Quotes by Sharon Salzberg

Letting go is an inside job, something only we can do for ourselves.

Taking responsibility for oneself is by definition an act of kindness.

Equanimity can be hard to talk about.

Our can-do culture has made many of us believe that we should always be self-sufficient. Somewhere along the way, we also got the message that asking for help is a sign of weakness. We often forget that we’re interdependent creatures whose very existence depends on the kindness of others, including—with a bow to Tennessee Williams—strangers.

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

In more ways than any of us can name, love is wrapped up with the idea of expectation.

Letting go is actually a healthy foundation upon which we can open up to real love—to giving, receiving, and experiencing it authentically and organically.

Mindfulness may help you gain insight into your role in conflicts with others, it won’t single-highhandedly help you resolve them.

The heart is a generous muscle.

These are times when sympathetic joy comes naturally, but in a complex relationship the heart may not leap up so easily.

Laughing at your pettiness probably works better than scolding yourself for it.

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.

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.

To celebrate someone else’s life, we need to find a way to look at it straight on, not from above with judgment or from below with envy.

There is no conflict between loving others deeply and living mindfully.

Even when we do our very best to treat those close to us with utmost respect and understanding, conflict happens. That’s life. That’s human nature.

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.

Love is defined by difficult acts of human compassion & generosity.

As we explore new ways of loving and being loved by others, we need to equip ourselves with open, pliant minds; we need to be willing to investigate, experiment, and evaluate as we approach a topic we thought we knew so much about.

Love simply, perpetually exists and that it’s a matter of psychic housekeeping to make room for it.