An Intuitive Sense of What’s Possible
One of the many wonderful (and ordinary) things Mirabai and I talked about while I was staying with her was Sharon Salzberg‘s book, Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience. (Sharon was one of the guest teachers at the CDL retreat.) The book had come out a couple of years ago and I thought I’d read it, but during my discussion with Mirabai it became clear that I had not.
So of course, as soon as I got home, I started reading. And I couldn’t stop! It is EXCELLENT. (Despite the title, which I think is the reason I never got around to reading it in the first place. “Faith.” Not my favorite concept — at least not the way it’s usually meant, i.e. a belief you’re supposed to have, no matter how irrational, unlikely, and/or contrary to fact.)
But I love this book! Here’s a sample:
“I stepped onto the spiritual path moved by an inner sense that I might find greatness of heart, that I might find profound belonging, that I might find a hidden source of love and compassion. Like a homing instinct for freedom, my intuitive sense that this was possible was the faint, flickering, yet undeniable expression of faith.
“The breakout moment of faith was my decision to travel to India without knowing where to go once I got there. A few days before my departure, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher, was scheduled to speak in Buffalo. I decided to go. Trungpa Rinpoche was the first practicing Buddhist I’d encountered. His background seemed very exotic…
“After his talk, Trungpa Rinpoche asked people to submit written questions. Mine happened to be the first piece of paper he picked out of the huge stack in front of him. He read the question aloud: ‘In a few days I am leaving for India to study Buddhism. Do you have any recommendations as to where I should go?’
“He was silent for a few minutes, then in his precise British accent he replied: ‘In this matter you had perhaps best follow the pretense of accident.’ That was it–no names or addresses, no maps, no directions.
“What could he mean by ‘the pretense of accident?’ This was the first intimation that I might be embarking on a journey unlike anything I could image or predict.”
***
No kidding.
Even if you think you already know everything about Sharon and what it’s like to take a “leap of faith”….check out this book. It’s quite the story. And it just “happens” to be exactly the book I needed to be reading at this moment. What an accident!