WHY RELIGION MATTERS: THE FATE OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT IN AN AGE OF DISBELIEF
Huston Smith
In this book, Smith champions a society in which the human spirit is honored and encouraged to experience its full potential, and religion is once again treasured and authentically practiced as the vital source of human wisdom and the moral compass by which we must steer our lives.
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1 |
"Wholeness comes first, multiplicity later; the many derive from the one."
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2 |
"The most important thing I inherited from my parents was faith. Its substance made me, on average, a trusting person, and its content can be stated equally simply: we are in good hands, and in gratitude for that fact we do well to bear one another's burdens."
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3 |
"What are we able to SEE with what Plato called the eye of the soul and Sufis refer to as the eye of the heart? In Blake's formulation, 'If the doors of perception were cleansed, we would see everything as it is: infinite.'"
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"To say that the pilgrim is not alone in her heroic journey understates the case, for it is the spark of divinity that God plants in human beings that initiates the journey in the first place."
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5 |
"Our essence is relationship – we are brother and sister – and the foundation of that essence is love."
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6 |
"We do know what the virtues are through the rudimentary ways they surface in us. Ones that come immediately to mind are the Greek ternary of the good, the true, and the beautiful; India's existence, consciousness, and bliss; the creativity and compassion that Yahweh so steadfastly exemplifies; and in their full sweep, Islam's ninety-nine Beautiful Names of Allah. Christian love should not be overlooked, nor should the power that in God climaxes in omnipotence."
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7 |
"The universe is nonlocal. Separated parts of it – how widely they are separated makes no difference; it could be from here to the rim of the universe – are simultaneously in touch with one another."
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8 |
"The self is a theomorphic creature – one whose morphe (form) is theos – God encased within it. Having been created in the imago Dei, the image of God, all human beings have a God-shaped vacuum built into their hearts."
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