Salzberg Meditation Quotes & Sayings

You might have extensive bouts of thinking exceedingly nasty thoughts, but because you are relating to those thoughts with mindfulness and compassion, that's considered good meditation. — Sharon Salzberg

Each opportunity to interrupt the onslaught of thoughts and return to the object of meditation is, in fact, a moment of enlightenment — Sharon Salzberg

We can use meditation as a way to experiment with new ways of relating to ourselves, even our uncomfortable thoughts. — Sharon Salzberg

By accepting and learning to embrace the inevitable sorrows of life, we realize that we can experience a more enduring sense of happiness. — Sharon Salzberg

Vulnerability in the face of constant change is what we share, whatever our present condition. — Sharon Salzberg

When our focus is on seeking, perfecting, or clinging to romance, the charge is often generated by instability, rather than by an authentic connection with another person. — Sharon Salzberg

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

Love is a living capacity within us that is always present, even when we don't sense it. — Sharon Salzberg

Wholehearted acceptance is a basic element of love, starting with love for ourselves, and a gateway to joy. Through the practices of loving kindness and self-compassion, we can learn to love our flawed and imperfect selves. And in those moments of vulnerability, we open our hearts to connect with each other, as well. We are not perfect, but we are enough. — Sharon Salzberg

Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what's happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what's happening, stories that get in the way of direct experience. Often such stories treat a fleeting state of mind as if it were our entire and permanent self. — Sharon Salzberg

Causing harm is never just a one-way street. — Sharon Salzberg

We use mindfulness to observe the way we cling to pleasant experiences & push away unpleasant ones. — Sharon Salzberg

As soon as we ask whether or not a story is true in the present moment, we empower ourselves to re-frame it. — Sharon Salzberg

The environment we create can help heal us or fracture us. This is true not just for buildings and landscapes but also for interactions and relationships. — Sharon Salzberg

All forms of meditation strengthen & direct our attention through the cultivation of three key skills: concentration, mindfulness & compassion or lovingkindness. — Sharon Salzberg

We are all too often told by someone that we are too old, too young, too different, too much the same, and those comments can be devastating. — Sharon Salzberg

Let the breath lead the way. — Sharon Salzberg

Sanskrit has different words to describe love for a brother or sister, love for a teacher, love for a partner, love for one's friends, love of nature, and so on. English has only one word, which leads to never-ending confusion. — Sharon Salzberg

Keeping secrets is a consequential act for all involved. — Sharon Salzberg

When we learn to respond to disappointments with acceptance, we give ourselves the space to realize that all our experiences - good and bad alike - are opportunities to learn and grow. — Sharon Salzberg

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

As human beings, we're capable of greatness of spirit, an ability to go beyond the circumstances we find ourselves in, to experience a vast sense of connection to all of life. — Sharon Salzberg

When we direct a lot of hostile energy toward the inner critic, we enter into a losing battle. — Sharon Salzberg

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. — Sharon Salzberg

Loving ourselves calls us to give up the illusion that we can control everything and focuses us on building our inner resource of resilience. — Sharon Salzberg

Instead, the Buddha replied, "I am going to send you back to the same forest, but I will provide you with the only protection you will need." This was the first teaching of metta meditation. The Buddha encouraged the monks not only to recite the metta phrases but to actually practice them. As these stories all seem to end so happily, so did this one - it is said that the monks went back and practiced metta, so that the tree spirits became quite moved by the beauty of the loving energy filling the forest, and resolved to care for and serve the monks in all ways. The inner meaning of the story is that a mind filled with fear can still be penetrated by the quality of lovingkindness. Moreover, a mind that is saturated by lovingkindness cannot be overcome by fear; even if fear should arise, it will not overpower such a mind. — Sharon Salzberg

Mindfulness can play a big role in transforming our experience with pain & other difficulties; it allows us to recognize the authenticity of the distress & yet not be overwhelmed by it. — Sharon Salzberg

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!" — Sharon Salzberg

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. — Sharon Salzberg

To forgive, we may need to open our minds to a fuller exploration of the context in which the events occurred, and feel compassion for the circumstances and everyone involved, starting with ourselves. — Sharon Salzberg

No connection is always easy or free of strife, no matter how many minutes a day we meditate. It's how we relate to conflict, as well as to our differing needs and expectations, that makes our relationships sustainable. — Sharon Salzberg

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

Until we begin to question our basic assumptions about ourselves and view them as fluid, not fixed, it's easy to repeat established patterns and, out of habit, reenact old stories that limit our ability to live and love ourselves with an open heart. — Sharon Salzberg

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

So often, fear keeps us from being able to say yes to love - perhaps our greatest challenge as human beings. — Sharon Salzberg

Several performers have told me that they do the following brief lovingkindness meditation if they have stage fright: Standing in front of an audience, before they start acting, playing music, or reciting a poem, they send out wishes for the well-being of everyone in the room. 'When I do that,' one singer told me, 'I no longer have a sense of the audience as a group of hostile people out there waiting to judge me. I feel, okay, here we all are together. — Sharon Salzberg

Open Awareness The Angle of Vision Leadership Openness Getting Out of The Way Possibilities MEDITATION: — Sharon Salzberg

We're in charge of our own forgiveness, and the process takes time, patience, and intention. — Sharon Salzberg

We're capable of much more than mediocrity, much more than merely getting by in this world. — Sharon Salzberg

Cultivation of positive emotions, including self-love and self-respect, strengthens our inner resources and opens us to a broader range of thoughts and actions. — Sharon Salzberg

Metta sees truly that our integrity is inviolate, no matter what our life situation may be. We do not need to fear anything. We are whole: our deepest happiness is intrinsic to the nature of our minds, and it is not damaged through uncertainty and change. — Sharon Salzberg

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

Equanimity can be hard to talk about. — Sharon Salzberg

Our path, our sense of spirituality demands great earnestness, dedication, sincerity & continuity. — Sharon Salzberg

Restore your attention or bring it to a new level by dramatically slowing down whatever you're doing. — Sharon Salzberg

The first time a meditation teacher encouraged me to practice mindfulness - which — Sharon Salzberg

We long for permanence but everything in the known universe is transient. That's a fact but one we fight. — Sharon Salzberg

When we are willing to explore our own experiences, we open the doorway to deeper connection and intimacy. — Sharon Salzberg

Meditation is a cyclical process that defies analysis, but demands acceptance. — Sharon Salzberg

The breath is the first tool for opening the space between the story you tell yourself about love. — Sharon Salzberg

Mindfulness isn't difficult, we just need to remember to do it. — Sharon Salzberg

Metta is the ability to embrace all parts of ourselves, as well as all parts of the world. Practicing metta illuminates our inner integrity because it relieves us of the need to deny different aspects of ourselves. We can open to everything with the healing force of love. When we feel love, our mind is expansive and open enough to include the entirety of life in full awareness, both its pleasures and its pains, we feel neither betrayed by pain or overcome by it, and thus we can contact that which is undamaged within us regardless of the situation. Metta sees truly that our integrity is inviolate, no matter what our life situation may be. — Sharon Salzberg

Meditation is not the construction of something foreign, it is not an effort to attain and then hold on to a particular experience. We may have a secret desire that through meditation we will accumulate a stockpile of magical experiences, or at least a mystical trophy or two, and then we will be able to proudly display them for others to see. — Sharon Salzberg

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. — Sharon Salzberg

Meditation is not a matter of trying to stop thinking or make your mind go blank but rather to realize when your attention is wandering and to simply let go of the thoughts and begin again. It is a way of changing our relationship to our thoughts, so we're not so consumed by them, with no sense of space. Having a newly spacious relationship to our thoughts brings both peace and freedom. — Sharon Salzberg

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. — Sharon Salzberg

If we harm someone else, we're inevitably also hurting ourselves. Some quality of sensitivity and awareness has to shut down for us to be able to objectify someone else, to deny them as a living, feeling being - someone who wants to be happy, just as we do. — Sharon Salzberg

When we identify the thoughts that keep us from seeing others as they truly are we prepare the ground for real love. — Sharon Salzberg

Clinging to our ideas of perfection isolates us from life and is a barrier. — Sharon Salzberg

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

Famed basketball coach Phil Jackson, a meditator himself, arranged to have his players - first the Chicago Bulls, and then the L.A. Lakers - learn meditation as a way to improve their focus and teamwork. Jackson finds that mindfulness assists players in paying attention to what's happening on the court moment by moment. Such precise training in attention has paid off during tense playoffs; Jackson has led more teams to championships than any coach in NBA history. Meditation — Sharon Salzberg

Meditation is a microcosm, a model, a mirror. The skills we practice when we sit are transferable to the rest of our lives. — Sharon Salzberg

Training attention through meditation opens our eyes. — Sharon Salzberg

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. — Sharon Salzberg

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

Every day seems to reveal a new piece of research about meditation, or new clinical applications of mindfulness or compassion practice, or new corporations or foundations or non-profits bringing mindfulness to work. — Sharon Salzberg

I believe that there is only one kind of love - real love - trying to come alive in us despite our limiting assumptions, the distortions of our culture, and the habits of fear, self-condemnation, and isolation that we tend to acquire just by living a life. — Sharon Salzberg

A key barometer to help us weigh the rightness of our actions is self-respect. — Sharon Salzberg

Our senses are often the gateway to our stories. — Sharon Salzberg

There are many different ways to practice meditation; it's good to experiment until you find one that seems to suit you. — Sharon Salzberg

Dedicating some time to meditation is a meaningful expression of caring for yourself that can help you move through the mire of feeling unworthy of recovery. As your mind grows quieter and more spacious, you can begin to see self-defeating thought patterns for what they are, and open up to other, more positive options. — Sharon Salzberg

The manifestation of the free mind is said to be lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. — Sharon Salzberg

There's no denying that it takes effort to set the intention to see our fundamental connected-ness with others. — Sharon Salzberg

Meditation may be done in silence & stillness, by using voice & sound, or by engaging the body in movement. All forms emphasize the training of attention. — Sharon Salzberg

It is so powerful when we can leave behind our ordinary identities, no longer think of ourselves primarily as a conductor, or writer, or salesclerk, and go to a supportive environment to deeply immerse in meditation practice. — Sharon Salzberg

Meditation isn't about what's happening; it's about how you relate to what's happening. — Sharon Salzberg

Training our mind through meditation does not mean forcibly subjugating it or beating it into shape. — Sharon Salzberg

Meditation can be a refuge, but it is not a practice in which real life is ever excluded. The strength of mindfulness is that it enables us to hold difficult thoughts and feelings in a different way - with awareness, balance, and love — Sharon Salzberg

[Meditation] trains us to be with a painful experience in the moment, without adding imagined distress and difficulty. If we look closely at it, the pain is bound to change, and that's as true of a headache as it is of a heartache: the discomfort oscillates; there are beats of rest between moments of unpleasantness. When we discover firsthand that pain isn't static, that it's a living, changing system, it doesn't seem as solid or insurmountable as it did at first. — Sharon Salzberg

As we practice meditation we are bringing forth ease, presence, compassion, wisdom & trust. — Sharon Salzberg

We can understand the inherent radiance & purity of our minds by understanding metta. Like the mind, metta is not distorted by what it encounters. — Sharon Salzberg

The wholesome pursuit of excellence feels quite different from perfectionism. — Sharon Salzberg

Real Love may run on a lower voltage, but it's also more grounded & sustainable. — Sharon Salzberg

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. — Sharon Salzberg

When we truly allow ourselves to feel our own pain, over time it comes to seem less personal. We start to recognize that what we've perceived as our pain is, at a deeper level, the pain inherent in human existence. — Sharon Salzberg

Paying attention to the ethical implications of our choices has never been more pressing - or more complicated - than it is today. — Sharon Salzberg

If we define ourselves by each of the ever-changing feelings that cascade through us, how will we ever feel at home in our own bodies and minds? — Sharon Salzberg

The meditation traditions I started and have continued practicing have all emphasized inclusivity: anyone can do this who is interested. — Sharon Salzberg

Because the development of inner calm & energy happens completely within & isn't dependent on another person or a particular situation, we begin to feel a resourcefulness and independence that is quite beautiful - and a huge relief. — Sharon Salzberg

I am totally amazed at the spread of interest in meditation. When I first came back from studying in India in 1974, I would be asked in social situations what I did. When I replied, "I teach meditation" they would frequently look at me as though to say "That is weird," and sort of sidle away. — Sharon Salzberg

Learning to treat ourselves lovingly may at first feel like a dangerous experiment. — Sharon Salzberg

The costs of keeping secrets include our growing isolation due to fear of detection and the ways we shut down inside to avoid feeling the effects of our behavior. We can never afford to be truly seen and known - even by ourselves. — Sharon Salzberg

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

Compassion is born out of lovingkindness.
It is born of knowing our oneness, not just thinking about it or wishing it were so. It is born out of the wisdom of seeing things exactly as they are. — Sharon Salzberg

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

Whether we fear the existence of boundaries with others or crave more of them, there's no denying that individuation and separation are inevitable parts of loving relationships that become the site of tension. — Sharon Salzberg

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. — Sharon Salzberg

Never feel ashamed of your longing for happiness. — Sharon Salzberg

There are an incalculable - even infinite - number of situations in which we can practice forgiveness.

Expecting it to be a singular action - motivated by the sheer imperative to move on and forget - can be more damaging than the original feelings of anger.

Accepting forgiveness as pluralistic and as an ongoing, individualized process opens us up to realize the role that our own needs play in conflict resolution. — Sharon Salzberg

What you learn about pain in formal meditation can help you relate to it in your daily life. — Sharon Salzberg