The Way Things Are with Huston Smith

[Music] well what a happiness these are occasions are always the pop word is happiness so many kindred spirits so I know you're Kendra nor you wouldn't be here and friends all all over the place some you it's a great pleasure now I was asked in the moments before we came to order how would you like to be introduced and I said well both here's Houston Smith and let it go I said anything more you say takes time away from me [Applause] well that didn't go very well so I had a backup I said okay here's my alternative let me introduce myself and that flew and so one of the reasons I like to introduce myself is that introductions always have so much height in them I mean that's the nature of the game who's going to ever ever say well ladies and gentlemen here is Professor Smith he's not much but he was the best our honorarium could afford you know that doesn't go and so those superlative really work against me one of the things I've been trying to do recently is to reduce the size of my ego and lavish introductions just work against that I'm Houston Smith I was born in traditional China a Methodist missionary parent and I from as far back as I can remember my guiding star what I wanted to do both in my life was to know the truth with a capital T meaning by that big picture the widest angle land we could get on the nature of ultimate reality now being in podunk China only foreigners in this town tight nuclear family why I grew up thinking that the Bible gives us the biggest picture and that's held in place till I came over to this country for Kali and then with all the dynamism of American so on I got interested in philosophy because I realized the Bible speaks only to one tradition and their other tradition and so I turned to philosophy that they might it might give me the biggest picture after getting my doctorate at the University of Chicago in philosophy and starting to teach I finally realize that the that philosophy does not give us the picture because it's blinders are very heavy at that time it was dominated by fire and philosophy was really inside science and science was a big picture and act held in place until one night a little bit before I got my degree I came upon my first book on mysticism that night was only night I had read read all night long and as dawn was breaking and I closed the book then science as a big picture that view had collapsed like a house of cards and the mystic view of reality took its place and it has held in place ever since people sometimes ask me why are you a Christian and the real answer is because I was born that way and that was my upbringing my nurturing and in my case it took but if I were to go beyond that I can say I'm a Christian because I believe in the forgiveness of sins and the older I grow the more I realized how much forgiveness I need because partly willfully and partly unconsciously I've given a lot of pain to people along the way and I need forgiveness and I always find on occasions like this that it's well to look at the description in the program because those few sentences are the only thing that has brought us together this is the contract so to speak and I do take responsibility for this and so it's good to refresh my mind and so that I was hue to what I said I would say otherwise I could be guilty of breach of contract so here it is spinning off from the way things are my latest book title there were copies in the bookstore I don't know if there any now Phil Cousineau skillfully edited summation of Smith lifelong search for the real now let me pause there for a moment in my career there have been three things that just seemed like they dropped out of heaven and fell in my lap I didn't work for them they just came the first was early 1960s I was researching Tibetan Buddhism in a monastery and on the full moon night in October Tjuta monastery high the foothill of the himalayas in three o'clock in the morning there broke over my ears the first Western ears to hear this sound the holiest sound I have ever heard which turned out when I brought it back to the West to be a mode of chanting of vocal phenomena that the West had no idea the throat was capable of and it introduced a new word into the lexicography a musicology multiphonics champion Oh first a third and fifth of dominant courts everything coming out of one Lehrer okay that was the first thing the second thing that fell in my lap is the bill Moyer the phone rang and the voice said this is Bill Moyers I read your religions a man now the world's religions are when I was in seminary in tech tech and I vowed on the spot that I was going to meet you someday and the time has come that I want to pursue that bow and that land as you may know to bill more years five-part PBS series the wisdom of faith was Houston's again it just dropped into my lap and the third was this current book latest book the way things are now through my career the university is honored me they they have given me 14 honorary degrees they use my books and so and I have no complaint but we live out of our fears rather than our faith take notes don't do that but we tend to do that and so I'll only had a little fear that I was really dismissed by my colleague as a popularizer in French vulgar atour it's an honor it's an honored position honored vocation here no vulgar vulgar and I am afraid that I've been dispensed by my colleague and it just slips through my mind wouldn't it be nice if one of my books were published by a University Press three weeks later the telephone rang Houston Smith yes this is Reid Malcolm the director of the university California Press we've been tracking you we want to bring out a book on you now we know you're busy and you can't just write a book for it but how about this we are tracking you we have found that you have given 40 35 interviews that have crested into print and we've scanned them they're all lying on my death how would we have your permission to contract for an editor and he mentioned the name of Phil Cousineau the leading biographer of Joseph Campbell splendid man and he would be interested in taking this on editing those interviews cutting out all the redundancies ordering them and a kind of sequin and you know the book was almost done [Applause] not quite six months of hard work lay ahead of Phil Cousineau but I just stepped back Buddhism it's the the Dharmakaya vowel which is the story the person who through innumerable incarnations worked their way up to the being this last incarnation and they are on the cusp of Nirvana eternal bliss and just as they're about to step over into that endless and be rid of this sorry world the Bodhisattva swivels around and plants the lifted leg back in this world vowing that he will not enter Nirvana until as the phrase goes but grass itself is enlightened now I pick up with our contract okay [Applause] spinning off from the way things are Smith will point out this is an hi it's true I'm gonna do it Smith will point out the way things really are in contrast to the way pundit of modernity would have us think they are somewhat important isn't it and that's what I intend to do all right now to pick up Houston claims no originality for what he says he will be conveying the winnowed wisdom of the human race as reported by the spiritual Giants throughout history that's what I've done and spent my life in I sometimes pull it together and referred to it as the window wisdom of the human race the wisdom tradition now quickly that means insert not everything in them is why natural science has retired their view of the physical universe permanently and also patterns for social relationship they mostly picked up the more rays of their time and we live in different time and so I don't thumb through the bog of engage of the doubt the Bible the Quran for patterns of human relation they have cast they have slavery and they have subordination of women and so on and those are not why so in those two areas the physical universe and our patterns of social relationships we one of the good things about modernity is we live in a time of the Fairness Revolution we are so far to go yet that it's too early to congratulate ourselves but at least we see we have to work on race relationship gender relationship lifestyle things like that okay so let's not be confused we push those aside but what remains the vision of the nature of ultimate reality and on that score I find nothing in modernity or anywhere else that rival that wisdom of this great tradition and it is reinforced that virgin by the by independent verification the various great tradition grew up mostly in cocoons in isolation and yet as the top they all converge in two things what is the nature of ultimate reality and second how can we best comport our lie in that a picture and that's what has been the steady object of my career it's very risky as a comparative Asst as I am playing the field to say one religion has something that the others don't because usually you can find echoes of it everywhere but I stick my neck out and say in no other tradition do I find band of men with a few women in it the Prophet these people by the way our word prophet is misunderstood we think of a prophet as somebody who foresees the future but that's not right etymologically Pro is for emphasis is for the root for speak a prophet speaks core and speaks for God the great coal in human will history occurred in the 16th 17th century in Western Europe with what we call the Scientific Revolution now we have to look at that squint at it pretty carefully because it scienced which centers in the controlled experiment offered proof and that's what history did not have they could have convergent among the same and so on but they couldn't prove it but science can prove its claim and that proof of those proof quickly accumulated in pouring out benefit goods could be multiplied drudgery reduce washing machines might grow we and the life and life expectancy extended now these are no small benefit and they ravaged the modern world modern mind and set in place the modern scenario which I'm going to come to in just a moment now the reason this is important for us is that this scenario it's big picture drew the shades down over this vision of ultimate reality that the wisdom traditions had put in place it's like as if we were in a bungalow with a picture window looking out on the Himalayan range one of the most gorgeous sight my eyes have ever seen of everybody anybody here seen that magnificent and but it's like the scientific method pull the window shades down so now looking at the window all we can see is the ground on which this angle Oh stand and that symbolizes the physical universe I'll give credit where credit is due it has shown that ground to be awesome beyond all belief but it is not Mount Everest now that's the mistake of modernity and it's important that we see that because the Baron's of the media are still caught in that modern scenario however I'm here to bring good news by the way nan about the news of the day that disastrous and I'm Norma optimist what about the big picture we stand in the most promising time that Western people have for 300 years - we pull up the shade and proclaim and ask people to look at Mount Everest and the reason our times are so promising is that the modern scenario it's big picture has worn thin and I'm going to document it the modern scenario has three part science is a royal road to truth empirical science second technology the spinnel of science is the cornucopia that will pour how the things that will bring the good life and third because that cornucopia is getting bigger with every discovery pouring out more and more the bottom line is progress in definite in ongoing non-ending progress [Music] Hinduism it's the for yoga that there are four paths to gone through knowing God through loving God but through serving God and through meditation none is better than the other but we each have our strong suit and it behooves us to lead with our strong suit just as in a pack of cards in the heart now I said this scenario is growing thin let's look at read backward progress the 20th century is the most horrendous century of all human history [Music] 160 million human being slaughtered by their own kind war starvation in every decade of the 20th century than in all the centuries that led up to the 20th century the gap between the rich and the poor never greater and it keeps increasing all the time now my friend nobody can look at that century honestly accurately and continue to believe in progress is this progress okay second let's go to technology sure the benefits keep pouring out but what would not notice is they they concern only the physical aspect of life yes science technology and science can tell us how we can live longer it cannot say one word about whether that's worth while living longer or what would make it what we can do to make those added years worth one zero not one thing and now we come we've taken care of progress we've taken care of technology now science what was not noticed for 300 years and my friends this is more than interesting it's riveting a little slip between the cup and the lip and nobody noticed it here is the slip science with its controlled experiment can deal is the technical word is empirical that means it is extrapolated from our physical senses mostly what we can see as enlarged by telescopes electron microscope but it all comes down to what we can see now my trend think about this I don't care if you think I'm fooling myself and this is hot spot but I'll bet I'm telling you things you haven't heard before and the reason is that they have only recently dawned on me and I haven't heard this before all right empiricism of what our physical senses can deliver now our physical senses are important for sure but they're not our only sensitive we have faults and we have feelings and our physical senses don't reveal that to it nobody has ever seen of thought nobody has ever seen of feeling and yet that's where our lived lines are so that whole dimension of life is not a probe or dealt with by science we can visualize it this way in this horizontal light symbolizing space the vertical line symbolizes work superior and inferior and science cannot touch it that's why I say that modernity vectored by this scenario is played out and thinkers are beginning to see this more and more every year every decade but we have a huge drag of cultural lag the backward pull of the out wrong good so it's going to take some time for the general public led by the media Baron or what I'm telling you now to sink down into our general consciousness Islam is marvelous I was four especially the Sufis of course now they're fanatics and Dogma - and fundamentalist in both Christianity and Islam and there I started to say doing no end of messages but really they're creating hell not too much to say that but that's the news of the day as I was speaking this morning the news of eternity in the Quran and Islam is a religion of peace their salutation you know is assalamu alaykum meaning peace be on you when we meet somebody we take how are you haha they say peace be upon you and that is the underlying theme we lived in a very dangerous world this is the news of the day and we are getting very little help on how to deal with that religion has just come roaring into public light because we're at war and now I know no more about politics I have my deep convictions but that's not relevant here no no more than any of you but I do have dealt with religion and I'll give you axiomatically what happened when nations go to war people at war to win that's the top priority avoid defeat and that requires power what is the greatest power in the universe God so we have to tap in to that power and see that it's channel to oh now this is axiomatic never mind who's a warrants on and in our present conflict between [Music] Christianity or if you want to say the American or mark way of life against Islam the rhetoric is exactly the same on both side you just mirror images of one another another cartoon an announcer in the e in the Evening News says today a small group of virtuous people were viciously attacked by mobs of evil people and of course the point of the cartoon is it didn't doesn't identify who are the good people were the evil people it's all scripted you can just plug in your name and here's a next axiomatic thing claiming God on your side entail demonizing the M&E a friend of mine Sam Cain some of you may know him has tracked that he had a video that came out after World War 2 sometimes on images of the enemy and it went back to World War 1 he did his research and had visual in World War 1 it was the Krauts and they're very vicious in World War two yes they're in the crowds but they're also the jet and these horrendous faces of the Yellow Peril and now he's updating yet with images of is law these are all posters visual eye and I forget whether it's already near enough completion to be scheduled to show on TV all right that is the news of the day we are living on the top of a volcano and it could it's already the world is in flame and you know here is such a beautiful environment lovely people good food and so on it's easy to forget the desperation in the world and that's what we must not just slack off and enjoy our private lives and our affluence and our good friend we should have this as my teacher said infinite service to all things present and infinite responsibilities to all things future including most importantly the future of our planet [Music] absolute perfection rain now you know I can just almost well I can't read your mind but other groups I could read what this guy's off the wall or off his rocker how can you square that with the Daily News disaster disaster or rental and my friend it can be done and the great science of the wisdom tradition have done it but that cannot how you make that connection with evil and and cannot be delivered in sound bites that requires a seminar to work that one through no I'm not an optimist but I am hopeful and the difference is that an optimist believes that they can psyche out the future and everything going is going to end well I'm not at all sure that that is the case but I am hopeful in the sense that if we give everything we've got to coping with the problems of the present that will be a meaningful act whatever happened in the future [Music] who comes in from a different angle it is the conviction that if we give everything we have to our present struggle those will be meaningful at and he threw in an analogy family has a severely child is it optimistic that that child will become normal or even improve substantially no it faces the fact it probably will not improve very much however that does not keep the family from pouring its love and nurturing and care on that child I think I reached for what one of my teachers said to me he put it in a very nice formula he says you should come to be infinite gratitude for all things has infinite service for all things presents infinite responsibility for all things future and I can do no better than my teacher in saying that and in gratitude for that we should bear one another's burdens [Music] well I'm not a scientist so I simply listen on that sore but I can tell you what the wisdom traditions say and it's very germane to what I said in this slip from the traditional wisdoms grounded society to modernity consciousness suffered a huge blow because it can you can you can't see it and two of the great mistake of modernity is to say that matter is the fundamental reality in the universe dead wrong all of the wisdom tradition everybody took it for granted that consciousness is the fundamental reality and note this we can learn from science some very excellent analogies science has shown us that matter cannot be an isolated it can be converted from one form to another matter energy energy back you cannot I nicely now look what follows if consciousness is fundamental you cannot uh nya late that it can change the content a little bit like a television screen it's like the light that is always there and makes possible the images but if conscious and I'm absolutely convinced they're right is basics it can change the script I mean the visuals like on the television but the light never goes up and let me tell you you are all immortal whether you want to be or not because there's some kickers in there depending on how you live it's not going to be all hunky-dory but the pictures will never stop I've been blessed by having many very good friends and one of them was Aldous Huxley Magisterial mine's one of the best novelists of the 20th century and I would say close to him for a long time and chauffeured him on many of his evening lectures and as we were coming back from one he turned to me and he said Houston you know it's a little bit embarrassing to have devoted one's entire life to the human condition and find the one and really nothing more to say to people than try to be a little bit kinder no cell is bet if we take self in the term in terms of the Eagle and to transcend once Eagle is the bet and back to bill Moyer the one thing I said in those five hours that drew the most flak was when I said right out loud under questioning from Bill are they're fully enlightened being in the human body is that possible and I flatly said no when it's an asymptotic curve you can am sure we all should work towards reducing the ego as much as possible but I do not think it's possible to bring it down to zero you should have seen the male I mean you ought to meet my guru Mayer Baba Sai Baba or whoever but I stick my my gun if Jesus said why call it now me good no it's a lot that there is only one good the if that's what Jesus said it's good enough for me [Applause] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Vedanta Video

Views: 5,381

Rating: 4.9139786 out of 5

Keywords: Huston Smith, religion, christianity, vedanta, buddhism, islam, god, christ, meditation, peace, purpose

Id: s0gs90xBnaA

Length: 56min 25sec (3385 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 10 2018