Tales of Wonder audiobook

I seldom read biographies, and still less often, autobiographies, making exceptions only for those subjects who truly fascinate me or who I believe have much to teach. Huston Smith falls squarely into both categories.Many years ago, my husband and I took a class on World Religions being given at the local high school by a professor from the nearest state university. The text was Smith's The Religions of Man, since revised, enlarged, and retitled The World's Religions. So I was familiar with Smith, and the title of this book attracted me. I pulled it from the library shelf and realized it was an autobiography, but sat down to read a few pages; immediately I knew I wanted to read the whole book.Smith is 90 years old -- he and his friend Pete Seeger share a birthday -- and grew up in a remote village in China where his parents were Methodist missionaries. He still belongs to a Methodist church - I believe, from things he says in this book, that it's San Francisco's Glide Memorial -- but has not only studied, but practiced, other religions. His quest for learning took him first to Shanghai, then to a small college in Missouri, and then to Chicago for grad school. Subsequently, besides teaching in several universities, he travelled all over the world and even to the doors of perception. (He tells of taking mescaline with Timothy Leary.) The tale of his experiences is fascinating in itself, but what makes this book truly worth reading are the nuggets of wisdom, well expressed, that Smith has gained from his studies, his practices, and his life. As a bonus, the appendix to the book is a lecture, "A Universal Grammar of Worldviews," that Smith gave at Pacific School of Religion four years ago, and which contains both knowledge and wisdom. Highly recommended.

Many years ago when visiting a nursing home, I met man who at the age of 101 was writing his first book. I met him again two years later and he was working on his second book. Like this nursing home patient, Huston Smith wrote this book shortly before turning ninety while living in an assisted living facility. He wrote this autobiograpy after a lifetime of studying, participating in and writing about the religions of the world. This is his fifteen book. If you are looking for a memoir of his spiritual life, forget it. This is an old-fashioned autobiography where the author touches on the highlights of his life, shares some stories of people he has met and generally paints a positive picture of his life.I was sixteen years old, a junior in high school and committed to becoming a minister when I encountered The Religions of Man by Huston Smith in 1965. The book was to change the course of my life and put me on the road to doubt and disbelief. I went from being committed to the ministry to not believing in God in two short years. Smith opened my eyes to the religions of the world. Smith was the son of Methodist missionaries to China and spent his early years growing up in China prior to the Communist revolution. He was on the path to becoming a minister before becoming a professor of world religions. He not only studied and wrote about religions but also practiced them. He embraced Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam.Tales of Wonder is a fast easy read that will give you some background on Huston Smith but little insight into the man. Most people would better spend their time reading his books on religion.

An autobiography of a man who made the world's religions his lifelong study, not in any impersonal way, but with a child's wholehearted delight. Before I had finished the book, I already knew I wanted a copy of my own.

I keep wondering how much more detailed this memoir would have been if Smith had started writing it several years ago -- or if, perhaps, he were less modest. He is a fascinating, charming, very humanistic person who has lived an incredible life, one which would have easily filled out a memoir four or five times the length of this and remained interesting. But these anecdotes merely provide a graceful outline of his life; they don't dig into the details which would have taken it from "interesting" to "compelling." Still, this memoir is well worth reading. As a student of comparative religion myself, I most enjoyed the second half, when he wrote about his spiritual explorations, including deep, decade-long dives into Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, his late-arriving exploration of indigenous religions (leading to a re-write of his major work), and even of entheogens as part of the spiritual journey.There is a great deal of wisdom in the second half of the book, and I highlighted many passages, and shared many of them to my FB page. They will be worth returning to for more contemplation.

I imagine this autobiography must have been one of Huston Smith's most challenging books to write--for he was both an extraordinarily gifted and remarkably accomplished man and a humble man. A egotistical person, with only a small fraction of Smith's life experiences, would have produced a much larger volume. So when he devotes a sentence to an event that seems to deserve a chapter, I take his brevity to be reflection of his modesty, or better yet, his absence of conceit. All of that is to say that while the reader might wish that this wonderful look back on Smith's life had been longer and more thorough, such a book will have to come from a biographer. This is Huston Smith's story as told by the man himself--at age 90 and living in a nursing home. It is as it should be.

A Very Interesting LifeHouston Smith's book on his life was a delight to read, not only because a biography allows the reader to peek into a person's intimate life, but because it describes in detail the role of religion in his daily business. Furthermore, the book is written with humour and abounds in deep reflections about existence.

I've heard that some books find you, and I can count on my fingers the ones that have truly found me when I was ready. I was not ready for this book to be one of them but it was. I'm not sure how much more to review a book whose words blend in with the soul of the reader, at least this reader. I am humbled at his life and Huston is high on my list of people I'd share a beer with.

Easily the most spiritually charged and life changing book I have ever read. After reading H. smith’s works I realized I was not alone in my thinking and exploration of world religions.

May we all reach 90 with as much curiosity, joy, and presence as Huston Smith!

Man. This book is fantastic. Wonder and gratitude ooze out of every page of this Religion scholar (and practitioner)'s wonderfully written reflection of his 90+ years spent taking it all in.

I adored Huston Smith before I finished the first chapter of "The World's Religions," which I read for my Comparative Religion class. Smith is a sort of hierophant, revealing the invisible beauties embraced by each of the world's religions. His focus is on the positive, essentially showing why the adherents of a religion adhere to it, the experiences provided by it. I knew I wanted to know more about Smith's life just from "The World's Religions." He grew up as a missionary's child in China, spent a decade as a Hindu, a decade as a Buddhist, and a decade as a Sufi. He befriended Thomas Merton and explored entheogens with Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary. Upon turning 90, he decided that he should create some record of his experiences.At first, I found myself disliking the fact that I was allowing myself to read the recollections of someone so unceasingly cheery, but a few tragedies midway through the book, and the general aging process, allowed me to see him as human, and his experiences truly were quite interesting. I found the book enthralling, though I admit that it's not much of a narrative, and you would have to find his exploits intrinsically interesting to find it worthwhile. Still, I'm sure you'd find Huston Smith utterly adorable.

Huston Smith wrote The World's Religions which sold 2 1/2 million copies & was the subject of a 5 part special on PBS wherein Bill Moyers interviewed him about the world's religions. He is now 90 and this is his new autobiography. For someone whose spent his life pondering the depths of Islam, Hinduism, and other religions, this book is surprisingly conversational in tone. It feels very much like you're just sitting down listening to someone tell stories about their life. I had never heard of him before & merely stumbled upon this book by chance at the bookstore. I spent a good chunk of the weekend reading it & wishing I had known about Smith for years. His book romps through encounters with people like Aldous Huxley, Martin Luther King, Timothy Leary, & the Dalai Lama. Smith is a Christian but not like any Christian I've met. Fundamentalists will object to his views of Christianity. And I suspect Islamic fundamentalists will object to his views of Islam. He definitely has a liberal viewpoint and at least in this book looks at religions through rose colored glasses - which is good, it's been a long time since I've thought about any organized religion in a positive way.

"In the Scarlet Letter Hawthorne cautions us to show the world, if not our worst, at least that by which our worst can be inferred.""In Buddhism monks daily recite the Five remembrances, which are: I will lose my youth, my health, my dear ones and everything I hold dear, and finally lose life itself, by the very nature of my being human. These are bitter reminders that the only thing that continues is the consequences of our action. The fact that all the things we hold dear and love are transient does not mean that we should love them less but, love them even more.""This is my litmus test for...any mental experience however induced: does it enhance your whole life, and do you in turn enhance the lives of others?""We should conceive God not as an object but as a direction""The proper response to a great work of art is to enter into it as though there were nothing else in the world. The proper response to a major spiritual tradition, if you can truly see it, may be to practice it."

I was about to give this book five stars, but then realized that I am probably not going to read it again, and I think the "amazing" should be reserved for those. But the life of which it tells is absolutely amazing, at least for those of us who appreciate a rich inner life at least as much as an eventful outward life. In the case of Huston Smith, both are true. He was present at pivotal moments, met and got to know influential people, and had the ability to make use of all this. Regardless of whether you agree with him or even respect his view of the validity of the great world religions, he is a man who will be remembered as standing a head taller than the crowd of his time, a remarkable man, with a vision and the will and dedication to pursue it.

Easily the best book he wrote and considering I've read every book he's written I highly suggest you read this if you want a clip of all of his book and more of his background. This man is one of my idols thanks to dr ruff history professor introducing him to me when I started working on my psych and Spanish degree. My interest in religion and cultures of the world keeps my soul alive and so do these books that tell me there's so much more to learn

As always, Huston Smith was awesome in the true sense of awe inspiring. Reading this brought me back to the mid 90s when I met him during one of his speaking engagements in Syracuse, NY. I loved listening to him then and I loved reading of his journey in Tales of Wonder. For anyone who loves to learn of the World's religions and wishes to learn more of how one man experienced them, this is an excellent read!