Sharon Salzberg Quotes

“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

“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.”

— Sharon Salzberg

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

— Sharon Salzberg

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

— Sharon Salzberg

“You are capable of so much more than we usually dare to imagine”

— Sharon Salzberg

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

— Sharon Salzberg

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

— Sharon Salzberg

Thinking we are only supposed to have loving & compassionate feelings can be a terrible obstacle to spiritual practice.

— Sharon Salzberg

“When we have insight into our inner world and what brings us happiness, then wordlessly, intuitively, we understand others. As though there were no longer a barrier defining the boundaries of our caring, we can feel close to others' experience of life. We see that when we are angry, there is an element of pain in the anger that is not different from the pain that others feel when they are angry. When we feel love, there is a distinct and special joy in that feeling. We come to know that this is the nature of love itself, and that other beings filled with love experience this same joy.”

— Sharon Salzberg

“We have the power to improve our work lives immeasurably through awareness, compassion, patience & ingenuity.”

— Sharon Salzberg

“Our path, our sense of spirituality demands great earnestness, dedication, sincerity & continuity.”

— Sharon Salzberg

“In a situation of potential conflict, let compassion guide you.”

— Sharon Salzberg

“This vision is always available to us; 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, or a week, or ten thousand years-we turn on the light and it is illumined. Once we contact our capacity for love and happiness-the good-the light has been turned on. Practicing the brahma-viharas is a way of turning on the light and then tending it. It is a process of deep spiritual transformation.”

— Sharon Salzberg

“Every single moment is expressive of the truth of our lives when we know how to look.”

— Sharon Salzberg

“This mirroring quality, whereby we "reteach a thing its loveliness," is one of the greatest attributes of metta. The power of metta enables us to look at people and affirm the rightness of their wish to be happy; it affirms our oneness with them. The power of love reflects both to ourselves and others the manifold possibilities available in each moment.”

— Sharon Salzberg

“Generosity has such power because it is characterized by the inner quality of letting go or relinquishing.”

— Sharon Salzberg

“Hatred does not help us alleviate our pain even in the slightest.”

— Sharon Salzberg

“Distraction wastes our energy, concentration restores it.”

— 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

“These four qualities are among the most beautiful and powerful states of consciousness we can experience. Together they are called in Pali, the language spoken by the Buddha, the brahma-viharas. Brahma means "heavenly." Vihara means "abode" or "home." By practicing these meditations, we establish love (Pali, metta), compassion (karuna), sympathetic joy (mudita), and equanimity (upekkha) as our home.”

— Sharon Salzberg

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.

— Sharon Salzberg

“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.”

— Sharon Salzberg

“It is a state of peace to be able to accept things as they are. This is to be at home in our own lives. We see that this universe is much too big to hold on to, but it is the perfect size for letting go. Our hearts and minds become that big, and we can actually let go. This is the gift of equanimity.”

— Sharon Salzberg

“Our world opens up because we can let go. We can relinquish, and we are not afraid. We do not have to hold on.”

— Sharon Salzberg

“I've been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened, Mark Twain once said.”

— Sharon Salzberg

“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

“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

“We can have skills training in mindfulness so that we are using our attention to perceive something in the present moment. This perception is not so latent by fears or projections into the future, or old habits, and then I can actually stir loving-kindness or compassion in skills training too, which can be sort of provocative, I found.”

— 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

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

“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.”

— Sharon Salzberg

If you go deeper and deeper into your own heart, you'll be living in a world with less fear, isolation and loneliness.

— Sharon Salzberg

“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.”

— Sharon Salzberg

“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.”

— Sharon Salzberg

“While you are meditating, if your mind wanders, gently bring it back to the present moment.”

— 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

“As we work to reweave the strands of connection, we can be supported by the wisdom and lovingkindness of others.”

— Sharon Salzberg

“Faith is not a commodity that you either have or don't have enough of, or the right kind of. It's an ongoing process. The opposite of faith is despair.”

— Sharon Salzberg

“We live in this world of great promise, where everything seems to offer an unchanging final happiness, if we can only get enough of it. It is very intoxicating.”

— Sharon Salzberg

What is important is not getting intoxicated with a good feeling or getting intoxicated even with an insight. These take many forms in our practice. We go through times of great release, where there has been physical holding for what feels like forever, and something opens up and releases.

— Sharon Salzberg

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

— Sharon Salzberg

“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.”

— Sharon Salzberg

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

— Sharon Salzberg

“I'm learning that to be at home everywhere, I have to be sure to include the place I actually live.”

— Sharon Salzberg

Faith is not a commodity we either have or don't have-it is an inner quality that unfolds as we learn to trust our own deepest experience.

— Sharon Salzberg

Some things hurt, you know, and there's pain. But we magnify the suffering of it often, I think, by our reactions.

— Sharon Salzberg

“Love and concern for all are not things some of us are born with and others are not. Rather, they are results of what we do with our minds: We can choose to transform our minds so that they embody love, or we can allow them to develop habits and false concepts of separation.”

— Sharon Salzberg

“We do good because it frees the heart. It opens us to a wellspring of happiness.”

— Sharon Salzberg

“Even in the midst of devastation, something within us always points the way to freedom.”

— Sharon Salzberg

“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.”

— Sharon Salzberg