Sharon Salzberg Quotes

One foundation of loving relationships is curiosity, keeping open to the idea that we have much to learn even about those we have been close to for decades.

The most common response I hear when I tell people I teach meditation is, "I'm so stressed out. I could use some of that!" A response I also sometimes hear, which amuses me a lot is, "My partner should really meet you!"

Real love allows for failure and suffering.

Our practice rather than being about killing the ego is about simply discovering our true nature.

We need to redefine community and find a variety of ways of coming together and helping each other.

It doesn't matter how long we may have been stuck in a sense of our limitations. If we go into a darkened room and turn on the light, it doesn't matter if the room has been dark for a day, a week, or ten thousand years - we turn on the light and it is illuminated. Once we control our capacity for love and happiness, the light has been turned on.

The idea that traumatic residues - or unresolved stories - can be inherited is groundbreaking.

We need the courage to learn from our past and not live in it.

The good news is that opportunities for love enter our lives unpredictably, whether or not we've perfected self-compassion or befriended our inner critic.

These are times when sympathetic joy comes naturally, but in a complex relationship the heart may not leap up so easily.

Each of us has a genuine capacity for love, forgiveness, wisdom and compassion. Meditation awakens these qualities so that we can discover for ourselves the unique happiness that is our birthright.

What unites us as human beings is an urge for happiness which at heart is a yearning for union.

Some people have a mistaken idea that all thoughts disappear through meditation and we enter a state of blankness. There certainly are times of great tranquility when concentration is strong and we have few, if any, thoughts. But other times, we can be flooded with memories, plans or random thinking. It's important not to blame yourself.

Fortunately, the Buddha was characteristically precise about what those benefits include. He said that the intimacy and caring that fill our hearts as the force of lovingkindness develops will bring eleven particular advantages: You will sleep easily. You will wake easily. You will have pleasant dreams. People will love you. Devas [celestial beings] and animals will love you. Devas will protect you. External dangers [poisons, weapons, and fire] will not harm you. Your face will be radiant. Your mind will be serene. You will die unconfused. You will be reborn in happy realms.

If we have a very strong commitment, so that we can trust ourselves and be beacons of trust for others no matter what the circumstance, then we're protected from suffering the consequences of many actions. We can be protected from that pain.

Evolutionary biologists tell us we have a "negativity bias" that makes our brains remember negative events more strongly than positive ones. So when we're feeling lost or discouraged, it can be very hard to conjure up memories and feelings of happiness and ease.

With every action we take, we send love or suffering into the web that connects us.

Detachment is not about refusing to feel or not caring or turning away from those you love. Detachment is profoundly honest, grounded firmly in the truth of what is.

Our minds tend to race ahead into the future or replay the past, but our bodies are always in the present moment.

Every time we forget to breathe or our minds wander or we're hijacked by feelings or sensations, we gently bring ourselves back to the breath, again and again.

Though it may sound paradoxical, identifying our thoughts, emotions, and habitual patterns of behavior is the key to freedom & transformation.

Love seems to open and expand us right down to the cellular level, while fear causes us to contract and withdraw into ourselves.

Connecting to your breath when thoughts or images arise is like spotting a friend in a crowd: you don't have to shove everyone else aside or order them to go away; you just direct your attention, your enthusiasm, your interest toward your friend. 'Oh,' you think, 'there's my friend in that crowd. Oh, there's my breath, among those thoughts and feelings and sensations.

Keeping secrets is a consequential act for all involved.

Voting is like alchemy - taking an abstract value and breathing life into it.

When we don't allow setbacks to defeat us, they become opportunities for learning, acceptance, flexibility, and patience.

To relinquish the futile effort to control change is one of the strengthening forces of true detachment & thus true love.

Life is like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope - a slight change, and all patterns alter.

The journey to loving ourselves doesn't mean we like everything.

While happiness is an end in itself, it is also the state of mind we can have right now.

Sometimes people don't trust the force of kindness. They think love or compassion or kindness will make you weak and kind of stupid and people will take advantage of you; you won't stand up for other people.

Only when we start to distinguish reality from fantasy that we can humbly, with eyes wide open, forge loving and sustainable connections with others.

When we do our best to treat others with kindness, it's often a struggle to determine which actions best express our love and care for ourselves.

Love simply, perpetually exists and that it's a matter of psychic housekeeping to make room for it.

Love and compassion don't at all have to make us weak, or lead us to losing discernment and vision. We just have to learn how to find them. And see, in truth, what they bring us.

My earliest experiences in meditation were in a context of intensive retreats.

The critical element in meditation practice is beginning again. Everyone loses focus at times, everyone loses interest at times, and everyone gets distracted over and over again. What is essential, and also incredibly transforming, is realizing that we have the ability to begin again, without blaming or judging ourselves, without thinking we have failed, without losing heart, we can, and need to, constantly be beginning again.

Through meditation we come to know that we are dying & being reborn in every moment.

You may have heard the old story, usually attributed to a Native American elder, meant to illuminate the power of attention. A grandfather (occasionally it's a grandmother) imparting a life lesson to his grandson tells him, "I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is vengeful, fearful, envious, resentful, deceitful. The other wolf is loving, compassionate, generous, truthful, and serene." The grandson asks which wolf will win the fight. The grandfather answers, "The one I feed.

Genuine awe connects us with the world in a new way.

Any time we find ourselves relying on the ideas of an absolute, frozen state of right and wrong - or fairness versus unfairness - that we are used to, we can compare the habit to distraction during meditation.

One of the primary conditions for suffering is denial. Shutting our mind to pain, whether in ourselves or others, only ensures that it will continue. We must have the strength to face it without turning away. By opening to the pain we see around us with wisdom and compassion, we start to experience the intimate connection of our relationship with all beings.

As we practice meditation, we get used to stillness and eventually are able to make
friends with the quietness of our sensations.

We think of ourselves as our titles or our jobs or our position in a family. We depend on being praised by others. But something happens when that praise is undermined.

Though it may seem counter intuitive to our inner perfectionist, recognizing our mistakes as valuable lessons (not failures) helps us lay the groundwork for later success.

My ideal registration system would be an opt-out one, where every single person is registered once they turn 18. In Australia, I'm told, everyone is registered to vote and you pay a fine if you don't vote.

Sometimes we think that to develop an open heart, to be truly loving and compassionate, means that we need to be passive, to allow others to abuse us, to smile and let anyone do what they want with us. Yet this is not what is meant by compassion. Quite the contrary. Compassion is not at all weak. It is the strength that arises out of seeing the true nature of suffering in the world. Compassion allows us to bear witness to that suffering, whether it is in ourselves or others, without fear; it allows us to name injustice without hesitation, and to act strongly, with all the skill at our disposal. To develop this mind state of compassion ... is to learn to live, as the Buddha put it, with sympathy for all living beings, without exception.

In reality, love is fluid; it's a verb, not a noun.

Although much of the work we do in committed relationships we do with our partners, sometimes it's necessary to start with ourselves.

Mindfulness helps us see the addictive aspect of self-criticism - a repetitive cycle of flaying ourselves again and again, feeling the pain anew.

Vulnerability should be the thing that brings us closer than anything because we all share that.

We truly can reconfigure how we see ourselves and reclaim the love for ourselves that we're innately capable of.

With the practice of meditation we can develop this ability to more fully love
ourselves and to more consistently love others.

Not everyone wants to take up meditation, but most people can feel an alignment with values like mutual respect, insightful investigation, listening to one another.
Meditation is a way to help those values become real in day-to-day life, helping people to understand themselves more and more and have a way to not get lost in old patterns.

Whatever life presents us, our response can be an expression of our compassion.

The starting place for radical re-imagining of love is mindfulness.

Contemplating the goodness within ourselves is a classical meditation, done to bring light, joy, and rapture to the mind. In contemporary times this practice might be considered rather embarrassing, because so often the emphasis is on all the unfortunate things we have done, all the disturbing mistakes we have made. Yet this classical reflection is not a way of increasing conceit. It is rather a commitment to our own happiness, seeing our happiness as the basis for intimacy with all of life. It fills us with joy and love for ourselves and a great deal of self-respect. Significantly, when we do metta practice, we begin by directing metta toward ourselves. This is the essential foundation for being able to offer genuine love to others

The secure attachment of Western psychology is actually akin to Buddhist non-attachment; avoid-ant attachment is the inverse of being mindful and present; and anxious attachment aligns with Buddhist notions of clinging and grasping.

Resilience Practicing Self-Care To Avoid Burnout The Illusion of Control Patience and Perspective Resilience In The Face

The causes of familial discord and distance are countless, but the results are often the same: secrecy, blame, sadness, hurt, confusion, and feelings of loss and grief.

The difference between a life laced through with frustration and one sustained by happiness depends on whether it is motivated by self-hatred or by real love for oneself.

I think what we (as a society) need from artists of all kinds is courage, a willingness to explore, and a really big sense of possibility.

Spiritual practice, by uprooting our personal mythologies of isolation, uncovers the radiant, joyful heart within each of us and manifests this radiance to the world. We find, beneath the wounding concepts of separation, a connection both to ourselves and to all beings. We find a source of great happiness that is beyond concepts and beyond convention. Freeing ourselves from the illusion of separation allows us to live in a natural freedom rather than be driven by preconceptions about our own boundaries and limitations.

The first of the four noble truths of Buddhism, that there is suffering in life, was enormously important to me. No one had ever said it out loud. That had been my experience, of course, but no one had ever talked about it. I didn't know what to do with all the fear and emotions within, and here was the Buddha saying this truth right out loud.

Never feel ashamed of your longing for happiness.

Pure generosity emerges when we give without the need for our offering to be received in a certain way. That's why the best kind of generosity comes from inner abundance, rather than from feeling deficient and hollow, starved for validation.

Throughout history, wise observers of human behavior have pinpointed over and over again a core group of unhealthy human tendencies that are obstacles to happiness. They're the states of mind that distract us in meditation practice, and trip us up in the rest of our lives. Broadly speaking, they are: desire, aversion, sloth, restlessness, and doubt. And they manifest in a variety of ways - many of which you'll recognize. Desire includes grasping, clinging, wanting, or attachment. Aversion can appear as hatred, anger, fear, or impatience. Sloth is not just laziness, but also numbing out, switching off, disconnecting, and the sluggishness that comes with denial or feeling overwhelmed: This is going to be difficult; I think I'll take a nap. Restlessness shows itself as anxiety, worry, fretfulness, or agitation. The kind of doubt we're talking about is not healthy questioning but rather the inability to make a decision or commitment. Doubt keeps us feeling stuck; we don't know what to do next. Doubt undermines wholehearted involvement (in relationships, in our meditation practice) and robs us of in-depth experience.

Equanimity can be hard to talk about.

Loving kindness is the practice of offering to oneself and others wishes to be happy, peaceful, healthy, strong

The more we identify and acknowledge moments when we're unable to share in someone else's pleasure and ask ourselves whether another person's happiness truly jeopardizes our own, the more we pave the way for experiencing sympathetic joy

Sympathetic joy is a practice. It takes time and effort to free ourselves of the scarcity story that most of us have learned along the way, the idea that happiness is a competition, and that someone else is grabbing all the joy.

People turn to meditation because they want to make good decisions, break bad habits & bounce back better from disappointments.

When we set an intention to explore our emotional hot spots, we create a pathway to real love.

Our ability to connect with others is innate, wired into our nervous systems, and we need connection as much as we need physical nourishment.

Throughout our lives we long to love ourselves more deeply and to feel connected with others. Instead, we often contract, fear intimacy, and suffer a bewildering sense of separation. We crave love, and yet we are lonely. Our delusion of being separate from one another, of being apart from all that is around us, gives rise to all of this pain.

When we relate to ourselves with loving kindness, perfectionism naturally drops away.

How many pleasures escape our notice because we think we need big, dramatic sensations to feel alive? Mindfulness can allow us to experience fully the moment in front of us - what Thoreau calls 'the bloom of the present ' - and to wake up from neutral so we don't miss the small, rich moments that add up to a dimensional life.

The Buddha taught that we can feel pleasure fully, yet without craving or clinging, without defining it as our ultimate happiness. We can feel pain fully without condemning or hating it. And we can experience neutral events by being fully present, so that they are not just fill-in times until something more exciting comes along.

Buddhist teachings discourage us from clinging and grasping to those we hold dear, and from trying to control the people or the relationship. What's more, we're encouraged to accept the impermanence of all things: the flower that blooms today will be gone tomorrow, the objects we possess will break or fade or lose their utility, our relationships will change, life will end.

It's a rare and precious thing to be close to suffering because our society - in many ways - tells us that suffering is wrong. If it's our own suffering, we try to hide it or isolate ourselves. If others are suffering, we're taught to put them away somewhere so we don't have to see it.

There is so much we just can't see or know right now, including precisely how our actions will ripple out.

It is never too late to turn on the light. Your ability to break an unhealthy habit or turn off an old tape doesn't depend on how long it has been running; a shift in perspective doesn't depend on how long you've held on to the old view.
When you flip the switch in that attic, it doesn't matter whether its been dark for ten minutes, ten years or ten decades.
The light still illuminates the room and banishes the murkiness, letting you see the things you couldn't see before.
Its never too late to take a moment to look.

Seeking is endless. It never comes to a state of rest; it never ceases.

I think we spend so much of our lives trying to pretend that we know what's going to happen next. In fact we don't. To recognize that we don't know even what will happen this afternoon and yet having the courage to move forward - that's one meaning of faith.

Resilience is based on compassion for ourselves as well as compassion for others

He was amazed to find that the Karmapa, an eminent spiritual leader known the world over, treated him as though his visit were one of the most important things that had ever happened to the Karmapa in his life. This treatment did not manifest through grandiose gestures or ceremony, but rather through the simplicity and completeness of the Karmapa's presence, which offered my friend an experience of being completely loved. When I heard this story, I thought about how many conversations I have had during which my attention was halfhearted. I might be thinking about the next thing I had to do or the next person I had to talk to. How unfair that lack of attention now seems! The simple act of being completely present to another person is truly an act of love - no drama is required.

We can always begin again.

With attachment all that seems to exist is just me & that object I desire.

Love is defined by difficult acts of human compassion & generosity.

Once in a while, you have to let your mind just go.

We can learn the art of fierce compassion - redefining strength, deconstructing isolation and renewing a sense of community, practicing letting go of rigid us-vs.-them thinking - while cultivating power and clarity in response to difficult situations.

For all of us, love can be the natural state of our own being; naturally at peace, naturally connected, because this becomes the reflection of who we simply are.

The embodiment of kindness is often made difficult by our long ingrained patterns
of fear & jealousy.

As a friend of mine told me about Real Happiness: you wrote this one in American.

Identifying the source of our personal narratives helps us to release its negative aspects and re-frame it in ways that promote wholeness.

To imagine the way we think is the singular causative agent of all we go through is to practice cruelty toward ourselves.

The overarching practice of letting go is also one of gaining resilience and insight.

It's affirming that we can look at any experience from the fullness of our being and get past the shame we carry.

A particularly difficult line to navigate is the one between fear and love, especially for parents, who want more than anything to protect their children from suffering.

By engaging in a delusive quest for happiness, we bring only suffering upon ourselves. In our frantic search for something to quench our thirst, we overlook the water all around us and drive ourselves into exile from our own lives.