At her reading (for the lecture series of the Ram Dass library), Sharon Salzberg read from her latest book, called "Faith". Earlier,in the bookstore, I had instinctively recoiled from it when I saw the title, and moved along smoothly to her earlier work, "Loving Kindness," which seemed much more. umm. accessible.

As Sharon explained: (about the title) "I met with funny reactions when I started to tell people the name of the book. So many people had associated the word with a loss of respect, giving over to a doctrine, losing touch with the changing nature of things, and not being open to others. I wanted to help people reclaim the thing that had given me courage when I had to make a move-- that helps people make a difference.

In Sanskrit and Pali, she went on, faith means to offer your heart. "This has certain recognitions: one is that we have a heart, and that the other is that the offer of our heart is no small thing. It is something vital, crucial core to our being. So we need discernment, we need care, we need to use intelligence about where we are offering our heart to. In the conventional vision of faith, doubt is an enemy, or an opposite, but doubt actually can enrich faith, enhance it, as it questions explores, demands to know the truth."


Stages of Faith
(from Sharon Salzburg lecture at the Omega Institute, October 2002)
In the stage of bright faith, like falling in love, life can be really different:
We are blown open. It is a great beginning, but it can also be a risky state.
We may meet one teacher one day and think, I will live just as he or she says.
Then we meet another teacher, and we think, forget that other guy, this is really the right one.
Because our experience is not actually grounded in our own perception of what's true.

Or we may not want to rock the boat by pointing out some uncomfortable truths, or asking too many questions or expressing our doubt. This degenerates into a state that could be called blind faith.

Verified faith is the next stage of growth, where doubt and questioning and experience have proven the value of the faith.

The last stage is abiding or unwavering faith: We have tested and explored, and come to know something so deeply it is in our bones, who we really are, how we live.

Whether we describe the recipient (of our faith) as God, or a profound sense of undestructible love, or the dream of a kinder world, it is in the act of offering our hearts in faith that something in us transforms. And what may have been a remote abstraction flames into life. we no longer stand on the sidelines, leap directly into the centre of our lives, our truth, our full potential. No-one else can take that leap for us, and no-one has to. This is our journey of faith."

(Then there's the counterposture, from Robert A Heinlein, the dean of science fiction): "Faith! What a dirty mono-syllable -- Jill, why didn't you mention that one when you were teaching me the short words that mustn't be used in polite company?" - from Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A Heinlein.