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Event Reflections and Text of the
Interfaith Celebration:
Honoring Dr. Huston Smith: Living Treasure of World
Religions
Grace Cathedral, San Francisco - March 30, 2007
“In addition to our own traditions, we listen to the
faiths of others. We listen because our times require
it. Those who listen work for peace, for understanding
brings respect. And respect prepares the way for a
higher capacity, which is love.” Huston Smith
This
event, envisioned and facilitated by Rev. Dr. Gina Rose
Halpern, was co-hosted, by The Chaplaincy Institute for
Arts and Interfaith Ministries, and Grace Cathedral.
On
March 30, 2007, 3:00-5:00 pm, Interfaith leaders
gathered At Grace Cathedral in San Francisco to
celebrate and honor Huston Smith, Living Treasure of
Worlds Religions. Featured on the Bill Moyer's series
"The Wisdom of Faith," educator and author of “The
World's Religions,” Huston Smith was celebrated at this
time with an award ceremony honoring him for his work
building bridges of understanding between Religious and
faith traditions. On this day he was recognized as the
recipient of: The Peace Abbey, Courage of Conscience
Award: For Lifetime Dedication to Peace, Justice and
Service. Past Recipients Include: Mother Teresa, Rosa
Parks, Maya Angelou, The Dalai Lama. (www.peaceabbey.org)
Over three hundred
guests gathered in rapt attention
as the event began with a Native American invocation led
by Chief
Tsunka Wakan Sapa,-Phillip
Scott a leader in the Lakota Sundance Tradition of
Western Band Cherokee Ancestry, and
Director of
Ancestral Voice Center for Indigenous Lifeways, and
Adjunct faculty with The Chaplaincy Institute (www.ancestralvoice.org).
The Chief went on to thank Huston Smith for his efforts
to support the spiritual lives of Native Americans.
Huston arrived in a wheelchair in time to see the Sufis
turning on the labyrinth. As soon as he saw them his
face lit up with joy.
 The rich spiritual
offerings of the day unfolded from Native American
invocation to the turning of the Whirling Dervishes of
the Mevlevi Sufi Order of America, To extraordinary
sacred music and poetry the white and colored robes of
the dancing prayers of the Sufis, spun out like opening
flowers as they whirled on the Grace Cathedral
Labyrinth.
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The Sufis turning to
sacred poetry |
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To
African drumming we processed to the front to the
Cathedral, led by Rev. Megan Wagner,
and Rev Jim Larkin, Interfaith Ministers, Therapist,
Artist, Kabbalah Teacher, Ritual Leaders, and
Chaplaincy
Institute Core Faculty (www.treeoflifeteachings.com)
and
Masankho Bhanda guest faculty of The Chaplaincy
Institute, and recipient of The Dalai Lama “Unsung Hero
Award” (www.ucandanc.org.)
The day after the Grace Cathedral event and Huston
called to say he “was so ecstatic over the whole thing.”
 The
celebratory event at Grace Cathedral was a most
heart-felt thank-you for his gifts to us and to the
world. We are part of his living legacy. His texts
have illuminated our studies, and his example of
interfaith spiritual practice continues to ignite our
hearts. What follows here is the actual text with
photographs of the event and links to all of the amazing
presenters. May you feel transported into the magic of
this most wonderful celebration.
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Actual Text of the Event and Links to our Presenters:
Honoring Huston Smith: Living Treasure of world
Religions
Rev. Dr.
Gina Rose Halpern
Greetings
Huston
Presenters
and Friends:
 Opening
Blessings offered By Dean Alan Jones of Grace Cathedral
(www.gracecathedral.org)
From Rev.
Gina Rose: “We began our celebration today with an
invocation from Chief Tsunka Wakan Sapa, Phillip
Scott a leader in the Lakota Sundance Tradition.
Director of
Ancestral Voice Center for Indigenous Lifeways, Adjunct
faculty with The Chaplaincy Institute. (
www.ancestralvoice.org).
And our
afternoon was set in motion with the beautiful turning
of the Dervishes unfolding like flowers as they spun on
the labyrinth. All Thanks to the coordination
of Shakina Reinhertz author of Women Called to the
Path of Rumi, the Way of the Whirling Dervish, and to
all the dervishes of the Mevlevi Sufi Order of America
www.hayatidede.org and all the wonderful
musicians and performers offering their gifts,
Dean Alan Jones Grace Cathedral
Rev. Dr. Gina Rose Halpern
- Minister of Ceremonies for the Event
"We have
begun the spinning of this great wheel of appreciation
and love through this afternoon and my hope is that it
will carry us from the beauty of this moment in this
place of Grace, more deeply into our lives and more
fully- out into the world.
In Japan there is a tradition of honoring individuals
who are recognized as national living treasures. One day
while I was offering prayers of appreciation for the
life work of Houston smith, who has, through his
dedication to religious understanding through
scholarship, and education, it occurred to me that in
our country we tend to honor the departed, rather than
the living. It seemed that since Houston Smith has
blessed so many individuals, institutions and the world
itself, that it might be fitting to create an event to
honor his life while he was here to enjoy it.
So Here we are today to celebrate and honor the gifts of
an extraordinary, teacher, author and mystic.
I have a
favorite story
of St Francis and St Claire who were on a mountaintop
praying one evening. The people of Assisi looked up and
thought the mountain was on fire such was the power of
their spirits. I have been thinking that the people of
the financial district of San Francisco, must be going
to their windows and looking up to see what the glow is
shining out from Grace Cathedral, on the top of
California street.
Huston,
You are a living Treasure of the World Religions, and
we, representatives of many different faiths and the
many institutions where you have taught are here to
honor you today and celebrate you, because honoring is
good but you have taught us that celebration and ritual
open the doors of our hearts to the Divine.
As an
Interfaith seminary, for the past decade, The Chaplaincy
Institute, has been using your text The World’s
Religions to train and ordain interfaith ministers and
chaplains.
To gain a
deeper appreciation of your life we have the opportunity
to view the following film: Huston Smith: Living The
World’s Religions” by Jon & Anna Monday
www.mondaymedia.org
 And
now it is our pleasure to introduce:
Colette van Praag:
Artist, performer, and creator of Gateways of the
Divine: An Illuminated Manuscript for the Modern Age,
will offer what I have heard is your favorite poem, and
we will have a chance to practice a sort of kirtan, call
and response along with her
www.gatewaysofthedivine.com..
“i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)”
e.e. cummings
 She will
be joined by Pir Shabda Kahn: Pir (Spiritual
Director) of the Sufi Ruhaniat International and the
Chisti Sabri School of Music who will then guide us into
the Sufi Practice of Zikker. (www.ruhaniat.org/lineage/shabdaBio.php)
Coming to
our event from the furthest distance of Japan we have
Joined by:
Left, Masankho Bhanda guest faculty of The Chaplaincy
Institute, and recipient of The Dalai Lama “Unsung Hero
Award” (www.ucandanc.org.)
Pico Iyer,
Author: “The Global Soul,” and “Sun After Dark.”
Essayist: of Time Magazine.
Pico Iyer's new book, The Open Road, on the XIVth Dalai
Lama and globalism, will be out from Knopf in April
2008.
HUSTON SMITH: A Receptacle of Light
“Only a very few people alive today can make me smile
just to think of them: the Dalai Lama is one and Huston
Smith is another. And when I reflect on it, I realize
that this is in part because both celebrated teachers
are voracious in their pursuit of wisdom and able to
push back their own assumptions in order to learn from
everyone they meet; both radiate a calm and openness
that can come only from an inner shrine that is
unwavering. More deeply, with both of them the sense of
wisdom is infectious because they are light in every
way: alive with mischief and sparkle, unimpressed with
themselves and ready to see, and bear out in their every
action, that delight is as much a part of life’s
adventure as is sober rumination.
Huston Smith, to the benefit of us all, was born to
missionary parents in China, in 1919 and grew up
therefore with a naturally catholic sense of interests,
Confucius to one side of him, Methodism to the other. He
came to America to pursue his studies at seventeen and
quickly found himself aflame with an excitement about
the world that he has never lost (his conversion
experience coming after an all-night discussion about
the meaning of life with some friends). When America
needed someone to explain the world’s religions, to a
mass audience on television in the Fifties, it’s hardly
surprising that it turned to the professor with a gift
for radical, eclectic simplicity (his subsequent book,
The World’s Religions, has sold more than two million
copies and remains far and away the best introduction to
central philosophies available in English). Yet as with
any true philosopher, Huston Smith’s real instruction
has come through his practice; there can be few great
scholars around who practice yoga, sit za-zen, observe
the principles of Islam and do composting (after reading
the Bible) every single day.
Professor Smith has never been an advocate of the
salad-bar theory of religions, as he engagingly calls
it, and yet he has been even more strenuously opposed
to anyone who would deny the wisdom of any of the great
wisdom traditions. Indeed, his strongest battles have
always been fought on behalf of faith itself, and all
those intangible matters that science cannot hope to
explain. "Not everything in the 'wisdom traditions is
wise, he notes, and yet what has guided and sustained
humankind for centuries seems worthy of our attention.
The key thing, after all, is not altered states (I can
imagine the Dalai Lama saying this, too), but altered
traits.
This much, perhaps, is something that most can agree to,
but what lifts up Huston Smith’s journey with a special
spark and animation is that he has gone out in search of
the Real, and been ready to find it everywhere. He
traveled from Iran to India to experience the intensity
of religions first-hand, he hitch-hiked from Denver to
L.A. once to hear the English mystic Gerald Heard, and
even in his seventies he was going down to Mexico to
spend all-night vigils with the peyote people, feeling
that he had not done sufficient justice to them before.
Unlike the majority of scholars I know, he has always
kept revising his interests and texts, as friends have
pointed out deficiencies, or as history has moved
forward; that is a way of saying that exploration, not
dogma, is his keynote.
There is another world inside us and around us is what
he has always sought to pass on to his students, and
there is a rare excitement in exploring it. Joy is the
word that keeps recurring in his speech, and at the
center of the religious life, he has said, is a peculiar
kind of joy (peculiar, in that it has to exist in the
face of such suffering). This eagerness and curiosity
towards the world, meant that he was exploring, and
explaining Buddhism, before most people had heard of
Suzuki or Ginsberg (and outlining the similarities
between the mystics view of another dimension and the
scientists long before The Tao of Physics sat on many a
bedside table); but it also means that he has always
been able to encapsulate the loftiest ideas in the most
down-to-earth and lucid examples. Religion is a cow, he
likes to quote Ramakrishna as saying, that kicks us, but
gives milk. `Two plus two equals four isn’t untrue, he
once told an interviewer, because the person who said it
was drunk at the time. A two year-old, losing her
ice-cream cone, feels that the world has ended; that is
how we are, he suggests, unable to see beyond our
traumas of the moment.
In an age defined, as much as anything, by the blurring
of old borders, Huston Smith’s rapier lucidity has been
especially useful in seeing what is buried within the
trees. Of all the fruits of his miraculously clear and
open mind, the one I appreciate the most, I think, is
his faculty for making distinctions not just between
wisdom traditions and East and West, but between worlds
we are apt to confuse. The psychedelic experience can be
a reflection of the mystical one, he says, and yet it is
momentary and worth little unless it can be translated
into better action. The spiritual is always affirmed
these days, while religion is discarded, he points out,
and yet spirituality is only as meaningful as its place
within a community. A large part of his grace has come
from bringing to the New Age some of the larger
perspective and serenity of the old.
Yet at the same time he has waged constant battle with
the “reductionists” of the academy who would use
scientist to suggest that we are only as great as what
we can fathom (the title of his recent best-seller Why
Religion Matters brings home his central point). The
West has much to teach us about control, he has pointed
out, but the East has a certain wisdom about surrender.
Yet learning from the East should not mean forsaking the
very real guidance and wisdom developed in the West.
When you read him, in fact, and especially when you see
or hear him (as recorded, irresistibly, in a forthcoming
book of interviews, The Way Things Are), you quickly see
that Professor Smith has the clarity and poise of one
who can sit inside every philosophy he describes, with
his eyes wide open. It is almost as if he were a Method
scholar of a kind, entering Hinduism in order to outline
the four forms of yoga (serving God, loving God, knowing
God and meditating on God), or drawing upon his Buddhist
training to explain how ignorance is not the same as
mystery (because ignorance can be solved). Above and
beyond the keen powers of analysis shown in his Beyond
the Post-Modern Mind, or his new book (with Philip
Novak), Buddhism: A Concise Introduction, is a process
of sympathy that can somehow make Nagarjuna or Shankara
intelligible, and in fact intriguing, to a teenager.
The other thing that gives him a special authority, I
would venture, and the natural authority of one graced
with a very special humility, is that he has suffered,
as much as any of those he writes about; his is not the
innocence that comes before experience but the one that
comes after. His eldest daughter died suddenly of
cancer, his grand-daughter was killed and in his middle
years—it’s hard to believe this now--he suffered a
crisis of faith that he likened to an extended bout of
spiritual flu." And yet, he still believes, by all
accounts, in the holiness of the human enterprise. And,
like the Dalai Lama, again, he has constantly refined
and strengthened his awareness, by taking it into the
heart of the lions den--deepening his Christian
understanding, by immersing himself so profoundly in
Vedanta teachings, that many Vedanta practitioners claim
him as their own; teaching his classes on the world’s
religions for fifteen years at M.I.T., in part because
he felt that science cannot live without religion any
more than religion can survive without science.
I have never really met Huston Smith, though I have
driven 200 miles to hear him, and one of the only
possessions I always keep in my two-room apartment in
rural Japan is a copy of the five, hour-long discussions
of The Wisdom of Faith he recorded with Bill Moyers on
P.B.S. in 1996. In those programs, alive with Professor
Smith’s twinkle, he sang a song, recited a poem he had
written about a man of Empire, talked about his
discovery of mutli-tonal chanting in a Tibetan Buddhist
monastery (he later published a ground-breaking article
on the phenomenon), and offered a transfixing story of
the time he spent studying Zen in Japan, concluding with
a roar of impatience that quickly turned into a kind of
understanding. Professor Smith is 84 now, and, my
friends tell me, as full of light and energy as ever,
completing three new books while sharing his latest
discoveries with friends, as he has done over the years
with everyone from Aldous Huxley to the Dalai Lama. The
more the world gets torn apart, in fact, by violence
done in the name of religion, the more our spiritual
grandfather, as I think of him, works to sift the
passing from the eternal. It is a rare thing in any age,
to find a model of sweetness and light so intent on
pursuit of the truth, that he passes on his excitement
like a holy contagion; but when you find one who can mix
such rigor with such grace, and bring real spirit to
real scholarship--I think here of the Dalai Lama and of
Huston Smith--you can consider yourself truly among the
blessed.”
The
following is a heartfelt message from His Holiness The
Dalai Lama:
Presented by: Dr. Tara N. Doyle: Emory
University: Director of Tibetan Studies Program in
Dharamsala, India and Senior Lecturer, Religion Dept.
(http://www.religion.emory.edu/faculty/doyle.html)(http://www.cipa.emory.edu/search_programs/programDetails.cfm?prgmID=43)
From His Holiness The Dalai Lama of Tibet:
I am very
happy to know that the Chaplaincy Institute, Grace
Cathedral, the Graduate Theological Union, and others of
you there in the California Bay Area are today paying
tribute to my old friend Huston Smith in recognition of
his many achievements over the last sixty years or so.
He is an outstanding authority on the world’s religions,
not only because of his far reaching knowledge of their
teachings and scriptures, but also because he has put so
many of them into practice, and as we say in Tibetan
Buddhism, discovered their real taste. Huston seems to
have an intuitive grasp of the spirit that animates the
religious life, that it is about kindness and
transforming our attitude and conduct in order to make
our lives more meaningful. I know of few other people
who have done so much to bring about the tolerance,
religious harmony and mutual respect that we so urgently
need today.
I have had
the great pleasure of meeting Huston on many occasions.
I have vivid memories of these meetings, not only
because of the warmth of his welcome, but also because
of the gentle kindness and strength of character he
always exhibits. The many conversations we have had
over the years have regularly served to reaffirm my
conviction in the importance of inter-religious dialogue
and the essential role that all major world religions
can play in promoting basic human good qualities such as
love, compassion, tolerance, forgiveness in the modern
world.
Besides his
work to promote the general cause of religious harmony
and understanding, I have been touched to note that for
forty years or more Huston has shown a special sympathy
for Tibetan Buddhism and the difficulties we Tibetans
have faced. He has been a staunch friend and I would
like to take this opportunity to thank him for his
unflinching fellowship. I pray that Huston’s already
long and fruitful life may continue for many more years
to come to be a source of joy to him, his family and his
many friends.
Rev. Heng Sure, Longtime friend and colleague,
PhD. Director of the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery,
(www.berkeleymonastery.org)
& A Global Councillor, The United Religions Initiative.
Presenting The Heart Sutra: (Rev.
Sure ordained as a Buddhist monk in 1976. He met his
teacher, the late Ven. Master HsÃ1⁄4an Hua, while
finishing an M.A. in Oriental Languages at UC Berkeley.
After receiving full ordination in the Mahayana
tradition of Chinese Buddhism he commenced a three
steps, one bow pilgrimage. With a fellow monk, he
traveled more than 600 miles up the California Coastal
Highway from Pasadena to Ukiah, making a full
prostration to the ground every three steps. They
dedicated their efforts to world peace. The journey took
over two years and nine months to complete)
Rev. Heng
Sure, will offer the Buddhist Heart Sutra.
THE HEART
OF PRAJNA PARAMITA SUTRA
“ When
Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara was practicing the profound
Prajna Paramita, he illuminated the Five Skandhas and
saw that they are all empty, and he crossed beyond all
suffering and difficulty. Shariputra, form does not
differ from emptiness; emptiness does not differ from
form. Form itself is emptiness; emptiness itself is
form. So too are feeling, cognition, formation, and
consciousness.
Shariputra,
all Dharmas are empty of characteristics. They are not
produced, not destroyed, not defiled, not pure; and they
neither increase nor diminish. Therefore, in emptiness
there is no form, feeling, cognition, formation, or
consciousness; no eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, or
mind; no sights, sounds, smells, tastes, objects of
touch, or Dharmas; no field of the eyes up to and
including no field of mind consciousness; and no
ignorance or ending of ignorance, up to and including no
old age and death or ending of old age and death. There
is no suffering, no accumulating, no extinction, and no
Way, and no understanding and no attaining. Because
nothing is attained, the Bodhisattva through reliance on
Prajna Paramita is unimpeded in his mind. Because there
is no impediment, he is not afraid, and he leaves
distorted dream-thinking far behind. Ultimately Nirvana!
All Buddhas
of the three periods of time attain
Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi through reliance on Prajna
Paramita. Therefore know that Prajna Paramita is a Great
Spiritual Mantra, a Great Bright Mantra, a Supreme
Mantra, an Unequalled Mantra. It can remove all
suffering: it is genuine and not false. That is why the
Mantra of Prajna Paramita was spoken. Recite it like
this:
Gaté Gaté
Paragaté Parasamgaté Bodhi Svaha!
Translation: Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether
beyond (to the other shore)! O enlightenment! Be it so!
Hail!
Buddhist Text Translation Society, 2000”
Swami
Prabuddhananda,
of the Vedanta Society of Northern California. (www.sfvedanta.org)
Will lead us in chanting.
Huston,
Your “Dharma Daughter” Vrajaprana of the Vedanta
Society of Southern CA. (www.vedanta.org)
will Present the award
We call up Robert Frager PhD
and Rev.
Megan Wagner & Rev. Jim Larkin: Faculty: The Chaplaincy
Institute, & Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,
www.TreeofLifeTeachings.com
Huston
arrived in a wheel chair, but as the drummers moved back
through the cathedral to the labyrinth, He stepped off
the stage and beaming his thousand watt smile- he hugged
his wife Kendra, and arm in arm gathered his daughter
and grandson and the four of them almost danced down the
aisle.
The day after the Grace Cathedral event and Huston
called to say he “was so ecstatic over the whole
thing.”
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The
Courage of Conscience Award;
