Faith : trusting your own deepest experience PDF
Preview Faith : trusting your own deepest experience
SHARON SALZBERG bestselling author of Lovingkindness “Sharon Salzberg is a great teacher and Faith is a book full of wisdom—knowledge that is earned honestly and rendered vividly through wonderful and revealing stories. I will keep this book at my side for years. ” —Susan Griffin, author of A Chorus of Stones Faith. Its a word loaded with promise and con troversy. Its a word often misunderstood. We may think that the innocent lucky few have faith, and that those more worldly couldn’t pos sibly. Or that we have to give up independence to attain it. In Faith, Sharon Salzberg strips away negative conceptions that dismiss faith as being divisive or requiring blind adherence to a belief system. She offers discerning wisdom on understanding faith as a healing quality, a refuge that can be nurtured in each of us to soothe life’s deepest wounds. In this beautifully written book, we find that faith is neither blind nor ignorant. Rather, it is firmly grounded in intelligence, common sense, and most important, our own experience. Through the teachings of the Buddha and insight gained from her lifelong spiritual quest, Salzberg pro vides us with a road map for cultivating a feeling of ease and peace that can be practiced by any one, of any tradition. 0208 d eep est experien ce SHARON SALZBERG RIVERHEAD BOOKS A MEMBER OF PENGUIN PUTNAM INC. NEW YORK 2002 From Lalla: Naked Song, translated and copyright © Coleman Barks, reprinted by permission of the translator. From “East Coker* in Four Quartets, copyright 1942 by T. S. Eliot and renewed 1970 by Esme Valerie Eliot, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc. From “East Coker* in Four Quartets, copyright by T. S. Eliot, re printed by permission of the publishers, Faber and Faber Ltd. From “Autumn” by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated and copyright © Jonathan Cott, reprinted by permission of die translator. Riverhead Books a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. 375 Hudson Street New York, NY 10014 Copyright © 2002 by Sharon Salzberg All rights reserved.This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission. Published simultaneously in Canada Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Salzberg, Sharon. Faith : trusting your own deepest experience / Sharon Salzberg. p. cm. ISBN 1-57322-228-3 1. Salzberg, Sharon. 2. Buddhists—United States—Biography. 3. Spiritual biography. 4. Faith (Buddhism). I.Tide. BQ984.L7A3 2002 2002017901 294.3'092—dc21 IB] Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 This book is printed on add-free paper. © Book design by Marysarah Quinn T o my teach ers, wh o h a ve taug h t me h ow to liv e , an d wh y . acknowledgments So many people have helped me since 1996, when the idea first came to me to write a book about faith, that I couldn’t possibly name them all. Among them are wonder ful friends who have helped shape my understanding of faith through discussion, inspiration, or the example of their lives. They include Joseph Goldstein, Tara Bennett- Goleman, Dan Goleman, Sarah Doering, Ram Dass, Sunanda Markus, Mark Epstein, Bob Thurman, Lila Anderson, Mag gie Spiegel, Dorothy Austin, and Sylvia Boorstein. Several wise and generous people either helped guide me through the publishing process, gave me feedback on the manuscript, or reminded me that the essence of good writing is to “tell the truth," and pointed out when I fell short of that. They include Amy Gross, Mark Matousek, Tracy Cochran, Naomi Wolf, Patty Gift, Elizabeth Cutthrell, A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S Marsha Norman, Dean Ornish, Jonathan Cott, Barbara Gra ham, Kate Wheeler, Catherine Ingram, and Jeff Zaleski. In the course of writing this book I have been sheltered, fed, supported, and befriended by Ann Buck, Jen Green field, Gina Thompson, Daidie Donnelly, Julie Tato, Anne Millikin, Fred Hanson, the staff, board, and teachers of IMS, Davine Fox, Mitch Kapor, and my extraordinary yoga teacher John Friend. Gyano Gibson and Eric McCord, the home team, provided the essential platform that kept the rest of my life going so that I could write. Eric did every thing from help me find the missing toolbar on the com puter on a Saturday morning, to permissions, to all levels of computer support. Gyano helped me make numerous difficult choices about what needed to be said, entered changes for what seemed like a million hours in LA, and has steadfastly accompanied me throughout the many byways of this journey. Shoshana Alexander first sat down with me in 1997, to ask what I would want to say in a book about faith. Since then she has interviewed me to help discern what I really did want to say, helped create a structure when there was none apparent, helped create a new structure whenever I changed my mind, taught me about writing, and edited at least ten drafts of most chapters. Joan Oliver did many hours of research, gave me much moral support, and added v i i i A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S immeasurably to the manuscript through her refined sense of language and precision of expression. Cathy Saypol, in a burst of intuition, gave me a subtitle. I owe a great debt to my agent, Joy Harris, who was once described accurately to me as “the closest you’ll ever come to unconditional love in a business relationship.” Her caring and clarity have held me through this whole process, from the time I first appeared in her office saying, “I’m not really a writer, I’m a meditation teacher,” until this moment. Without Amy Hertz, my editor at Riverhead, this book would never have come into being. Amy has always trusted me, even when I’ve been discouraged or confused, and her clear vision, remarkable intelligence, and professional stan dards have sustained the whole project and brought my work to an entirely different level. Special thanks to Krishna Das, whose CDs kept me company many times at 2 a.m. as I was writing, and whose chanting always brings me back to the things I care about more than anything; and to the people I’ve taught and med itated with in NYC, who through the years have become good friends, and who, since September 11, have kept re minding me of what faith looks like.
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