Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience
by Sharon Salzberg
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Book Summary Information
Author: Sharon SalzbergEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-09-02
ISBN: 1573223409
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: Riverhead Trade
Book Reviews of Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience
Book Review: good example of Buddhism, overuse of 'faith'
Summary: 3 Stars
Faith is full of touching stories, and heart felt feelings.
This book connects with my own experiences of suffering and depression. There are indeed great things to come of meditation and many of the other eye opening concepts in Buddhism, and this book does a fantastic job of representing them.
The largest gripe I have, and what prevents me from spreading this enlightening book seriously, is ironically the author's use of the term faith. She does define faith initially as that of a foreign Buddhist concept of 'saddah' and does a fair translation of it, but I fear that she takes far too many liberties when expounding on faith as the book progresses. It starts to sound like faith is the result of Buddhism, and not merely a facet alluding to trust required to continue on the path approaching enlightenment.
I find myself mentally replacing her use of the word 'faith' with more concrete concepts like 'trust', 'wisdom', 'love', 'self-reflection', 'balance'. It becomes so used and given so many implied meanings that it becomes meaningless jargon. This word is called upon so reflexively through-out, I start to question to what ends some passage are actually saying about faith. I would even re-title the book as 'happiness'.
If you can overlook the tendency of this book to treat faith as a mystical and metaphysical catch-all, the sentiments within can be a motivating asset in your quest to reach harmony and peace with existence, and yourself.
Summary of Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience
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.
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
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