Huston Smith
Huston Smith literally wrote the book on world religions, in 1958, with the release of The Religions of Man. Born in 1919 in China and raised there, he later became a professor of philosophy and religion, teaching at M.I.T., Syracuse University, and University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of 14 books, and the Christian Science Monitor once called him “Religion’s Rock Star.” The Dalai Lama once wrote that Smith, who became his friend in 1964, knew the “real taste” of religion; Ken Wilber, Deepak Chopra, and Karen Armstrong have cited him as a major influence on their work; Bill Moyers, who, in 1996, produced a five-part PBS series featuring Smith, said Smith had not only studied the world’s religions but “practiced what he had learned;” and Michael Murphy, co-founder of the Esalen Institute, has commented that, “Of the many presenters we’ve had over the past 50 years, only a handful ‘glowed in the dark,’ and Huston Smith was one of them.” —Dana Sawyer
