As a student, Huston Smith used to wake up, bolt upright, hands outstretched, declaring in a loud voice, “Good!" He maintained this grateful, wondering attitude through a long, inwardly and outwardly, adventurous life told with aplomb here, though thankfully, for Kendra, his partner for more than 60 years, he had surrendered this particular waking practice by the time they met!
Nevertheless, it was practice that was at the heart of Smith's sustained, lifelong exploration of the religions of humankind. His book, 'The World's Religions' sold in its millions and he was an early adopter of television as a medium of communication. Though thought of as a religious scholar, Smith preferred to describe himself as a 'religious communicator'. He would immerse himself in a tradition, practice it himself, to the extent permitted, listen carefully and attentively to its wider practitioners, and befriend them in meaningful, engaged dialogue.
Born the son of Christian missionaries in China, and though never abandoning his primary Christian faith and orientation, Smith remarkably progressed through serious, decade long engagements with Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, gleaning insight, being challenged and challenging, able to give accessible, experientially based accounts of their fundamentals; and, in a way, as he acknowledged, that put their best foot forward into the wider world. He was not blind to religions' multiple, often institutional failings, and sought to correct them but was essentially in love with the magic of a divinely gifted world which these traditions at their best sought to navigate and provide inspiration and healing to their human (and other) membership.
That other membership became important to Smith when he realized after the first edition of The World's Religions was published (then titled the Religions of Man) that he had managed to exclude ''primordial traditions" and their enfolded relationship with the natural world of other persons/beings, so, in an act of correction and contrition, he embarked on a series of engagements with indigenous traditions especially in Australia and North America. Here too, not content with reading or outward observation, where possible he shared peoples' places and practices, exhibiting a rare and compelling gift for friendship. He writes movingly of being excluded, he thought wholly rightly, from a Native American ceremony, where his indigenous interlocutor tells him that they know he is ''on their side" but certain things must remain mysteries to the outside world.
Not content, however, with exploring religious traditions, Smith's capacious mind absorbed science (he taught at MIT, not wholly happily, for over a decade) and explored entheogens or psychedelics. He was a friend of Aldous Huxley, who introduced Smith to Timothy Leary and Richard Allport (Ram Dass); and, he took his first dose of LSD with the former in his kitchen! He wrote about his experiences extensively, with sober enthusiasm, and successfully campaigned to legalize peyote use within the Native American Church. In reading, you often wonder where all his extraordinary energy came from!
Though lived in wonder, it was not a life lived without suffering endured and negotiated. One of his daughters dies of cancer, in excruciating pain, but thinking serenely of the sea. One of his granddaughters, their mother's only daughter, was murdered at sea in circumstances still unexplained, her body never found. He writes movingly of his family and what these tragedies meant to him and how they came to be seen within his wider faith.
Wide faith might be a good summary - we are gifted into being by the divine, to good purpose, that we live out to the best of our abilities, shared with others, in service with others. We may find ourselves in a loving relationship with a tradition, as he did with Christ, that makes it unique for you. Yes, on the horizontal, historic plain, you can compare and contrast this with other traditions to useful effect, but on the vertical, eternal plain, you know that ultimately truth is one, embraces all, and to live into this is to grow wider, deeper, evermore in union with all, in love in all.
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