This lecture discusses the distinction between esoteric and exoteric religions, arguing that the primary difference lies in their approach to the divine. The speaker explores how various religious traditions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity, embody these distinctions. The lecture also touches on the idea of a universal, esoteric truth that underlies all religions.
Huston Smith — 2 recordings in the archive.
Related reading: Forgotten Truth: The Common Vision of the World’s Religions by Huston Smith.
I guess without giving it too much thought, I had assumed that the chief distinctions within religions consisted, you might say, of a vertical line which could represent divisions between the major great historical traditions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and so on, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, just to mention some of the principal ones. Now, recently I've become convinced that the basic distinction is really a horizontal one, which should be drawn this way and which cuts right across all the traditions. And I've been using, in my own mind, the words esoteric and exoteric to designate this distinction. Let me move into it quite personally. I have sat with—I can just move them through my mind—Swami Satprakashananda in Hinduism, Gotō Zuigan Roshi and Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in Buddhism. I would have to leave the Chinese area blank even though I was born there because I haven't been back to the mainland since my youth. So I can't name anyone in that tradition. In Judaism, Hugo Bergmann, in Jerusalem; Thomas Merton in Christianity; the Sheikh Isa in Islam. As I say, I have sat with these men in absolute accord, just not a ripple, not a thread of division, present. Meanwhile, I could take, well, if I take the tradition that I grew up in, Christianity, I can turn on an evangelist from Los Angeles or some of the InterVarsity Fellowship people, say, at MIT, and all kinds of static going on across this line. Well, that's why experientially, and I could duplicate that in the other traditions too, there are certain representatives in those traditions with whom I sense just an enormous, in ways unbridgeable, gulf. So this seems to be the basic distinction, and it's that that I want to explore. I'll use about fifteen or twenty minutes to unpack, to lift to direct attention, the differences between these two modes of apprehension of approach in the religious field, and then we can open it up to your comments or questions. Just one more word before going into specifics on the differences. What I've come to the conclusion, provisionally, is that there are different spiritual types, personality types. And this is perhaps the most basic. There might be another one if we had the purely secular view out here that has no religious sensitivity, sensibility, then that's a huge divide, too. But this is the divide within the…