Search - Huston Smith: The Mystic's Journey on DVD

Smith is great, but these films have exceeded their freshnes

Jason Mierek | Urbana, IL | 05/05/2006

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Huston Smith is a wonderful thinker, writer, and speaker who never fails to inspire.

Alas, the three films on this DVD are long past their expiration dates in terms of production values. If you loved the experience of watching twenty-year old films in high school, then by all means purchase this DVD. I bought it used as a resource for my undergrad Asian Religions class, and my students were embarrassed at how dated it was. Needless to say, I did not show it again. It was soon in my "trade" pile and is no longer in my collection.

My advice is to pass on this DVD and to look instead for The Wisdom of Faith, a set of Bill Moyers interviews with Huston Smith. Moyers' skill at interviewing elucidates such intelligent and warm improvised responses from Smith that repeat viewings are a pleasure."

Huston Smith teamed up with filmmakers Elda and Irving Hartl

bernie | Arlington, Texas | 08/31/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

""Externals must yield to internals,
Matter to meaning,
Outward symbol to inner reality,
Love the pitcher less... and the water more."

This fascinating film looks like it should be just one of a series of films.

In this day and age of documentaries from many major scholars and investigators and presented by people such as Bill Moyers we tend to over look hard to find yet just as relevant earlier documentaries.

This film has three separate films Islamic Mysticism: The Sufi Way," "Requiem for a Faith: Tibetan Buddhism" and "India and the Infinite: The Soul of a People." Each is found to be fascinating in its self.

What make the films fascinating is that even though the focus is on the mysticism of the religion the actual subject is more of the culture; there is good footage of daily lives of the different regions.

This is only an 80 minutes presentation that leaves you wanting more.
The only down fall is that we can see the original film is dated and no one took the time to remaster or clean up the original scratches. One you start watching you will not notice.


The World's Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions"