JUST AS COMPARING BIBLE TRANSLATIONS HELPS US UNDERSTAND both specific passages and the Bible as a whole, so comparing religious traditions helps us understand both specific traditions and religious phenomena more broadly. Comparative study brings witnesses with differing points of view into play, in the hope they’ll clarify one another. Last week, while re-reading The …
Different Roads, One Path
AS THE WAR AGAINST FASCIST IMPERIALISM REACHED ITS CLIMAX around the world in 1944-45, Aldous Huxley was in southern California publishing The Perennial Philosophy. The book, still in print and now a popular classic in the comparative study of religion, spells out what Huxley called the “highest common factor” in the world’s religions. While differences …
Hide and Seek
Alan Watts told a remarkable story about God playing hide-and-seek. It was a playful presentation of key ideas from Hindu philosophy. The Upanishads say, "You are That." Watts said, "You're IT!" The story goes something like this ...
Carried Away in the Watercourse
LEFT ALONE TO FOLLOW ITS NATURAL COURSE, CONSCIOUSNESS EBBS AND FLOWS like the tides, rises and falls like waves on the sea, rolls and tumbles like a mountain stream, wanders like a meandering river. Over the past month or so, I’ve re-read the Zhuangzi (also known as the Chuang Tzu) in two translations, one old, …
Soul Spirit Wisdom 