Collection
Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Thorsons (2003), 192 pages
Description
How to choose faith over fear to develop trust in ourselves and in life. * Sharon Salzberg, one of the most inspiring and eminent spiritual teachers of our time, tells her powerful, personal story and shares with readers the way that they too can learn to find faith; not in a spiritual teacher, a God or a religion, but in themselves. * Includes an account of the author's childhood: deserted by her mentally ill father, her mother died of a haemorrhage when Sharon was nine and she consequently grew up with her grandparents, isolated and withdrawn. * To find a way through her suffering, Sharon investigated meditation and Buddhism, travelling through Asia and studying with many famous masters. Here she reveals her discoveries and describes methods that can be practised by anyone of any tradition, regardless of religion or spiritual beliefs. * This book offers a way to feel at ease and at peace with yourself, and to discover your capacity for happiness, freedom and awakening.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member paisley1974
This is the first complete book of Salzberg's that I've read, having read several of her essays and articles. I really liked her perspective of looking at faith as a verb.
LibraryThing member neontapir
This book helped me understand faith in ways I never had before, from a Buddhist perspective.
LibraryThing member yeldabmoers
Faith by renowned meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg is one of those books that can change your entire perspective of the world. There are few books that can do that, that can challenge the foundation of your reality. For me, such books were On the Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche and
But Salzberg challenges all of this. She speaks of her version of faith, one that doesn’t revolve around God at all. Salzberg lost her mother at nine when she witnessed her hemorrhage right before her eyes. Her father left the family when she was a young child and ended up institutionalized. To experience such devastation in childhood, it is no wonder that she could dismiss God entirely, or any higher being. But miraculously, Salzberg doesn’t reject God, or she doesn’t say so. She just has a different view of faith.
She begins by explaining that the word faith in Pali, the language of the original Buddhist texts, means “to place the heart upon.” In Faith, part memoir, part essay, Salzberg shares many beliefs and tents of Buddhism that have shaped her spirituality and concept of faith. To her faith is to keep walking forward, even in the dark. It’s the strength to take that magnitude of risk, though you know not what lies ahead.
I found this concept of faith wholly original, a Godless faith. What kind of faith can you really have without the power of God?
Deeper into her book, Salzberg speaks of an immense interconnectedness among us, and a truth like protective hands that holds her. It sounds like God, but she doesn’t elaborate as to what this is. Her concept sounds oddly familiar, like the invisible hand that Newton referred to in his writings, or that unexplainable uplifting force that Tolstoy explains at the end of his memoir. Both are referring to God, and it sounds like Salzberg is too, but she isn’t.
Suffering, such as when we experience trauma or loss, she says, comes from feeling alone, separate from everyone and everything around us. The core aspect of despair is this sense of utter isolation and disconnection. She explains that Buddhist teachings reveal that it is in deep suffering that faith can be uncovered and renewed. It is at this low point, the abyss, that we begin to sense this interconnectedness, that we are intimately connected to a bigger reality.
But what is that thread that connects us? What is it that makes us so united and so whole? What is the source of this unity? To me, that source of unity is God, and I wonder, what is this source to Salzberg? How does she refer to this interconnectedness that is just there?
Though Salzberg’s book doesn’t answer all of my questions, Faith is still a beautifully written, poignant, pivotal book that can stretch all notions of spirituality.
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Walden by Henry David Thoreau. As a heavy reader of religion and spirituality, I thought I’d never read a book on faith apart from God, or a deity we know as God. I didn’t think the word could exist without God.But Salzberg challenges all of this. She speaks of her version of faith, one that doesn’t revolve around God at all. Salzberg lost her mother at nine when she witnessed her hemorrhage right before her eyes. Her father left the family when she was a young child and ended up institutionalized. To experience such devastation in childhood, it is no wonder that she could dismiss God entirely, or any higher being. But miraculously, Salzberg doesn’t reject God, or she doesn’t say so. She just has a different view of faith.
She begins by explaining that the word faith in Pali, the language of the original Buddhist texts, means “to place the heart upon.” In Faith, part memoir, part essay, Salzberg shares many beliefs and tents of Buddhism that have shaped her spirituality and concept of faith. To her faith is to keep walking forward, even in the dark. It’s the strength to take that magnitude of risk, though you know not what lies ahead.
I found this concept of faith wholly original, a Godless faith. What kind of faith can you really have without the power of God?
Deeper into her book, Salzberg speaks of an immense interconnectedness among us, and a truth like protective hands that holds her. It sounds like God, but she doesn’t elaborate as to what this is. Her concept sounds oddly familiar, like the invisible hand that Newton referred to in his writings, or that unexplainable uplifting force that Tolstoy explains at the end of his memoir. Both are referring to God, and it sounds like Salzberg is too, but she isn’t.
Suffering, such as when we experience trauma or loss, she says, comes from feeling alone, separate from everyone and everything around us. The core aspect of despair is this sense of utter isolation and disconnection. She explains that Buddhist teachings reveal that it is in deep suffering that faith can be uncovered and renewed. It is at this low point, the abyss, that we begin to sense this interconnectedness, that we are intimately connected to a bigger reality.
But what is that thread that connects us? What is it that makes us so united and so whole? What is the source of this unity? To me, that source of unity is God, and I wonder, what is this source to Salzberg? How does she refer to this interconnectedness that is just there?
Though Salzberg’s book doesn’t answer all of my questions, Faith is still a beautifully written, poignant, pivotal book that can stretch all notions of spirituality.
Show Less
Original publication date
2002
ISBN
0007151144 / 9780007151141
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Call number
SAL-101
Pages
192