Sharon Salzberg Quotes

Real Love may run on a lower voltage, but it’s also more grounded & sustainable.

~ Sharon Salzberg

From our first breath to our last, we’re presented again and again with the opportunity to experience deep, lasting, and trans-formative connection with other beings: to love them and be loved by them; to show them our true natures and to recognize theirs.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Buddhist teachings discourage us from clinging and grasping to those we hold dear, and from trying to control the people or the relationship. What’s more, we’re encouraged to accept the impermanence of all things: the flower that blooms today will be gone tomorrow, the objects we possess will break or fade or lose their utility, our relationships will change, life will end.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Whatever language we use use to describe healthy relationships, when we’re in them, we feel nourished by them, in body as well as mind.

~ Sharon Salzberg

When we constantly hear that we should be smarter, better connected, more productive, wealthier—it takes real courage to claim the time and space to follow the currents of our talents, our aspirations, and our hearts, which may lead in a very different direction.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Intellectually, we may appreciate that loving ourselves would give us a firm foundation but for most of us this is a leap of logic, not a leap of the heart.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Though it may seem counter intuitive to our inner perfectionist, recognizing our mistakes as valuable lessons (not failures) helps us lay the groundwork for later success.

~ Sharon Salzberg

We long for permanence but everything in the known universe is transient. That’s a fact but one we fight.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Science tells us that love not only diminishes the experience of physical pain but can make us—and our beloveds—healthier.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Evolutionary biologists tell us we have a “negativity bias” that makes our brains remember negative events more strongly than positive ones. So when we’re feeling lost or discouraged, it can be very hard to conjure up memories and feelings of happiness and ease.

~ Sharon Salzberg

When we pay attention to sensations in our bodies, we can feel that love is the energetic opposite of fear.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Love seems to open and expand us right down to the cellular level, while fear causes us to contract and withdraw into ourselves.

~ Sharon Salzberg

There is a sentiment common among most of us when it comes to love—letting go can feel scary.

~ Sharon Salzberg

There are an incalculable—even infinite—number of situations in which we can practice forgiveness. Expecting it to be a singular action—motivated by the sheer imperative to move on and forget—can be more damaging than the original feelings of anger. Accepting forgiveness as pluralistic and as an ongoing, individualized process opens us up to realize the role that our own needs play in conflict resolution.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Loving kindness is the practice of offering to oneself and others wishes to be happy, peaceful, healthy, strong

~ Sharon Salzberg

We begin to cultivate real love for ourselves when we treat ourselves with compassion.

~ Sharon Salzberg

A lack of real love for ourselves is one of the most constricting, painful conditions we can know.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Forgiveness is a personal process that doesn’t depend on us having direct contact with the people who have hurt us.

~ Sharon Salzberg

When we forgive someone, we don’t pretend that the harm didn’t happen or cause us pain. We see it clearly for what it was, but we also come to see that fixating on the memory of harm generates anger and sadness.

~ Sharon Salzberg

When we truly allow ourselves to feel our own pain, over time it comes to seem less personal. We start to recognize that what we’ve perceived as our pain is, at a deeper level, the pain inherent in human existence.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Forgiveness is the way we break the grip that long-held resentments have on our hearts.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Healing comes in many ways, and no one formula fits all.

~ Sharon Salzberg

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

~ Sharon Salzberg

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

~ Sharon Salzberg

Equanimity can be hard to talk about.

~ Sharon Salzberg

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.

~ Sharon Salzberg

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

~ Sharon Salzberg

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

~ Sharon Salzberg

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.

~ Sharon Salzberg

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

~ Sharon Salzberg

The heart is a generous muscle.

~ Sharon Salzberg

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

~ Sharon Salzberg

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

~ Sharon Salzberg

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.

~ Sharon Salzberg

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.

~ Sharon Salzberg

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.

~ Sharon Salzberg

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

~ Sharon Salzberg

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.

~ Sharon Salzberg

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.

~ Sharon Salzberg

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

~ Sharon Salzberg