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The Huston Smith Reader

This reader compiles a selection of Huston Smith's writings, offering insights into the world's major religions and philosophical concepts. Smith, a renowned scholar, delves into the beliefs, practices, and historical contexts of these traditions, providing a comprehensive overview of religious thought and its impact on human culture. more

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Huston Smith
Huston Smith

Huston Smith, an American religious philosopher, was born on May 31, 1919, and passed away on December 30, 2016. He is renowned for his extensive research on world religions and has authored classic works such as 'The World's Religions,' which has had a profound impact on global religious culture. more

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“In the 'in-itself' there is nothing of 'causal connections', of 'necessity', or of 'psychological non-freedom'; there the effect does not follow the cause, there is no rule or 'law'. It is we alone who have devised cause, sequence, for-each-other, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and purpose; and when we project and mix this symbol world into things as if it existed 'in itself', we act once more as we have always acted- mythologically.”

IfsWorldDoeLawPurposeCausesNumbersEffectsProjectsConnectionsPsychologicalSymbolsMotiveRationalitySequenceConstraintsRelativity
Author:Friedrich Nietzsche
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“Since ancient times, the left side has stood for the side of the unconscious or the unknown; the right side, by contrast, has represented the side of consciousness or wakefulness. Through the late twentieth century, the movement of the Left limited themselves to a materialist understanding of reality- exemplified by Marxism- demanding social justice and economic equality but not the restoration of intuition and the recognition of the hidden, qualitative dimensions of being suppressed by the mental-rational consciousness, narrowly focused on the quantifiable.”

RealityLeftSocialUnderstandingSidesJusticeConsciousnessEconomicCenturyMovementLateSocial JusticeAncientIntuitionFocusedRationalRecognitionUnconsciousDimensionsContrastRationalityMarxismTwentieth CenturyRestorationAncient TimesQualitativeEconomic Equality
Author:Jean Gebser
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“Indeed, what forces us at all to suppose that there is an essential opposition of 'true' and 'false'? Is it not sufficient to assume degrees of apparentness and, as it were, lighter and darker shadows and shades of appearance- different 'values', to use the language of painters?”

DifferentUseValuesLanguageForceEssentialsDegreesShadowAssumingAppearancePainterSufficientOppositionShadeRationalityLightersTrue And FalseDifferent Values
Book:Basic Writings of Nietzsche
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“I think this fear of insanity is comparable to the fear people once had of falling off the edge of the world. Or the fear of heretics...What's happening is that each year our old flat earth of conventional reason becomes less and less adequate to handle the experiences we have and this is creating wide-spread feelings of topsy-turviness. As a result we're getting more and more people in irrational areas of thought...occultism, mysticism, drug changes and the like...because they feel an inadequacy in classical reason to handle what they know are real experiences.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsWorldFeelsYearsRealReasonFeelingsEarthFallResultsDrugCreatingHappeningsAreasEdgesSpreadWideHandleInsanityMysticismFlatsConventionalIrrationalRationalityAdequateHereticInadequacyFalling OffZen Motorcycle MaintenanceEdge Of The World
Author:Robert M. Pirsig
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“What is essential to understand at this point is that until now there was no such thing as mind and matter, subject and object, form and substance. Those divisions are just dialectical inventions that came later...They are just ghosts, immortal gods of the modern mythos which appear to us to be real because we are within that mythos. But in reality they are just as much an artistic creation as the anthropomorphic gods they replaced.”

MindRealMatterRealityFormModernSubjectsCreationObjectsEssentialsGhostInventionArtisticSubstanceImmortalDivisionBeing RealReplacedRationalityMind And MatterArtistic CreationForm And Substance
Author:Robert M. Pirsig
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“Dialectic, which is the parent of logic, came itself from rhetoric. Rhetoric is in turn the child of the myths and poetry of ancient Greece. That is so historically, and that is so by any application of common sense. The poetry and myths are the response of a prehistoric people to the Universe around them made on the basis of Quality. It is Quality, not dialectic, which is the generator of everything we know.”

PeopleKnowsChildrenMadeTurnsUniverseParentCommonQualityLogicBasesResponseAncientMythCommon SenseApplicationRhetoricRationalityGreeceDialecticsAncient GreecePrehistoricGenerator
Author:Robert M. Pirsig
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