Top 100 Sharon Salzberg Quotes
#1. Everyone loses touch with their aspiration, and we need the heart to return to what we really care about. All of this is based on developing greater lovingkindness and compassion.
Sharon Salzberg
#2. A relationship is the union of two psychological systems.
Sharon Salzberg
#3. Once we are honest about our feelings, we can invite ourselves to consider alternative modes of viewing our pain and can see that releasing our grip on anger and resentment can actually be an act of self-compassion.
Sharon Salzberg
#4. People turn to meditation because they want to make good decisions, break bad habits & bounce back better from disappointments.
Sharon Salzberg
#5. Training our mind through meditation does not mean forcibly subjugating it or beating it into shape.
Sharon Salzberg
#6. But if people are genuinely happy in their choice of action or lifestyle, we do not need to impose our standards. If they are not harming themselves, if they are not harming others, can we be generous enough to feel joy for them? That is the practice of mudita.
Sharon Salzberg
#7. 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.
Sharon Salzberg
#8. Being happy at work is possible for all of us, anytime & anywhere, with open eyes and a caring heart
Sharon Salzberg
#9. To be truly happy in this world is a revolutionary act ... It is a radical change of view that liberates us so that we know who we are most deeply and can acknowledge our enormous ability to love.
Sharon Salzberg
#10. Respecting differences while gaining insight into our essential connected-ness, we can free ourselves from the impulse to rigidly categorize the world in terms of narrow boundaries and labels.
Sharon Salzberg
#11. The journey to loving ourselves doesn't mean we like everything.
Sharon Salzberg
#12. Some things hurt, you know, and there's pain. But we magnify the suffering of it often, I think, by our reactions.
Sharon Salzberg
#13. 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.
Sharon Salzberg
#14. What unites us as human beings is an urge for happiness which at heart is a yearning for union.
Sharon Salzberg
#15. Healing comes in many ways, and no one formula fits all.
Sharon Salzberg
#16. The unconscious mind is a vast repository of experiences and associations that sorts things out much faster than the slow-moving conscious mind.
Sharon Salzberg
#17. When we can step back even briefly from our hurt, sorrow, and anger, when we put our faith in the possibility of change, we create the possibility for non-judgmental inquiry that aims for healing rather than victory.
Sharon Salzberg
#18. Everyone Can Play is now the precept I live by. We may not agree with one another. We may argue. We may compete. But everybody gets to play, no matter what. We all deserve a shot at life.
Sharon Salzberg
#19. True happiness is born of letting go of what is unnecessary.
Sharon Salzberg
#20. 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
#22. It takes a special courage to challenge the rigid confines of our accustomed story. It's not easy to radically alter our views about where happiness comes from but it's eminently possible.
Sharon Salzberg
#23. Communication and Connection Skillful Self-Expression What Do We Want? The Culture of Disparagement Appreciative Inquiry Gossip Paying Attention The Realm of Email Teamwork The Ripple Effect
Sharon Salzberg
#24. When we bring deep awareness to whatever's bothering us, the same things might be happening, but we are able to relate to them differently.
Sharon Salzberg
#25. 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.
Sharon Salzberg
#27. 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.
Sharon Salzberg
#28. 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.
Sharon Salzberg
#29. Concentration Attention Multitasking Boredom Procrastination
Sharon Salzberg
#30. Protection, as we use the word in Buddhism, is actually wisdom, it's insight. Protection is seeing and knowing deeply that all things in our experience arise due to causes, due to conditions coming together in a certain way.
Sharon Salzberg
#31. What's really transformative is our willingness to keep going, our openness to possibility, our patience, our effort, our humor, our growing self-knowledge, and the strength that we gain as we keep going.
Sharon Salzberg
#32. The practice of loving-kindness is about cultivating love as a trans-formative strength,
Sharon Salzberg
#33. My earliest experiences in meditation were in a context of intensive retreats.
Sharon Salzberg
#34. Mindfulness won't ensure you'll win an argument with your sister. Mindfulness won't enable you to bypass your feelings of anger or hurt either. But it may help you see the conflict in a new way, one that allows you to break through old patterns.
Sharon Salzberg
#35. 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
#36. Forgiveness is the way we break the grip that long-held resentments have on our hearts.
Sharon Salzberg
#37. As we practice meditation we are bringing forth ease, presence, compassion, wisdom & trust.
Sharon Salzberg
#38. The more we practice sympathetic joy, the more we come to realize that the happiness we share with others is inseparable from our own happiness.
Sharon Salzberg
#39. We begin to cultivate real love for ourselves when we treat ourselves with compassion.
Sharon Salzberg
#40. As we work to reweave the strands of connection, we can be supported by the wisdom and lovingkindness of others.
Sharon Salzberg
#41. Mindfulness helps us see the addictive aspect of self-criticism - a repetitive cycle of flaying ourselves again and again, feeling the pain anew.
Sharon Salzberg
#42. Every single moment is expressive of the truth of our lives when we know how to look.
Sharon Salzberg
#43. Mindfulness helps us to set boundaries by revealing what makes us unhappy & what brings us peace.
Sharon Salzberg
#44. Intellectually, we may appreciate that loving ourselves would give us a firm foundation but for most of us this is a leap of logic, not a leap of the heart.
Sharon Salzberg
#45. I prefer to think of faith, as Coleridge says of poetry, not as the taking up of belief but as "the willing suspension of disbelief" ... a willingness to be open, to explore, to investigate.
Sharon Salzberg
#46. 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
#47. 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.
Sharon Salzberg
#48. 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.
Sharon Salzberg
#49. Laughing at your pettiness probably works better than scolding yourself for it.
Sharon Salzberg
#50. Compassion isn't morose; it's something replenishing and opening; that's why it makes us happy.
Sharon Salzberg
#51. In order to free ourselves from our assumptions about love, we must ask ourselves what long-held, often buried assumptions are and then face them, which takes courage, humility, and kindness.
Sharon Salzberg
#52. Everything is impermanent: happiness, sorrow, a great meal, a powerful empire, what we're feeling, the people around us, ourselves.
Sharon Salzberg
#53. Seeking happiness is not the problem. The problem is that we often do not know where and how to find genuine happiness and so make the mistakes that cause suffering for ourselves & others.
Sharon Salzberg
#54. 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.
Sharon Salzberg
#55. To remember non-attachment is to remember what freedom is all about. If we get attached, even to a beautiful state of being, we are caught, and ultimately we will suffer. We work to observe anything that comes our way, experience it while it is here, and be able to let go of it.
Sharon Salzberg
#57. Even as we recognize our resentment, bitterness, or jealousy, we can also honor our own wish to be happy, to feel free.
Sharon Salzberg
#58. We find greater lightness & ease in our lives as we increasingly care for ourselves & other beings.
Sharon Salzberg
#60. These are times when sympathetic joy comes naturally, but in a complex relationship the heart may not leap up so easily.
Sharon Salzberg
#61. When we are devoted to the development of kindness, it becomes our ready response, so that reacting from compassion, from caring, is not a question of giving ourselves a lecture: 'I don't really feel like it, but I'd better be helpful, or what would people think?'
Sharon Salzberg
#62. Our vision becomes very narrow when we need things to be a certain way and cannot accept things the way they actually are.
Sharon Salzberg
#63. I see real love as the most fundamental of our innate capacities, never destroyed no matter what we might have gone through or might yet go through.
Sharon Salzberg
#64. Self-compassion is like a muscle. The more we practice flexing it, especially when life doesn't go exactly according to plan (a frequent scenario for most of us), the stronger and more resilient our compassion muscle becomes.
Sharon Salzberg
#65. We like things to manifest right away, and they may not. Many times, we're just planting a seed and we don't know exactly how it is going to come to fruition. It's hard for us to realize that what we see in front of us might not be the end of the story.
Sharon Salzberg
#66. I need to start over. I can't just stay stuck in this place. This is a wonderful skill to bring to your life.
Sharon Salzberg
#67. Sometimes people in abusive situations think they're responsible for the other person's happiness or that they're going to fix them and make them feel better. The practice of equanimity teaches that it's not all up to you to make someone else happy.
Sharon Salzberg
#68. Telling the story, acknowledging what has happened and how you feel, is often a necessary part of forgiveness.
Sharon Salzberg
#69. Michelangelo was once asked how he would carve an elephant. He replied, I would take a large piece of stone and take away everything that was not the elephant.
Sharon Salzberg
#70. Often we can achieve an even better result when we stumble yet are willing to start over, when we don't give up after a mistake, when something doesn't come easily but we throw ourselves into trying, when we're not afraid to appear less than perfectly polished.
Sharon Salzberg
#71. Even in the midst of devastation, something within us always points the way to freedom.
Sharon Salzberg
#72. The more we practice mindfulness, the more alert we become to the cost of keeping secrets.
Sharon Salzberg
#73. If we truly loved ourselves, we'd never harm another. That is a truly revolutionary, celebratory mode of self-care.
Sharon Salzberg
#74. We learn from conflicts only when we are willing to do so.
Sharon Salzberg
#75. Compassion has more to do with the attitude we bring to our encounters with other people than with any quantifiable metric of giving.
Sharon Salzberg
#76. When we open our hearts to the breadth of our experiences, we learn to tune into our needs, unique perceptions, thoughts & feelings
Sharon Salzberg
#77. Forgiveness that is insincere, forced or premature can be more psychologically damaging than authentic bitterness & rage.
Sharon Salzberg
#78. Paying attention to the ethical implications of our choices has never been more pressing - or more complicated - than it is today.
Sharon Salzberg
#79. 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
#80. Smiling at someone can have significant health consequences.
Sharon Salzberg
#81. If I am feeling stupid, angry, jealous, or humiliated, I bring total awareness and acknowledgment to those feelings. I admit my failures and own them. Then I usually start laughing as I realize how small and inconsequential I really am and also how ridiculous my problems are!
Sharon Salzberg
#82. 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.
Sharon Salzberg
#83. Fearful of wasting a second, we hoard time as if it were money.
Sharon Salzberg
#84. Meeting people in a genuine way and feeling like there is a vital and meaningful connection going on makes me come alive.
Sharon Salzberg
#85. All beings want to be happy, yet so very few know how. It is out of ignorance that any of us cause suffering, for ourselves or for others
Sharon Salzberg
#86. By experimenting with sympathetic joy, we break from the constricted world of individual struggle and see that joy exists in more places than we have yet imagined.
Sharon Salzberg
#87. We have the power to improve our work lives immeasurably through awareness, compassion, patience & ingenuity.
Sharon Salzberg
#88. Mindfulness practice helps create space between our actual experiences and the reflexive stories we tend to tell about them.
Sharon Salzberg
#89. Concepts such as loving kindness should never be used as weapons against our real feelings.
Sharon Salzberg
#90. With every action we take, we send love or suffering into the web that connects us.
Sharon Salzberg
#91. We need the courage to learn from our past and not live in it.
Sharon Salzberg
#92. 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.
Sharon Salzberg
#93. When we identify the thoughts that keep us from seeing others as they truly are we prepare the ground for real love.
Sharon Salzberg
#94. 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.
Sharon Salzberg
#95. Continuous Partial Attention involves an artificial sense of constant crisis, of living in a 24/7, always-on world. It contributes to feeling stressed, overwhelmed, overstimulated, and unfulfilled; it compromises our ability to reflect, to make decisions, and to think creatively. Not
Sharon Salzberg
#96. 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.
Sharon Salzberg
#97. Stealth Meditation If you start to feel overwhelmed, take a quick, centering moment - as short as following three breaths - to connect with a deeper sense of yourself.
Sharon Salzberg
#98. Thinking we are only supposed to have loving & compassionate feelings can be a terrible obstacle to spiritual practice.
Sharon Salzberg
#99. We can travel a long way in life and do many things, but our deepest happiness is not born from accumulating new experiences. it is born from letting go of what is unnecessary, and knowing ourselves to be always at home.
Sharon Salzberg
#100. The overarching practice of letting go is also one of gaining resilience and insight.
Sharon Salzberg
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