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 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.
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- Anneliese, LausanneReviewed in the United Kingdom on March 17, 2017
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