The Wisdom of Huston Smith

The life of Huston Smith reads like an adventure novel. One of the foremost religious scholars in the world today, Smith has lived in a missionary household in China, monasteries in Japan, and a sweat lodge in North America. Smith has engaged many of the contemporary wisdom giants-including Thomas Merton and the Dalai Lama-and believes in the eternal mystery of life, cautioning against our "tendency to reduce the Divine to where it is easily manageable by our finite mind."

Due to his varied background studying the world's diverse religions, Smith is a natural to discuss the role of religion today; the value religion continues to provide for those who choose to listen; the difference between religion and spirituality; the commonalities of various religions; and the qualities of Native American religious beliefs.

Westerners look to science to explain the way things are, yet science often overlooks something essential to life: the human spirit. Professor Smith discusses the role of spirit in modern life, focusing on how to understand the difference between the secular and the sacred in a scientifically biased world. He looks at why spirituality has taken a back seat to science for 400 years and how idolizing science has diminished the human spirit.

Although he describes the pitfalls of the "Modern Western mind set," Smith points to a new balance between the worlds of science and mysticism and shows why physics and philosophy go hand in hand. He also updates us on his own excitement and puzzlements about new developments in science and spirituality.