Sharon Salzberg
Sharon Salzberg
Sharon Salzbergis a New York Times Best selling author and teacher of Buddhist meditation practices in the West. In 1974, she co-founded the Insight Meditation Society at Barre, Massachusetts with Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein. Her emphasis is on vipassanāand mettāmethods, and has been leading meditation retreats around the world for over three decades. All of these methods have their origins in the Theravada Buddhist tradition. Her books include Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness, A Heart as Wide as...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
CountryUnited States of America
commodity whether
There's no commodity we can take with us. There is only our lives, whether we live them wisely or whether we live them in ignorance. And this is everything.
changed death ended family five left lived painful point terrible turbulent until
I had a very turbulent and painful childhood, like many people. I left for college when I was 16 years old and up until that point I'd lived in five different family configurations. Each one ended or changed through a death or some terrible loss.
depend family jobs ourselves position praised titles
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.
maybe people power sweetness whereas
I think the associations people have with kindness are often things like meekness and sweetness and maybe sickly sweetness; whereas I do think of kindness as a force, as a power.
act actions create generally habitual ourselves tendencies
We come to meditation to learn how not to act out the habitual tendencies we generally live by - those actions that create suffering for ourselves and others, and get us into so much trouble.
attention chance condemning gentle instead judging magic realize wandered
The moment that we realize our attention has wandered is the magic moment of the practice, because that's the moment we have the chance to be really different. Instead of judging ourselves, and berating ourselves, and condemning ourselves, we can be gentle with ourselves.
afternoon courage fact faith happen lives meaning move pretend recognize spend trying
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.
authority blind dogma faith losing people result surrender tend terms
I think so many people tend to think of faith as blind adherence to a dogma or unquestioned surrender to an authority figure, and the result is losing self-respect and losing our own sense of what is true. And I don't think of faith in those terms at all.
hear inviting might revealed teaching truth whether
We can't give the truth to someone as an object, we can only point to it, inviting inspection. It is in that spirit that we can hear or read a teaching and then look at our own lives, at our own experiences to see whether anything might have been revealed about them.
difficult loving strengths
It is sometimes difficult to view compassion and loving kindness as the strengths they are.
chanting expressing home inner notice
Chanting is a simple practice. When you notice you are thinking about something else during the chant, let go of the thought and come back home, to the chant, to that place where we are expressing our inner purity.
faith heart offering
It is in the act of offering our hearts in faith that something in us transforms... proclaiming that we no longer stand on the sidelines but are leaping directly into the center of our lives, our truth, our full potential.
attachment meditation desire
With attachment all that seems to exist is just me & that object I desire.
support way cherish
To cherish others is to cherish ourselves. To cherish ourselves is to cherish others. And in that same way, we relate to the truth. If we support it, if we embrace it, if we uphold it, we will be embraced by it, we will be supported and upheld by it.