Sharon Salzberg Quotes

Life is like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope - a slight change, and all patterns alter.

Things don't just happen in this world of arising and passing away. We don't live in some kind of crazy, accidental universe. Things happen according to certain laws, laws of nature. Laws such as the law of karma, which teaches us that as a certain seed gets planted, so will that fruit be.

Patience doesn't mean making a pact with the devil of denial, ignoring our emotions and aspirations. It means being wholeheartedly engaged in the process that's unfolding, rather than ripping open a budding flower or demanding a caterpillar hurry up and get that chrysalis stage over with.

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.

The difference between misery and happiness depends on what we do with our attention.

As I go through all kinds of feelings and experiences in my journey through life -- delight, surprise, chagrin, dismay -- I hold this question as a guiding light: 'What do I really need right now to be happy?' What I come to over and over again is that only qualities as vast and deep as love, connection and kindness will really make me happy in any sort of enduring way.

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.

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.

We learn and grow and are transformed not so much by what we do but by why and how we do it.

Meditation has made me happy, loving, and peaceful-but not every single moment of the day. I still have good times and bad, joy and sorrow. Now I can accept setbacks more easily, with less sense of disappointment and personal failure, because meditation has taught me how to cope with the profound truth that everything changes all the time.

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

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.

We spend our lives searching for something we think we don't have, something that will make us happy. But the key to our deepest happiness lies in changing our vision of where to seek it.

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

What comes up is not nearly as important as how you relate to what comes up.

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

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, a week, or ten thousand years - we turn on the light and it is illuminated. Once we control our capacity for love and happiness, the light has been turned on.

Mindfulness allows us to watch our thoughts, see how one thought leads to the next, decide if we're heading down an unhealthy path, and, if so, let go and change directions.

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

Meditation is the ultimate mobile device; you can use it anywhere, anytime, unobtrusively.

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.

Loving ourselves opens us to truly knowing ourselves as part of the matrix of existence, inextricably connected to the boundlessness of life... when we see that we are far bigger than the person that is delineated by family or cultural expectations, we realize we are capable of so much more than we usually dare to imagine.

We need the compassion and the courage to change the conditions that support our suffering. Those conditions are things like ignorance, bitterness, negligence, clinging, and holding on.

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.

If we fall, we don't need self-recrimination or blame or anger - we need a reawakening of our intention and a willingness to re-commit, to be whole-hearted once again.

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

True happiness is born of letting go of what is unnecessary.

Loving kindness is the spirit of friendship toward yourself and others.

What unites us as human beings is an urge for happiness which at heart is a yearning for union.

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.

The art of concentration is a continual letting go. We let go of what is inessential or distracting. We let go of a thought or a feeling, not because we are afraid of it or because we can’t bear to acknowledge it as a part of our experience; but, because it is UNNECESSARY.

There are many times when I have to remind myself that people who harm others are coming from a place of profound disconnection. It is not easy to recognize the pain such a person is in, especially because they may not be conscious of it themselves. They may present themselves to the world as just fine. If you believe human beings have a potential for deep connection, wisdom and love; the limitation in those peoples' lives becomes clearer.

Mindfulness helps us to set boundaries by revealing what makes us unhappy & what brings us peace.

If you’re reading these words, perhaps it’s because something has kicked open the door for you, and you’re ready to embrace change. It isn’t enough to appreciate change from afar, or only in the abstract, or as something that can happen to other people but not to you. We need to create change for ourselves, in a workable way, as part of our everyday lives.

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.

Someone who has experienced trauma also has gifts to offer all of us - in their depth, their knowledge of our universal vulnerability, and their experience of the power of compassion.

Compassion allows us to bear witness to suffering, whether it is in ourselves or others, without fear; it allows us to name injustice without hesitation, to act strongly, with all the skill at our disposal.

Detachment is not about refusing to feel or not caring or turning away from those you love. Detachment is profoundly honest, grounded firmly in the truth of what is.

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.

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.

Each decision we make, each action we take, is born out of an intention.

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.

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.

In those moments when we realize how much we cannot control, we can learn to let go.

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

To reteach a thing its loveliness is the nature of metta. Through lovingkindness, everyone & everything can flower again from within.

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.

When we practice metta, we open continuously to the truth of our actual experience, changing our relationship to life.

Compassion allows us to use our own pain and the pain of others as a vehicle for connection. This is a delicate and profound path. We may be adverse to seeing our own suffering because it tends to ignite a blaze of self-blame and regret. And we may be adverse to seeing suffering in others because we find it unbearable or distasteful, or we find it threatening to our own happiness. All of these possible reactions to the suffering in the word make us want to turn away from life.

An ordinary favor we do for someone or any compassionate reaching out may seem to be going nowhere at first, but may be planting a seed we can't see right now. Sometimes we need to just do the best we can and then trust in an unfolding we can't design or ordain.