Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
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
Book Description
Faith. It's a word loaded with promise and controversy. It's a word often misunderstood. We're tried and tested, some days feeling that everything is right with the world, some days feeling lost and alone. Maybe we think that the innocent, lucky few have faith, and those more worldly couldn't possibly. Or, that we have to give up independence to attain it.
Stripping away negative conceptions that dismiss faith as being divisive or requiring blind adherence to a belief system, Sharon Salzberg offers discerning wisdom on understanding faith as a healing quality, a refuge that can be nurtured in us all. In her beautifully written book we find that faith is neither blind nor ignorant. Salzberg shows how to combine devotion and the intellect to develop a genuine ease with ourselves and the world.
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. |
