Quotes by Sharon Salzberg

For all of us, love can be the natural state of our own being; naturally at peace, naturally connected, because this becomes the reflection of who we simply are.

Let the breath lead the way.

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

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

Effort is the unconstrained willingness to persevere through difficulty.

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.

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.

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

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.

Buddha first taught metta meditation as an antidote: as a way of surmounting terrible fear when it arises.

To relinquish the futile effort to control change is one of the strengthening forces of true detachment & thus true love.

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

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

If we have nothing material to give, we can offer our attention, our energy, our appreciation. The world needs us. It doesn’t deplete us to give.

We’re in charge of our own forgiveness, and the process takes time, patience, and intention.

Kindness is really at the core of what it means to be and feel alive.

Any time we find ourselves relying on the ideas of an absolute, frozen state of right and wrong—or fairness versus unfairness—that we are used to, we can compare the habit to distraction during meditation.

If we truly loved ourselves, we’d never harm another. That is a truly revolutionary, celebratory mode of self-care.

The more we practice mindfulness, the more alert we become to the cost of keeping secrets.

We’re capable of much more than mediocrity, much more than merely getting by in this world.