Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience - Softcover

Salzberg, Sharon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573223409 ISBN 13: 9781573223409

Publisher: Riverhead Books, 2003

Synopsis

In this beautifully written work, one of America's most beloved meditation teachers offers discerning wisdom on understanding faith as a healing quality. Through the teachings of Buddha and insight gained from her lifelong spiritual quest, Salzberg provides us with a road map for cultivating a feeling of peace that can be practiced by anyone of any tradition.

About this title

Review

Bestselling author Sharon Salzberg explores the meaning of faith through her personal story about a harrowing childhood of isolation and loss (a father's abandonment, a mother's early death) and her eventual journey into the Buddhist tradition. The overriding message, explains Salzberg, is that faith is "not superficial or sentimental: it does not say everything will turn out all right." So what is faith, if not trust in a happy ending? Salzburg, the cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society, explains that faith resides not in the outcome, but in the willingness to see the possibility for change.

"The first step on the journey of faith is to recognize that everything is moving onward to something else, inside us and outside.... We see that a self-image we've been holding doesn't need to define us forever, the next step is not the last step, what life was is not what it is now, and certainly not what it might yet be."

Like the great teachers of Buddhism, Salzberg relies on her stories to make the teachings relevant. She shifts effortlessly from the voice of a memoirist to the voice of a master teacher. Through her insights, we come to understand faith as a verb. Faith means never giving up on the possibilities of each moment, always seeing "our own potential for happiness, for vibrant wisdom and sustained compassion--a potential that all beings share." --Gail Hudson

About the Author

Sharon Salzberg has been practicing and studying Buddhism for more than thirty years. Now a renowned spiritual leader and meditation instructor, she has trained with some of the foremost masters of India, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, and Tibet. She is the cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society, a center devoted to meditation training, and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in Massachusetts, both of which serve a community of more than 20,000. She is a frequent contributor to O, The Oprah Magazine and the author of Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness.

About this edition

• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1573223409
• ISBN 13: 9781573223409
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192