gospel: What separates Christianity from other religions is the fact that its members experience the fire of the Holy Spirit that brought with it Christian Love that God gives to us and the fact that we want to share this Love with others. It was this value of feeling God's presence in our lives through his Divine Love that displaced the feelings of fear, guilt for not living up to ones potential, and disregard for the self in favor for the all-encompassing Love that made mass conversion possible and attracted people to the early church. Through the principle of Christian Love, a feeling of common discipleship that disregard status and feeling of inner peace that found expression in exuberant joy.

Also unlike Islam, the conversion experience is highly individualized instead of institutionalized. Thus, this individualization and the sense of the mystical body of Christ that needs to be expressed differently in order to come into the same goal is in direct contradiction of the Islamic way of top-down submission to the will of Allah via the Islamic law explicitly stated in the Koran.

Christian theology sprung from from religious experience and tried to explain the what people were experiencing. The three cornerstones of this theology is: 1) Incarnation - Jesus is a full man and full God 2) Atonement - Jesus died for our sins (separation away from God) so that we can be reconciled with him 3) Trinity - God's love extends to three beings and by extension us the mystical body of God. So what this all means is that God is a continuum that can extend to us if we fervently have faith in him and do his will on earth

Christian Denomination

1) Roman Catholicism - teaches that the Church concentrated on the Pope is the final authority in matters of faith and morality and that the sacraments are the way for us to live the Christian life by infusing the Divines presence in our daily lives. The most pressing of this example is the Mass and the communing of God's presence on earth in the form of the Holy Eucharist

2) Eastern Orthodox - is similar to Catholicism in its sacrament but teaches that corporate body of the Church is the final authority of faith and morality as present in the ecclesiastical councils of Bishops. It teaches that all its members has direct responsibility to the Church which includes electing its clergy and thus everyone needs to keep the other in line. Thus, unlike Catholicism, everyone is responsible for the Churches well-being and unlike Protestantism everyone is solidly behind the Orthodox faith. Also, the orthodox church encourages everyone to be a mystic in that they want their congregation to be united with Christ

3) Protestantism

a) Justification by Faith - The starting point for all Christians is faith to Jesus Christ and Christian Love and through this faith meaning is infused into the Sacraments, Creeds, and good works. Without this faith and belief the sacraments, creeds, and good works are meaningless.

b)Protestant principle- against idolatry that is nothing on earth is infallible since it is touched by human hands thus people should always question earthly power ---> gives rise to critical thinking skills---> diversity of thought---> diversity of action---> societal checks and balances via rejection of absolutes ---> rise of Western Power

i) protestant can succumb to biblotry - they think that the Bible is the unerring Word of God when it is supposed to be only His medium in communicating his will on Earth----so the Bible is should not be seen as Dogmatic rather it should be used as a medium.... Incidentally, I think it is protestantism insistence on reading the Bible for oneself that gave rise to global literacy

ii) inerrant works of the Holy Spirit through man

BUDDHISM:

I see the Buddhist philosophy as pre-christian addendum to Christianity. I think the Buddha himself was the first famous pre-Christian mystic saint in that he preached and practice Christian Love.

The reason I think Buddhist philosophy is compatible with Christianity is the way the Buddha lived out his life with Christian Love and total integrity just like Jesus. Imagine trying to explain Christian Love suffused with the power of the Holy Spirit 500 years before Christ using language of the pervading concept of religion (Hinduism) so people who want to follow enlightenment can understand what you are teaching. I think this is the reason he was so circumvect in his teaching because He was trying to explain an phenomenon in which the words have not been created yet. To Buddha, Nirvana is dissolving of self into the Oneness of the Divine (Christian concept of heaven on earth) and thus cease to exist as an individual but instead he started to do God's will and thus became an extension of God himself (Pauline Christian mystical body of God).

Like Jesus, Buddha hated social conventions that separated people from each other and he rejected religious authorities of his day for preaching spirituality that is devoid of meaning. After leading a life of pleasure in the world, the Buddha sought to experience enlightenment apart from the world. Buddhism rose as a rejection of the meaningless religion of his day and preached the enlightenment (Christian Love) can be attained by anyone who seeks it without any preconditions. Like him, enlightenment must be experienced by the seeker.

BUDDHIST TEACHINGS:

1) Once a person focuses solely on material things of this world outside his basic comforts (middle way or Christian simplicity), he is doomed to disappointment and suffering

2) Suffering is caused by selfish desire that attaches us to the material world

3) The only way out of this suffering is to focus on being selfless and to think of how our actions will effect the universe

4) The way out of selfishness into universal thinking is through the 8th fold path which is to live with total integrity to being good in ones mind, heart, soul, and actions.

a)One needs to know why one is seeking enlightenment

b)One needs to know that he wants to seek enlightenment in his heart---> so one can have persistence towards it

c) right speech - since speech shows one's character so one has to be aware of what one is speaking and gradually focus on saying the right thing

d) right conduct - one's actions need to be good and pure

e) right livelihood - one needs to do something that is consistent with one's good character

f) right effort - one has to have the will to live the Buddhist way

g) right mindfulness - self-awareness in what one is thinking good and bad and gradually change it to focus on the good

h) right concentration - meditation toward enlightenment is the only way to bring it

Buddhist sects: Theravada vs Mahayana

Theravada rightly believes that Buddha was a saint who taught how one can achieve enlightenment (heaven on earth) and only those who become compenlative monks can achieve similar enlightenment

Mahayana sect focus on Buddha's being not his teaching in that Buddhist should be compassionate since the Buddha himself was compassionate. Since this sect is awed by the Buddha's compassion (Christian Love) they mistakenly assume that he was the messiah.

Mahayana sect:

1) Pure Land sect believes that only through faith alone of the Divine does one reach Nirvana

2) Zen Buddhism - the use of words that expresses scripture or creeds are imperfect so they prefer to silently meditate, answer difficult illogical questions in order to banish the logical mind and thus achieve Satori. One they achieve Satori they must live their lives as though the infinite has come down to the finite plain. A person is said to achieve Satori when he sees that absolute beauty of life, have a dispassionate view of the world so compassion flows out from his very being b/c everything and himself are unified, and they do everything with meaning as though the infinite is present in every mundane task (Therese of Lisieux).

Tibetan Buddhism focuses on Tantra interconnectedness through movt via Mantras(words), Mudras(movt.), Mandalas(symbolism) in order to attain Nirvana now. Dalai Lama is the bodhavista is the being that shows it is possible to attain enlightenment now.

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Jared Woods

Jul 20, 2020Jared Woods rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition

I don't know what happened over the last five years but my interest in religion has unceasingly grown until it sprouted legs. It then proceeded to trip me up and stomp on my skull causing my obsession gland to explode onto my carpet and now it's all I think about. When I read another sacred text or grasp the innards of a new belief system, I feel myself level-up, earning a badge of historical understanding within long developed paths of spiritual access. My enthusiasm has sunk so far inward that I've already founded my own religion, Janthopoyism, which I consider to be the central point where the collective holy worship can function in unity with the universal sciences. Look us up!

But just because I've located solace in my personal conclusions, this does not mean that my hunger has been muffled. Hence why I recently determined that I needed a book akin to a fat religious cake with hefty slices representing multiple faiths, allowing me to digest various divine outlooks in the shortest timeframe possible. Moments later, this publication came roaring down the pipeline, winning first place in my attention race, two-million sold, lathered in accolades, ordering me to order it immediately. Ok! I ordered it! I read it! I'm here!

The World's Religions focuses primarily on seven of the biggest names: Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity (with a small section devoted to primal religions too). Why Sikhism was hardly discussed and why Jainism was excluded (to mention only a few) baffles me but never mind. Because what was covered was done so thoroughly, churned out from a uniquely rich perspective, leaning into the spiritual enlightenment of these beliefs rather than wasting time analysing the oft-misguided organisations that were built around them. I eagerly learned something new on every page and was embarrassed at how incorrect I was about certain previous judgments, ideas that once appeared absurd to me now making total sense. On the other side of this, however, were those powerful concepts I comprehended from my solar plexus outwards but never had the vocabulary to connect them to my head. This book poured the cement of knowledge into my brain and smoothed out the crevices, reinforcing what it is that I love so dear about religion and what it is that so many fail to see.

Religion is heartbreakingly misunderstood. It's not as much of a blind faith as people often assume it is, but rather, complex theories set forth by some of the greatest philosophers that ever existed then debated for thousands of years by millions of reflective thoughts further. Every religion is essentially good if you concentrate on the words of their prophets and/or earliest teachings, promoting love and unity, moral progression and a quest to encounter perfection. What's more, plenty of souls have pursued these doctrines and, no matter the denomination, have achieved profound spiritual breakthroughs. They have deconstructed the universe often using logical measurements then uniting their vibrations with the inner-workings of this infinite divinity, an achievement which would be difficult to attain without these guidances. And I can't think of anything more beautiful or more important than this. Sadly, the bigger a doctrine becomes and the longer it exists for, the easier it splits and the greater the temptation is for a select few individuals to exploit the name for a disguised ulterior chase of power. It's such a shame that these ugly yet rare practices have turned so many minds away from core messages that could soothe their lives with an aura of peace. To write religion off is nothing but a disservice to yourself but, whatever, moving on.

When considering such a celebrated topic, well-researched content is imperative but this alone would be useless if the voice did not know how to handle the message. And it is here that you learn why this specific publication is as revered as it is. Huston Smith harnesses an undeniable adoration for the subject matter which he sets forth with poetic flair, utilising descriptive language which (truth be told) may have benefited from simpler deliveries and shorter sentences. However, it is this vibrancy that moulds an otherwise intricate and testing topic into a bright and exciting experience. His intellect and expertise ooze through his impassioned words as if the paper had pores and, what's more, he really gets it. Each religion is articulated with respect, treating their designated slots as if this belief is the correct one, always rational and fair, never succumbing to bias, leaving me with no idea which faith this man even subscribed to (if any). He did an impressively meticulous job here and I was in awe every step of the way, grateful for the miniature dollop of enlightenment that inevitably comes with examining material like this. Without fail, my mood forever elated during these reading sessions, at times curiously so. Simply put, this was the right book. I don’t know what I was expecting but I got everything.

I closed this cover more confident than ever that I am on the correct path of discovery. I think specialising in one religion is where the danger lies but by dedicating yourself to all of them, you start to piece together a monumental picture of collaborated thought. My mind and spirit have been fed, enriched from these seven important timelines of metaphysical hypothesis and I feel blessed by a soft underlying sensation of wellbeing. It's strange but I truly believe that studying religious principles reveals to you more about yourself than anything else, and the deeper I explore these ideas the calmer my state of person becomes. I am thankful for this book's significant role on my exciting journey and I simply couldn't score it any less than perfect for what it is. I genuinely cannot fault Huston's work and would recommend it immediately to anybody with similar pursuits. (less)

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Kate Nos

Apr 14, 2021Kate Nos rated it did not like it  ·  review of another edition

I stopped on the first chapter because of inaccurate informations about Hinduism. Coming from European deeply catholic country I wanted to learn about other religions, yet I am also lucky to have a husband raised in a Hindu Brahmin house that can check the accuracy of what the author is saying.

Even when the book is trying to go to the source of the information talking about sanskrit word artha, the translation is wrong. The author is referring to it as a "things, objects, worldly success", when it simply stands for "meaning". This changes a lot in what he is trying to say.

From other reviews I can see that book is ok if you want to learn more about western religions, but from perspective of a person reading this book while sitting at my Indian in laws' couch I can say that the Hinduism chapter has very little to do with the reality. (less)

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Debra Leigh

Jun 18, 2018Debra Leigh rated it it was amazing  ·  review of another edition

One of the earlier editions of this book was my first introduction into the subject of world religions -- that was many decades ago now, and the book remains on my shelf. I am a huge fan of the scholarship and work of Huston Smith -- both as an academic and as a public intellectual. He brought this topic into the public awareness of Americans by popularizing the topic, offering lectures beyond the college campus, providing shows on PBS. His was a very open-minded and open-hearted approach to the study and the understanding of the world's wisdom traditions -- a term he prefers because it encompasses more than the word "religion" -- and I would say that every one should have a copy of this book of their shelves, as a primer to understand the spiritual practices of the world's people. (less)

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