Traditional societies function discussion Please generate five discussion threads, each addressing a different one of the following five Discussion Prompts

Traditional societies function discussion Please generate five discussion threads, each addressing a different one of the following five Discussion Prompts [generating 5 threads total, while giving each thread a clear title (e.g. ‘Discussion Topic 1′)]

Discussion Prompt 1:

How traditional societies function, according to Smith:

(a) There are tribes among the Eskimos and the Australian aborigines that do not even have words for disobedience.

(b) Tradition exerts its influence tacitly – spontaneously and unthinkingly. No laws are formulated or penalties affixed; no plans for moral education are intentionally devised. Group expectations are so strong that the young internalize them automatically. (Smith, 162)

What about our society? To what extent do you see ‘tradition’ at work in our time and place? What parts of daily life operate ‘tacitly’ according to ‘group expectations?’ Or might aspects of a society’s tradition be discernable only after they are lost?

Discussion Prompt 2:

According to Smith, education was key to Confucius’ plan for reinstating the role of tradition in society through instillation of deliberate tradition:

“Moral ideas were to be driven into the people by every conceivable means – temples, theatres, homes, toys, proverbs, schools, history, stories – until they became habits in daily life… Even festivals and parades were [in this sense] religious in character. By such means, even a society constituted of individuals can (if it puts itself to the task) spin an enveloping tradition, a power of suggestion, that can prompt its members to behave socially even when the law is not looking.” (Smith, 170)

Was this method of deliberate tradition confined to a context of merely ‘long ago’ and only ‘over there’?

“The United States has its story of George Washington and the cherry tree… […] The stories express national ideals, and shape peoples to their image.” (Smith, 171)

What part do morals or ‘national ideals’ play in your own education? Why is education mandatory up to a certain point in the United States? Why have we subsidized higher education to the point that some amount of college is expected from almost everyone? Can it be explained solely in economic terms (e.g. training the workforce to ensure prosperity)? Or are we all the product of an educational system designed to impart a deliberate tradition? Could we account for changes in our collective morals under this view?

Discussion Prompt 3:

Confucius appears to have thought that the quality of a class or collective (e.g. the state of a society) was entirely determined by the attributes of its members or individuals (e.g. the character of each citizen) and their relations with each other:

“‘If there is righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in the character. If there is beauty in the character, there will be harmony in the home. If there be harmony in the home, there will be order in the nation. If there be order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.’” (Smith, quoting Confucius, 173-4)

What do you think of this sort of a worldview? Is the presence or absence of peace in the world due entirely to our personal triumphs or failings? Why or why not? What role does religion play in forming individuals and by implication, entire societies?

Discussion Prompt 4:

According to Smith, “the family is the basic unit of society” in China, where “legend…credits the hero who ‘invented’ the family with elevating the Chinese from animal to human level.” (Smith, 176) This attitude is particularly evident in the thought of Confucius:

“That three of the Five Relationships pertain within the family is indicative of how important Confucius considered this institution to be. […] Within the family, in turn, it is the children’s respect for their parents that holds the key; hence the concept of filial piety. […] ‘The duty of children to their parents is the fountain from which all virtues spring.’”(Smith, quoting Confucius, 176)

What is our society’s view of the importance of the institution of the family? Does family play as crucial a role in our society as Confucius thought it must? Is family as important today in America (and the West) as it was in the recent past? Has any other institution taken its place as central to the health of other relationships in our society? Dowe see children as having duties to their parents?

Discussion Prompt 5:

The Confucian view of self, according to Smith:

“apart from human relationships there is no self. The self is a center of relationships. It is constructed through its interactions with others and is defined by the sum of its social roles.” (180)

e.g. metaphor of an anemone in the sea

e.g. metaphor of an eagle on the wind

“The expansion [of one’s sympathy and empathy indefinitely] proceeds in concentric circles that begin with oneself and spread from there to include successively one’s family, one’s face-to-face community, one’s nation, and finally all humanity. In shifting the center of one’s empathic concern from oneself to one’s family one transcends selfishness. The move from family to community transcends nepotism. The move from community to nation overcomes parochialism, and the move to all humanity counters chauvinisticnationalism.” (Smith, 182)

What do you think of the Confucian account of ‘self’?

Do you feel that there is something essential missing from this conception of self?

If so, what do you think is missing?

Where and how do you think you arrived at this idea?

–Science (psychology)?

–Culture (the arts)?

–Religion (overt doctrine or practices)?

–Religion (covert elements which persist within our culture)? The World’s
Religions
Our Great Wisdom
Traditions
Huston Smith
To
Alice Longden Smith
and
Wesley Moreland Smith
Missionaries to China for forty-one years
When I behold the sacred liao wo*my thoughts return
To those who begot me, raised me, and now are tired.
I would repay the bounty they have given me,
But it is as the sky: it can never be approached.
*
A species of grass symbolizing parenthood.
…the life of religion as a whole is mankind’s most important function.
—William James
The essence of education is that it be religious.
—Alfred North Whitehead
We need the courage as well as the inclination to consult, and profit from, the
“wisdom traditions of mankind.”
—E.F. Schumacher
In 1970 I wrote of a “post-traditional world.” Today I believe that only living
traditions make it possible to have a world at all.
—Robert N. Bellah
Contents
Epigraph
3
Foreword
ix
Preface to the Second Edition
xi
I. Point of Departure
1
Notes.
11
II. Hinduism
12
What People Want.
13
What People Really Want.
19
The Beyond Within.
22
Four Paths to the Goal.
26
The Way to God through Knowledge.
29
The Way to God through Love.
32
The Way to God through Work.
37
The Way to God through Psychophysical Exercises.
41
The Stages of Life.
50
The Stations of Life.
55
“Thou Before Whom All Words Recoil.”
59
Coming of Age in the Universe.
63
The World—Welcome and Farewell.
68
Many Paths to the Same Summit.
72
Appendix on Sikhism.
75
Suggestions for Further Reading.
78
Notes.
78
THE WORLD’S RELIGIONS / v
III. Buddhism
82
The Man Who Woke Up.
82
The Silent Sage.
88
The Rebel Saint.
92
The Four Noble Truths.
99
The Eightfold Path.
103
Basic Buddhist Concepts.
112
Big Raft and Little.
119
The Secret of the Flower.
128
The Diamond Thunderbolt.
139
The Image of the Crossing.
144
The Confluence of Buddhism and Hinduism in India.
147
Suggestions for Further Reading.
149
Notes.
149
IV. Confucianism
154
The First Teacher.
154
The Problem Confucius Faced.
159
Rival Answers.
163
Confucius’ Answer.
167
The Content of Deliberate Tradition.
172
The Confucian Project.
180
Ethics or Religion?
183
Impact on China.
187
Suggestions for Further Reading.
193
Notes.
194
V. Taoism
196
vi / HUSTON SMITH
The Old Master.
196
The Three Meanings ofTao.
198
Three Approaches to Power and the Taoisms That Follow.
199
Efficient Power: Philosophical Taoism.
199
Augmented Power: Taoist Hygiene and Yoga.
200
Vicarious Power: Religious Taoism.
204
The Mingling of the Powers.
206
Creative Quietude.
207
Other Taoist Values.
211
Conclusion.
218
Suggestions for Further Reading.
219
Notes.
219
VI. Islam
221
Background.
222
The Seal of the Prophets.
223
The Migration That Led to Victory.
228
The Standing Miracle.
231
Basic Theological Concepts.
235
The Five Pillars.
242
Social Teachings.
248
Sufism.
257
Whither Islam?
266
Suggestions for Further Reading.
268
Notes.
269
VII. Judaism
272
Meaning in God.
273
THE WORLD’S RELIGIONS / vii
Meaning in Creation.
277
Meaning in Human Existence.
280
Meaning in History.
283
Meaning in Morality.
287
Meaning in Justice.
289
Meaning in Suffering.
294
Meaning in Messianism.
297
The Hallowing of Life.
300
Revelation.
304
The Chosen People.
308
Israel.
311
Suggestions for Further Reading.
316
Notes.
317
VIII. Christianity
319
The Historical Jesus.
319
The Christ of Faith.
325
The End and the Beginning.
331
The Good News.
332
The Mystical Body of Christ.
338
The Mind of the Church.
341
Roman Catholicism.
348
Eastern Orthodoxy.
354
Protestantism.
358
Suggestions for Further Reading.
364
Notes.
365
IX. The Primal Religions
367
viii / HUSTON SMITH
The Australian Experience.
368
Orality, Place, and Time.
370
The Primal World.
376
The Symbolic Mind.
379
Conclusion.
382
Suggestions for Further Reading.
384
Notes.
384
X. A Final Examination
386
The Relation between Religions.
386
The Wisdom Traditions.
388
Listening.
392
Notes.
393
Acknowledgments
394
Index
396
About the Author
408
Also By Huston Smith
409
Front Cover
1
Credits
410
Copyright
411
About the Publisher
412
FOREWORD
The reissue of this book has the feel of a fortieth-anniversary edition, and
it puts me in a distinct mood. If I were at a Pentecostal testimonial meeting—several of which I witnessed as a boy in Missouri and Arkansas—I
would rise to my feet and testify. We are familiar with the typical format
of such testimonials. It has three parts. Part One: “No one was as deep in
the gutter as I was.” Part Two: “But look at me now,” said with wreaths of
smiles and an erect carriage that exudes confidence and self-esteem. Then
comes the punch line: “Not of my doing! It all came from Above.” The
“Above” part I shall keep to myself, but I welcome this opportunity to document the “not of my doing” part.
Had the St. Louis station of what evolved into the Public Broadcasting
System not asked me in its second year to mount a television series on the
world’s religions, I am not sure that I would ever have written a book on
the subject. I was teaching those religions but had other writing priorities.
The response of the viewing public to that series changed my priorities.
Click! Not my initiative.
Even if eventually I had written a book on the subject, it would not have
been this book. It would have been in the standard textbook mode with
the normal audience and life span of that particular genre. As it was, the
first “draft” of my book was delivered to a television audience, and the director of the series never let me forget that audience. This is not a classroom
where you have a captive audience, he kept reminding me. If you lose their
attention for thirty seconds they will switch stations and you won’t get them
back. So, make your points if you must—you’re a professor so you have to
make points. But illustrate them immediately, with an example, an anecdote,
a fragment of poetry, something that will connect
x / HUSTON SMITH
your point to things your audience can relate to. That advice—at the time
it felt more like a command—has made all the difference. There are many
books on world religions that in their own ways are better than mine. But
if they haven’t received the audience that mine has, it is because they didn’t
grow out of television series with directors as severely wise as Mayo Simon.
It’s a miracle that we have remained close friends after all these years, seeing
as how I still cannot get his scathing verdicts on the dry runs of my programs
out of my ears. “Doesn’t sound too red-hot to me,” he would say, meaning
back to the drawing boards. Click. Not of my doing.
If the feminist movement—not of my doing, despite pointed prods from
my wife—had not come along, The Religions of Man (as the book was originally titled) would never have been rewritten in inclusive gender with the
explicative “man” deleted from its title. The rewriting had the important
corollary of providing the opportunity for me to add to the text things that
I had learned from thirty years of additional teaching. I am especially glad
that I will not go to my grave having let stand a book on religions that
omitted its primal, oral, tribal members.
If the directors of Labyrinth Publishing in London and Harper San
Francisco had not decided that the time was ripe for a book on the world’s
great religious art and asked me to abridge The World’s Religions to provide
its accompanying text, The Illustrated World’s Religions would not have
come into existence. Once more, not of my doing.
Finally, without the careful shepherding that the book has received from
HarperCollins at every step of its odyssey, it is difficult for me to imagine
that there could have been this happy occasion of a fortieth-anniversary
printing. Recently, in going through old papers, I came upon a letter that
its original editor, Virginia Hilu, wrote to me in 1958 when the book was
first published, and the best way I can think of to document the solicitous
shepherding I refer to is to quote its closing paragraph:
I have re-read your book several times over the summer. When you
are an old man, I am certain you will look back on its author with a
great deal of affection, admiration, and respect.
I do, provided that the “not of my doing” part is solidly in place.
Huston Smith
Berkeley, California
December 1998
PREFACE TO THE SECOND
EDITION
In the years that have elapsed since this book first appeared, people have
grown more sensitive to the gender biases in language; so I have changed
the book’s original title, The Religions of Man, to The World’s Religions.
No book can include all of the world’s religions. Here the major ones—as
determined by their longevity, historical impact, and number of current
adherents—are dealt with individually, and smaller, tribal ones considered
as a class.
In addition to switching to gender-inclusive language, I have added a
short note on Sikhism and sections on Tibetan Buddhism and Sufism, the
mystical dimension of Islam. A section on “The Confucian Project” has been
inserted, Taoist materials have been considerably reworked, the chapter on
Judaism now includes a section on Messianism, and the historical Jesus is
treated in greater detail.
I have also added a short concluding chapter on the oral traditions. This
is partly to acknowledge that the historical religions the book covers are
latecomers; for the bulk of human history, religion was lived in tribal and
virtually timeless mode. A strong supporting reason, however, is to allow
us to affirm our human past. Recent decades have witnessed a revival of
concern for the feminine and the earth, concerns that the historical religions
(with the exception of Taoism) tended to lose sight of, but which tribal religions have retained.
The somewhat informal—though not unserious—tone of the book derives
from the fact that it evolved from a television series
xii / HUSTON SMITH
on what is now the Public Broadcasting System. Mention of that allows me
to acknowledge again my indebtedness to Mayo Simon, my producer, for
what success in communication the book achieves. The book’s aim remains
the same as the one we set for that series: to carry intelligent laypeople into
the heart of the world’s great enduring faiths to the point where they might
see, and even feel, why and how they guide and motivate the lives of those
who live by them.
Huston Smith
Berkeley, California
May 1991
I. POINT OF DEPARTURE
Although the individuals that I name are now only memories for me, I begin
this second edition of this book with the four paragraphs that launched its
first edition.
I write these opening lines on a day widely celebrated throughout
Christendom as World-Wide Communion Sunday. The sermon in the service
I attended this morning dwelt on Christianity as a world phenomenon.
From mud huts in Africa to the Canadian tundra, Christians are kneeling
today to receive the elements of the Holy Eucharist. It is an impressive
picture.
Still, as I listened with half my mind, the other half wandered to the wider
company of God-seekers. I thought of the Yemenite Jews I watched six
months ago in their synagogue in Jerusalem: dark-skinned men sitting
shoeless and cross-legged on the floor, wrapped in the prayer shawls their
ancestors wore in the desert. They are there today, at least a quorum of ten,
morning and evening, swaying backwards and forwards like camel riders
as they recite their Torah, following a form they inherit unconsciously from
the centuries when their fathers were forbidden to ride the desert horse and
developed this pretense in compensation. Yalcin, the Muslim architect who
guided me through the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, has completed his month’s
Ramadan fast, which was beginning while we were together; but he too is
praying today, five times as he prostrates himself toward Mecca. Swami
Ramakrishna, in his tiny house by the Ganges at the foot of the Himalayas,
will not speak today. He will continue the devotional silence that, with the
exception of three days each year, he has kept for five years. By this hour
U Nu is probably facing the delegations, crises, and
1
2 / HUSTON SMITH
cabinet meetings that are the lot of a prime minister, but from four to six
this morning, before the world broke over him, he too was alone with the
eternal in the privacy of the Buddhist shrine that adjoins his home in Rangoon. Dai Jo and Lai San, Zen monks in Kyoto, were ahead of him by an
hour. They have been up since three this morning, and until eleven tonight
will spend most of the day sitting immovable in the lotus position as they
seek with intense absorption to plumb the Buddha-nature that lies at the
center of their being.
What a strange fellowship this is, the God-seekers in every land, lifting
their voices in the most disparate ways imaginable to the God of all life.
How does it sound from above? Like bedlam, or do the strains blend in
strange, ethereal harmony? Does one faith carry the lead, or do the parts
share in counterpoint and antiphony where not in full-throated chorus?
We cannot know. All we can do is try to listen carefully and with full
attention to each voice in turn as it addresses the divine.
Such listening defines the purpose of this book. It may be wondered if
the purpose is not too broad. The religions we propose to consider belt the
world. Their histories stretch back thousands of years, and they are motivating more people today than ever before. Is it possible to listen seriously
to them within the compass of a single book?
The answer is that it is, because we shall be listening for well-defined
themes. These must be listed at the outset or the pictures that emerge from
these pages will be distorted.
1. This is not a textbook in the history of religions. This explains the
scarcity of names, dates, and social influences in what follows. There are
useful books that focus on such material.1 This one too could have been
swollen with their facts and figures, but it is not its intent to do their job
in addition to its own. Historical facts are limited here to the minimum that
is needed to locate in space and time the ideas the book focuses on. Every
attempt has been made to keep scholarship out of sight—in foundations
that must be sturdy, but not as scaffolding that would obscure the structures
being examined.
2. Even in the realm of meanings the book does not attempt to give a
rounded view of the religions considered, for each hosts differences that
are too numerous to be delineated in a single chapter. One need only think
of Christendom. Eastern Orthodox Christians worship in ornate cathedrals,
while Quakers consider even steeples
THE WORLD’S RELIGIONS / 3
desecrations. There are Christian mystics and Christians who reject mysticism. There are Christian Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian Unitarians.
How is it possible to say in a manageable chapter what Christianity means
to all Christians?
The answer, of course, is that it is not possible—selection is unavoidable.
The question facing an author is not whether to select among points of
view; the questions are how many to present, and which ones. In this book
the first question is answered economically; I try to do reasonable justice
to several perspectives instead of attempting to catalogue them all. In the
case of Islam, this has meant ignoring Sunni/Shi’ite and traditional/modernist divisions, while noting different attitudes toward Sufism. In Buddhism
I distinguish its Hinayana, Mahayana, and Vajrayana traditions, but the
major schools within Mahayana are bypassed. The subdivisions never exceed
three lest trees obscure the woods. Put the matter this way: If you were
trying to describe Christianity to an intelligent and interested but busy
Thailander, how many denominations would you include? It would be
difficult to ignore the differences between Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox,
and Protestant, but you would probably not get into what separates Baptists
from Presbyterians.
When we turn to which views to present, the guideline has been relevance
to the interests of the intended reader. Three considerations have figured
in determining this relevance. First, there is the simple matter of numbers.
There are some faiths that every citizen should be acquainted with, simply
because hundreds of millions of people live by them. The second consideration has been relevance to the modern mind. Because the ultimate benefit
that may accrue from a book such as this is help in the ordering of the
reader’s own life, I have given priority to what (with caution yet a certain
confidence) we may regard as these religions’ contemporary expressions.
The third consideration is universality. Every religion mixes universal principles with local peculiarities. The former, when lifted out and made clear,
speak to what is generically human in us all. The latter, rich compounds of
rites and legends, are not easy for outsiders to comprehend. It is one of the
illusions of rationalism that the universal principles of religion are more
important than the rites and rituals that feed them; to make that claim is
like contending that the branches and leaves of a tree are more important
than the roots from which they grow. But for this book, principles are more
important
4 / HUSTON SMITH
than contexts, if for no other reason than that they are what the author has
spent his years working with.
I have read books that have brought contexts themselves to life: Heather
Wood’s Third Class Ticket for India, Lin Yu-tang’s My Country and My
People for China, and Shalom Rabinowitz’s The Old Country for Eastern
European Jews. Perhaps someday someone will write a book about the
great religions that roots them to their social settings. This, though, is a
book I shall read, not write. I know my limitations and attend to areas from
which ideas can be extracted.
3. This book is not a balanced account of its subject. The warning is important. I wince to think of the shock if the reader were to close the chapter
on Hinduism and step directly into the Hinduism described by Nehru as
“a religion that enslaves you”: its Kali Temple in Calcutta, the curse of her
caste system, her two million cows revered to the point of nuisance, her
fakirs offering their bodies as sacrifice to bedbugs. Or what if the reader
were transported to Bali, with its theaters named the Vishnu-Hollywood
and its bookstores that do brisk business in Klasik Comics, in which Hindu
gods and goddesses mow down hosts of unsightly demons with cosmic ray
guns? I know the contrast. I sense it sharply between what I have written
of Taoism and the Taoism that surrounded me as a boy in China: its almost
complete submergence in augury, necromancy, and superstition. It is like
the contrast between the Silent Christ and the Grand Inquisitor, or between
the stillness of Bethlehem and department stores blaring “Silent Night” to
promote Christmas shopping. The full story of religion is not rose-colored;
often it is crude. Wisdom and charity are intermittent, and the net result is
profoundly ambiguous. A balanced view of religion would include human
sacrifice and scapegoating, fanaticism and persecution, the Christian Crusades and the holy wars of Islam. It would include witch hunts in Massachusetts, monkey trials in Tennessee, and snake worship in the Ozarks. The
list would have no end.
Why then are these things not included in the pages that follow? My
answer is so simple that it may sound ingenuous. This is a book about
values. Probably as much bad music as good has been composed in the
course of human history, but we do not expect courses in music appreciation
to give it equal attention. Time being at a premium, we assume that they
will attend …
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