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
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.
What you learn about pain in formal meditation can help you relate to it in your daily life.
Meditation teaches us to focus and to pay clear attention to our experiences and responses as they arise, and to observe them without judging them.
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.
When you're wide open, the world is a good place.
You don't have to believe anything, adopt a dogma in order to learn how to meditate.
Everyone's mind wanders, without doubt, and we always have to start over. Everyone resists or dislikes the thought of or is too tired to meditate at times, and we have to be able to begin again.
Let the power of intention lead the way.
Compassion grows in us when we know how the energy of love is available all around us.
By practicing meditation we establish love, compassion, sympathetic joy & equanimity as our home.
We can't control what thoughts and emotions arise within us, nor can we control the universal truth that everything changes. But we can learn to step back and rest in the awareness of what's happening. That awareness can be our refuge.
To sense which gifts to accept which to leave behind is our path to discovering freedom.
Even on the spiritual path, we have things we'll tend to cover up or be in denial about.
I call myself a meditation teacher rather than a spiritual teacher.