In ‘Wisdomkeeper,’ a Maine author goes to the source to chronicle the life of radical religious scholar Huston Smith.

For more than 50 years, professors of religion and philosophy have cited Huston Smith as the standout authority on world religions.

His 1958 book, “The World’s Religions,” is a stalwart to this day in college courses on comparative religions. Smith was first to describe religions as their followers experience them, instead of as Christians interpret them. He has written 13 books. Bill Moyers devoted a five-part PBS special to Smith in 1996.

Now Dana Sawyer, a professor of religion and philosophy at Maine College of Art and adjunct professor in Asian Religions at the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine, has published a lively and definitive biography, titled “Huston Smith: Wisdomkeeper.” The 305-page book, based on multiple interviews with 95-year-old Smith (who continues to speak and lecture) is an official biography, in that it is approved by its subject.

Sawyer is the author of a previous book, “Aldous Huxley: A Biography,” that received considerable praise.

In his just-published book, the author chronicles Smith’s adventurous life, including his friendship with Huxley, the Dalai Lama, Joseph Campbell and other famous movers of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Advertisement

Smith was born in 1919 in Soochow, China, where his parents were Methodist missionaries. At 17, he left China to attend Central Methodist College in Missouri to prepare for life as a missionary.

“Because we were the only Americans in our small town (in China),” Sawyer quotes Smith as saying, “my parents were my only role models, so I grew up assuming that missionaries were what Westerners grew up to be.”

Smith was an able college student fascinated by striking similarities among the world’s diverse religions. He went on to receive a master’s degree and doctorate from the University of Chicago. He became a mystic, met Aldous Huxley and studied under Swami Satprakashananda at the Vedanta Society of St. Louis.

Oddly, perhaps, Smith found no glaring contradiction between the Methodist religion practiced by his parents and religions that originated elsewhere around the globe. This led to a philosophy of tolerance he espoused, later called Perennialism.

For many Americans growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, Smith’s objective explanation of Eastern religions stirred interest. Yoga became popular. Centers for the study of Hinduism and Buddhism opened in the United States, especially in California.

One of my favorite chapters in Sawyer’s book has to do with Smith’s long professorship in the philosophy department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There he met Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, who were then involved in testing psychedelics, including the recently synthesized and then-legal drug, LSD.

Advertisement

Smith was interested because insight gained from psychedelics mimicked to some extent insights gained through meditation and yoga. But he withdrew support when drug abuse spread and Leary espoused his infamous advice: Tune in. Turn on. Drop out.

In 1966, in a speech reminiscent of Margaret Chase Smith’s declaration of conscience, Smith broke with Leary in a student-filled auditorium in Berkeley, California.

As described by Sawyer, Smith’s speech lambasted the psychedelic movement as neither revolutionary nor utopian. Its message, Sawyer quotes Smith as saying, is “Quit school. Quit your job. Drop out. The slogan is too negative to command respect.”

“Wisdomkeeper” is a long but lively book. It illuminates the debate between science and religion, and the sometimes disconnect between religion and spirituality. Thoughtful readers will enjoy this book of wise insights into the nature of being.

Lloyd Ferriss is a writer and photographer who lives in Richmond.


Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.