Happy birthday to Huston Smith, who turns 94 today! Smith, widely recognized as the West’s preeminent teacher of world religions, has made a career of building cross-cultural bridges. For decades he has taught his readers about Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and many other traditions.
Raised in China, the son of Christian missionaries, Smith has had a long and illustrious career as an academic, TV interviewer, and author, along the way dropping acid with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) and hobnobbing with a Who’s Who of 20th-century truth-seekers, from Thomas Merton to Joseph Campbell, Martin Luther King, Jr., Noam Chomsky, and Saul Bellow.
In his most recent book, And Live Rejoicing, Smith relates the story of his friend who once accused him of “whoring after the Infinite.” Smith replied, “One could ask if there is any better whoring.”
We think not!
Enjoy the following selection of articles by and about Huston Smith that have appeared in Tricycle‘s pages.
Remembering the Great American Turn-On
“Spirituality” Versus “Religion”
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