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8f0592f
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Practice giving things away, not just things you don't care about, but things you do like. Remember, it is not the size of a gift, it is its quality and the amount of mental attachment you overcome that count. So don't bankrupt yourself on a momentary positive impulse, only to regret it later. Give thought to giving. Give small things, carefully, and observe the mental processes going along with the act of releasing the little thing you lik..
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non-attachment
releasing
giving
generosity
practice
simplicity
gift
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Huston Smith |
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1e4bf8a
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The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.
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wonder
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Huston Smith |
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5544fb4
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With mind distracted, never thinking, "Death is coming," To slave away on the pointless business of mundane life, And then to come out empty--it is a tragic error. (116) trans by Robert Thurman"
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life
error
mindfulness
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Huston Smith |
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c160b5c
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When there are miles to go before we sleep, altered traits are more important than altered states.
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Huston Smith |
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c300b8c
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We are born in mystery, we live in mystery, and we die in mystery.
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Huston Smith |
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0b2fbd6
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Never during its pilgrimage is the human spirit completely adrift and alone. From start to finish its nucleus is the Atman, the god-within... underlying its whirlpool of transient feelings, emotions, and delusions is the self-luminous, abiding point of the transpersonal god. As the sun lights the world even when cloud-covered, "the Immutable is never seen but is the Witness; it is never heard but is the Hearer; it is never thought but is th..
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spirituality
upanishads
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Huston Smith |
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ee1a7b7
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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? We cannot know. All we can do is to listen carefully and with full attention to ea..
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Huston Smith |
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aaef0a6
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The only power that can effect transformations of the order (of Jesus) is love. It remained for the 20th century to discover that locked within the atom is the energy of the sun itself. For this energy to be released, the atom must be bombarded from without. So too, locked in every human being is a store of love that partakes of the divine- the imago dei, image of god...And it too can be activated only through bombardment, in its case, love..
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spirituality
religion
parenting
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Huston Smith |
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ce78a4b
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Among the languages of American Indians there is no word for 'art,' because for Indians everything is art.
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Huston Smith |
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fbbd1b7
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If it is possible to be homesick for the world, even places one has never been and knows one will never see, this book is the child of such homesickness.
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Huston Smith |
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74737f7
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Without attention, the human sense of wonder and the holy will stir occasionally, but to become a steady flame it must be tended.
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Huston Smith |
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87fc30c
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If I were asked under what sky the human mind...has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions to some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant--I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the correcti..
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Huston Smith |
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68c83ab
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Science makes major contributions to minor needs, Justice Holmes was fond of saying, adding that religion, however small its successes, is at least at work on the things that matter most.
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Huston Smith |
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1429589
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The disciples of Jesus "found themselves thinking that if divine goodness were to manifest itself in human form, this (he) is how it would behave... he invited people to see differently instead of telling them what to do or believe...he located the authority of his teaching in his hearer's hearts, not in himself or God-as-removed."
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spirituality
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Huston Smith |
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d1504dd
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Lincoln Steffens has a fable of a man who climbed to the top of a mountain and, standing on tiptoe, seized hold of the Truth. Satan, suspecting mischief from this upstart, had directed one of his underlings to tail him; but when the demon reported with alarm the man's success--that he had seized hold of the Truth--Satan was unperturbed. "Don't worry," he yawned. "I'll tempt him to institutionalize it." That"
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Huston Smith |
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ca32702
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Most of the book deals with things we already know yet never learn.
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Huston Smith |
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6b07e8e
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To find meaning in the mystery of existence is life's final and fascinating challenge.
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Huston Smith |
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245dd95
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The game can be won or lost, but not the player himself. If he has worked hard, he has improved his game and indeed his faculties; this happens in defeat fully as much as in victory. As the contestant is related to his total person, so is the finite self of any particular lifetime related to its underlying Atman.
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Huston Smith |
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bf5a112
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If I were asked under what sky the human mind...has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions to some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant--I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the correcti..
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Huston Smith |
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e7792fc
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No individual is solely reflective, emotional, active, or experimental, and different life situations call for different resources to be brought into play. Most people will, on the whole, find travel on one road more satisfactory than on others and will consequently tend to keep close to it; but Hinduism encourages people to test all four and combine them as best suits their needs.
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Huston Smith |
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377956d
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To try to extinguish the drive for riches with money is like trying to quench a fire by pouring butter over it.
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Huston Smith |
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262d986
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Detachment from the finite self or attachment to the whole of things--we can state the phenomenon either positively or negatively. When it occurs, life is lifted above the possibility of frustration and above ennui--the third threat to joy--as well, for the cosmic drama is too spectacular to permit boredom in the face of such vivid identification.
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Huston Smith |
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4e3176f
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Hinduism advises such people not to try to think of God as the supreme instance of abstractions like being or consciousness, and instead to think of God as the archetype of the noblest reality they encounter in the natural world.
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Huston Smith |
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4c3b69c
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A great anatomist used to close his opening lecture to beginning medical students with words that apply equally to our own undertaking. "In this course," he would say, "we shall be dealing with flesh and bones and cells and sinews, and there are going to be times when it's all going to seem terribly cold-blooded. But never forget. It's alive!" II."
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Huston Smith |
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9c45593
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If my opinion that substance requires a true unity were founded only on a definition I had formulated in opposition to common usage, *then the dispute would be only one of words*. But besides the fact that most philosophers have taken the term in almost the same fashion, distinguishing between a unity in itself and an accidental unity, between substantial and accidental form, and between perfect and imperfect, natural and artificial mixture..
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Huston Smith |
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22dbc4c
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Everything I do for my private wellbeing adds another layer to my ego, and in thickening it insulates me more from God. Conversely, every act done without thought for myself diminishes my self-centeredness until finally no barrier remains to separate me from the Divine. The
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Huston Smith |
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93a9859
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Heaven and earth are my inner and outer coffins. The sun, moon, and stars are my drapery, and the whole creation my funeral procession. What more do I want?
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Huston Smith |
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c77146d
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Emerson argued that "the whole secret of the teacher's force lies in the conviction that men are convertible, and they are. They want awakening, [and for that purpose they need teachers] to get the soul out of bed, out of her deep habitual sleep." That"
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Huston Smith |
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1c293d3
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Today we do not live under a sacred canopy; it is marketing that forms the backdrop of our culture. The message that advertising dins into our conscious and unconscious minds is that fulfillment derives from the things we possess.
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Huston Smith |
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7f5ea1c
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Symbolism is the science of understanding the relations between the multiple levels of reality.
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Huston Smith |
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e5ebcae
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Such power as I possess for working in the political field has derived from my experiments in the spiritual field.
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Huston Smith |
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0ed1d37
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There is within us--in even the blithest, most lighthearted among us--a fundamental dis-ease. It acts like an unquenchable fire that renders the vast majority of us incapable in this life of ever coming to full peace. This desire lies in the marrow of our bones and the deep regions of our souls. All great literature, poetry, art, philosophy, psychology, and religion tries to name and analyze this longing. We are seldom in direct touch with ..
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Huston Smith |
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f56bd37
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The obvious veneration felt by almost all who knew him is contagious, and the reader is soon caught up with his disciples in the sense of being in the presence of something close to wisdom incarnate. Perhaps the most striking thing about him was his combination of a cool head and a warm heart, a blend that shielded him from sentimentality, on the one hand, and indifference, on the other. He was undoubtedly one of the greatest rationalists o..
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Huston Smith |
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bc3d86f
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Our life in historical or chronological time, measuring and minding, cautious and comparing, forms the horizontal arm of the cross. Our experience of the unqualified, of inner, immeasurable time (or timelessness), is the cross's vertical pole. We live in two kinds of time or perspective simultaneously. The horizontal and the vertical are at once quite distinct and entirely overlapping, and to experience their incongruity and confluence is w..
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Huston Smith |
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4573778
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The point of the story is that the universe is one gigantic Wishing Tree, with branches that reach into every heart. The cosmic process decrees that sometime or other, in this life or another, each of these wishes will be granted--together, of course, with consequences.
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Huston Smith |
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203621e
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In Buddhism monks recite daily the Five Remembrances, which are: I will lose my youth, my health, my dear ones and everything I hold dear, and finally lose life itself, by the very nature of my being human. These are bitter reminders that the only thing that continues is the consequences of our action. The fact that all the things we hold dear and love are transient does not mean that we should love them less but--as I do Karen and Serena--..
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Huston Smith |
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12f147b
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Suffering led the Buddha to enlightenment, and it may cause us, against our will, to grow in compassion, awareness, and possibly eventually peace.
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Huston Smith |
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637d2a6
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Some friends accused me of whoring after the Infinite. Well, what better whoredom is there?
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Huston Smith |
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7ddc81d
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What is Zen? Simple, simple, so simple. Infinite gratitude toward all things past; infinite service to all things present; infinite responsibility to all things future.
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Huston Smith |
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d405383
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terms. A nation can assume that the phrase "under God"
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Huston Smith |
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f66b838
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He who does the task Dictated by duty, Caring nothing For the fruit of the action, He is a yogi. (Bhagavad-Gita, VI:I) Hence
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Huston Smith |
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d2520d3
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Dismiss these post facto accounts as legends if we must; there is no question but that in his life as the Buddha the springs of tenderness gushed abundant. Wanting to draw the arrows of sorrow from everyone he met, he gave to each his sympathy, his enlightenment, and the strange power of soul, which, even when he barely spoke a word, gripped the hearts of his visitors and left them transformed.
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Huston Smith |
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fa24abd
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The ultimate truth is that nirvana is not infinitely distant but infinitely near, reaching gracefully toward us, as it were, and being the ground on which we already stand if we but knew this. Only the blinders of egoism hide this truth from us.
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Huston Smith |
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d67a43b
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Your reasoning is fine, but your experience is limited. Enlarge your experience, and your philosophy will be different.
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Huston Smith |