Sharon Salzberg Quotes

Shame weakens us. It can make us frightened to take on something new. We start to withdraw from whatever might give us pleasure, self-esteem, or a sense of our value.

~ Sharon Salzberg

To imagine the way we think is the singular causative agent of all we go through is to practice cruelty toward ourselves.

~ Sharon Salzberg

It’s affirming that we can look at any experience from the fullness of our being and get past the shame we carry.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Mindfulness allows us to shift the angle on our story and to remember that we have the capacity to learn and change in ways that are productive, not self-defeating.

~ Sharon Salzberg

We can use meditation as a way to experiment with new ways of relating to ourselves, even our uncomfortable thoughts.

~ Sharon Salzberg

if we really look at our actions with eyes of love, we see that our lives can be more straightforward, simpler, less sculpted by regret and fear, more in alignment with our deepest values.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Paying attention to the ethical implications of our choices has never been more pressing—or more complicated—than it is today.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Causing harm is never just a one-way street.

~ Sharon Salzberg

If we harm someone else, we’re inevitably also hurting ourselves. Some quality of sensitivity and awareness has to shut down for us to be able to objectify someone else, to deny them as a living, feeling being—someone who wants to be happy, just as we do.

~ Sharon Salzberg

When we do our best to treat others with kindness, it’s often a struggle to determine which actions best express our love and care for ourselves.

~ Sharon Salzberg

When we feel conflicted about a particular decision or action, our bodies often hold the answer—if we take the time to stop and tune in.

~ Sharon Salzberg

You can see your thoughts and emotions arise & create space for them even if they are uncomfortable.

~ Sharon Salzberg

The breath is the first tool for opening the space between the story you tell yourself about love.

~ Sharon Salzberg

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

I believe that there is only one kind of love—real love—trying to come alive in us despite our limiting assumptions, the distortions of our culture, and the habits of fear, self-condemnation, and isolation that we tend to acquire just by living a life.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Mindfulness practice helps create space between our actual experiences and the reflexive stories we tend to tell about them.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Loving kindness practice helps us move out of the terrain of our default narratives if they tend to be based on fear or disconnection. We become authors of brand-new stories about love.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Our senses are often the gateway to our stories.

~ Sharon Salzberg

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

Meditation can be a refuge, but it is not a practice in which real life is ever excluded. The strength of mindfulness is that it enables us to hold difficult thoughts and feelings in a different way—with awareness, balance, and love

~ Sharon Salzberg

Mindfulness is so much wiser and more robust than our inner critic.

~ 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

The manifestation of the free mind is said to be lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Contemplating the goodness within ourselves is a classical meditation, done to bring light, joy, and rapture to the mind. In contemporary times this practice might be considered rather embarrassing, because so often the emphasis is on all the unfortunate things we have done, all the disturbing mistakes we have made. Yet this classical reflection is not a way of increasing conceit. It is rather a commitment to our own happiness, seeing our happiness as the basis for intimacy with all of life. It fills us with joy and love for ourselves and a great deal of self-respect. Significantly, when we do metta practice, we begin by directing metta toward ourselves. This is the essential foundation for being able to offer genuine love to others

~ Sharon Salzberg

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

There is so much we just can't see or know right now, including precisely how our actions will ripple out.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Love exists in itself, not relying on owning or being owned.

~ Sharon Salzberg

When we don’t allow setbacks to defeat us, they become opportunities for learning, acceptance, flexibility, and patience.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Each opportunity to interrupt the onslaught of thoughts and return to the object of meditation is, in fact, a moment of enlightenment

~ 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

Meditation trains the mind the way physical exercise strengthens the body.

~ Sharon Salzberg

In order to do anything about the suffering of the world we must have the strength to face it without turning away.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Vulnerability in the face of constant change is what we share, whatever our present condition.

~ Sharon Salzberg

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

~ Sharon Salzberg

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

~ Sharon Salzberg

Through meditation we come to know that we are dying & being reborn in every moment.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Meditation is a cyclical process that defies analysis, but demands acceptance.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Just as a prism refracts light differently when you change its angle, each experience of love illuminates love in new ways, drawing from an infinite palette of patterns and hues.

~ Sharon Salzberg

The causes of familial discord and distance are countless, but the results are often the same: secrecy, blame, sadness, hurt, confusion, and feelings of loss and grief.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Forgiveness is a process, an admittedly difficult one that often can feel like a rigorous spiritual practice.

~ Sharon Salzberg