Faith is Sharon Salzberg's most personal book, published by Riverhead in 2002, and the volume in which she sets out a Buddhist understanding of faith as a verifiable trust in one's own capacity for awakening rather than as belief in a fixed proposition. The book draws on Salzberg's own biography — a difficult childhood in New York, the early-1970s journey to India to study with Goenka and Munindra, the founding of the Insight Meditation Society in 1976 — to ground a contemplative account of faith in stages: bright faith, verified faith, and the abiding confidence she calls 'unwavering' faith. The structure follows the traditional Theravada three-fold analysis of saddha (the Pali term, meaning "to place the heart upon") but the texture of the book is closer to memoir than to doctrinal exposition.
Reception
Faith is the book most often cited by Sharon Salzberg's readers as the volume that distinguishes her body of work from Joseph Goldstein's and Jack Kornfield's — the autobiographical opening, in particular, is treated by reviewers in Buddhist publications (Tricycle, Lion's Roar, Inquiring Mind) as a rare first-person account of a Western teacher's own contemplative path. The book has been continuously in print since 2002 and is the text Salzberg's students at IMS most often recommend when readers ask for the Buddhist treatment of the word 'faith' that does not require commitment to a metaphysical proposition. Critics outside the IMS lineage (B. Alan Wallace, Stephen Batchelor) have argued that Salzberg's reading of saddha understates the doctrinal scaffolding the Pali sources place behind the term — that 'faith' in the suttas points more specifically at the Three Jewels than at the open contemplative confidence she develops — a debate Batchelor's own After Buddhism (2015) continued.
Frequently asked
What is Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience about?
It is Sharon Salzberg's account of Buddhist faith — the Pali concept saddha, meaning "to place the heart upon." The book argues that genuine faith is a verifiable trust in one's capacity for awakening, not adherence to a fixed proposition. It grounds this argument in Salzberg's own biography: her childhood in New York, her journey to India in the early 1970s, and her co-founding of the Insight Meditation Society.
What are the stages of faith the book describes?
The book traces three stages from the Theravada tradition: bright faith (an initial inspiration, like falling in love with a teaching or teacher), verified faith (trust grounded in direct personal experience and investigation), and abiding or unwavering faith (a stable confidence that does not depend on external conditions).
How does Salzberg's account of faith differ from mainstream religious faith?
Salzberg grounds faith in the Pali word saddha — verified trust rather than doctrinal belief. Her argument is that Buddhist faith begins with questioning rather than requiring it to stop; doubt and inquiry are instruments for moving from bright faith toward what the tradition calls knowledge through practice. She presents it as accessible to practitioners of any background or no background.