I recall vividly the first time I met Ninian Smart. It was a number of years ago at a conference in London. With that slightly whimsical smile of his, Ninian came across the room and said to me, 'I know you!' I, of course, knew of him and, after a brief conversation, was delighted to recognise a kindred spirit and to have the certainty that we would be longstanding friends.
I have always had the greatest admiration for Ninian as an extraordinary scholar and as an exemplary person. Generous to a fault-he could never say no to any reasonable demand upon his time if there was the possibility that others, through his efforts, might understand more of the richness of nonwestern religious and philosophical traditions; self-effacing-he refused ever to take himself as seriously as others were wont to do; blessed with a remarkable sense of wry humor-he could recite, so it seemed, every religious joke ever uttered by man or woman; and possessed of an enormous range of cultural knowledge that he exhibited so thoroughly in his many published works. Ninian Smart was indeed 'one of a kind'.
And yet at the same time, he was a 'pluralist', if ever there was one. I think he had many answers available when asked what his own religious affiliation was, but I did hear him once tell a persistent interlocutor that he was a 'non-theistic, early Buddhist Christian with a large dose of S uaivism thrown in'! Ninian taught me, and I assume countless others, that every religious and philosophical tradition had something valuable to teach us, but that did not mean that we-in a naive relativist manner-were unable thereby to exercise sound critical judgment. He insisted on the utmost rigor of thought and evaluation, while always remaining open to what another was saying. Ninian was, I believe, a complete master of philosophical hermeneutics at its best.
The last time I saw Ninian was during a visit of his to Hawaii to deliver the Berry Lectures at our Department of Religion. He gave me a copy of his just published World Philosophies and remarked, 'Just a little thing I've been working on for awhile'. Little thing indeed! Who but Ninian Smart would, among other things, boldly take on in separate chapters-and never superficially-