Huston Smith

While at Washington University, Smith was the host of two National Educational Television series (NET – the forerunner of PBS): The Religions of Man and Search for America.

The Pacific Coast Theological Society celebrated "the lifetime of achievements of Professor Emeritus Huston Smith by considering the relationship between theology, mythology, and science" in a special session in 2012. In 2015, the society presented Smith with their Codron Prize for The World's Religions.

Smith was named to be one of the first recipients of the Order of Universal Interfaith and Universal Order of Sannyasa's Interfaith-Interspiritual Sage Award in January 2010. He received the award at his home on February 23, 2010.

Throughout his career, Smith made himself available to the communities where he resided. Toward the end of his life, while living in Berkeley, California, he participated in the Pacific Coast Theological Society at the Graduate Theological Union. He also attended local churches, including Trinity United Methodist, First Congregational Church, and Epworth United Methodist. On the occasion of publishing Tales of Wonder, in 2009 he co-convened "community conversations" at Epworth, during which he responded to questions about his life and work.

In 1996, Bill Moyers devoted a 5-part PBS special to Smith's life and work, "The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith". Smith has produced three series for public television: "The Religions of Man", "The Search for America", and (with Arthur Compton) "Science and Human Responsibility". His films on Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, and Sufism have all won awards at international film festivals.

Due to his connection with Heard and Huxley, Smith went on to meet Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), and others at the Center for Personality Research, where Leary was research professor. The group began experimenting with psychedelics and what Smith later called "empirical metaphysics". The experience and history of the group are described in Smith's book Cleansing the Doors of Perception. During this period, Smith was also part of the Harvard Project, an attempt to raise spiritual awareness through entheogenic plants. During his tenure at Syracuse University, he was informed by leaders of the Onondaga tribe about the Native American religious traditions and practices, which resulted in an additional chapter in his book on the world's religions. In 1990 the Supreme Court ruled that the use of peyote as a religious sacrament by Native Americans was not protected under the US Constitution. Smith took up the cause as a noted religion scholar. With his help in 1994, Congress passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act amendment, providing legislative protection to a religious practice that the Supreme Court had decided lacks constitutional protection.

In 1973, Smith moved to Syracuse University, where he was Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Philosophy until he took emeritus status in 1983. That year, Smith moved to Berkeley, California, where he remained a visiting professor of religious studies at the University of California, Berkeley until his death.

In 1958, Smith was appointed professor of philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he remained until 1973. While there, he participated in experiments with psychedelics that professors Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert conducted at Harvard University. In 1964, during a trip to India, Smith stayed in a Gyuto Tibetan Buddhist monastery. During his visit he heard the monks chanting and realized that each individual was producing a chord, composed of a fundamental note and overtones. He returned to record the chanting in 1967 and asked acoustic engineers at MIT to analyze the sound. They confirmed the finding, which is an example of overtone singing. Smith has called this the singular empirical discovery of his career. The recording was released as Music of Tibet (1967). Royalties from the album continue to support the Gyuto Tantric University. Because of his belief in religion, however, Smith was mistrusted by his colleagues, leading MIT to prohibit him from teaching graduate students.

As a young man, Smith suddenly turned from traditional Methodist Christianity to mysticism, influenced by the writings of Gerald Heard and Aldous Huxley. In 1947, before moving from Denver to St. Louis, Smith set out to meet with then-famous author Gerald Heard. Heard responded to Smith's letter, inviting him to his Trabuco College (later donated as the Ramakrishna Monastery) in Trabuco Canyon, Southern California. Heard made arrangements to have Smith meet the prominent author Aldous Huxley, a highly respected novelist and commentator on modern society. Smith recounts in the 2010 documentary Huxley on Huxley meeting Huxley at his desert home. Smith was told to look up Swami Satprakashananda of the Vedanta Society once he settled in St. Louis. So began Smith's experimentation with meditation and association with the Vedanta Society of the Ramakrishna order. Smith developed an interest in the Traditionalist School formulated by René Guénon, Frithjof Schuon and Ananda Coomaraswamy. This interest became a continuing thread in all his writings.

Born and raised in Suzhou, China in a Methodist missionary family, Huston Smith moved back to the United States at the age of 17 and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1945 with a PhD in philosophy. He spent the majority of his academic career as a professor at Washington University in St. Louis (1947-1958), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1958-1973) and Syracuse University (1973-1983). In 1983, he retired from Syracuse and moved to Berkeley, California, where he was a visiting professor of religious studies at the University of California, Berkeley until his death.

Upon coming to the United States to complete his education, he received a B.A. from Central Methodist University in 1940 and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1945.

Huston Smith was born on May 31, 1919 in Suzhou, China as Huston Cummings Smith. He was married to Kendra Wieman.