Meditation Quotes

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

~ Sharon Salzberg

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

~ Sharon Salzberg

As human beings, we’re capable of greatness of spirit, an ability to go beyond the circumstances we find ourselves in, to experience a vast sense of connection to all of life.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Our minds tend to race ahead into the future or replay the past, but our bodies are always in the present moment.

~ Sharon Salzberg

The skills available to us through mindfulness make it possible to bring love to our connections with others.

~ Sharon Salzberg

What we learn in meditation, we can apply to all other realms of our lives.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Keeping secrets is a consequential act for all involved.

~ Sharon Salzberg

The environment we create can help heal us or fracture us. This is true not just for buildings and landscapes but also for interactions and relationships.

~ Sharon Salzberg

So often, fear keeps us from being able to say yes to love—perhaps our greatest challenge as human beings.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Learning to treat ourselves lovingly may at first feel like a dangerous experiment.

~ Sharon Salzberg

By accepting and learning to embrace the inevitable sorrows of life, we realize that we can experience a more enduring sense of happiness.

~ Sharon Salzberg

The journey to loving ourselves doesn’t mean we like everything.

~ Sharon Salzberg

When we direct a lot of hostile energy toward the inner critic, we enter into a losing battle.

~ Sharon Salzberg

When we approach the journey acknowledging what we do not know and what we can’t control, we maintain our energy for the quest.

~ Sharon Salzberg

When we relate to ourselves with loving kindness, perfectionism naturally drops away.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Wholehearted acceptance is a basic element of love, starting with love for ourselves, and a gateway to joy. Through the practices of loving kindness and self-compassion, we can learn to love our flawed and imperfect selves. And in those moments of vulnerability, we open our hearts to connect with each other, as well. We are not perfect, but we are enough.

~ Sharon Salzberg

When we contemplate the miracle of embodied life, we begin to partner with our bodies in a kinder way.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Wherever the responsibility lies, shame creates a solid and terrible feeling of unworthiness that resides in our bodies: the storehouse of the memories of our acts, real or imagined, and the secrets we keep about them.

~ Sharon Salzberg

The heart contracts when our bodies are overcome by shame.

~ Sharon Salzberg

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

Just as you can never squeeze water out of the water, you can never squeeze the good out of goodness: You simply tap into the good by positioning yourself and allowing it.

~ Dr. Jacinta Mpalyenkana

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

Meditation is about mindfulness and learning to strip away the illusion, revealing your authentic self and connectedness to everything and everyone.

~ Nanette Mathews

Our senses are often the gateway to our stories.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Sure, I've had times it was hard to meditate....But even then I still end up being more calmly agitated.

~ Nanette Mathews