The Huston Smith Reader by Smith Huston

Author:Smith, Huston
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: University of California Press

VI

We have suggested that each of the world's three great religious traditions has exercised a noteworthy influence on one of the basic human problems, but seems to have tended insufficiently to the other two. It would appear that an adequate civilization must strike all three notes as a chord. In developing this chord of a fully adequate world culture, each of the three great traditions appears to have something of importance to contribute. Perhaps each has something to learn as well.

EPILOGUE

Not often in discussions as general as this does one stumble upon evidence so clear-cut as to stand as independent verification for an entire thesis. But since completing the above, a point has occurred to me which seems to come close to this.

What is truth? The question didn't arise in our discussion. But if one does raise it, one finds the three civilizations answering along the lines we would expect. For the West, truth is essentially correspondence with a state of affairs that exists independently in nature or history (past nature). A Chinese, on the other hand, will feel that the primary objects to which assertions refer, and are responsible, are the feelings of persons involved. Hence the normality of white lies and keeping one's mouth shut when appropriate. India has a third criterion: to India truth is essentially spiritual pragmatism. One can generate little interest in India over whether Hindu myths are “true” in our Western sense—whether Krishna really lived, for example. The accounts are true to the needs of the human spirit. What could be more important?

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