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" Voting is like alchemy - taking an abstract value and breathing life into it. "

Sharon Salzberg

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" The moment that we realize our attention has wandered is the magic moment of the practice, because that's the moment we have the chance to be really different. Instead of judging ourselves, and berating ourselves, and condemning ourselves, we can be gentle with ourselves. "

Sharon Salzberg

" It is sometimes difficult to view compassion and loving kindness as the strengths they are. "

Sharon Salzberg

" To cherish others is to cherish ourselves. To cherish ourselves is to cherish others. And in that same way, we relate to the truth. If we support it, if we embrace it, if we uphold it, we will be embraced by it, we will be supported and upheld by it. "

Sharon Salzberg

" When we see the relatedness of ourselves to the universe, that we do not live as isolated entities, untouched by what is going on around us, not affecting what is going on around us, when we see through that, that we are interrelated, then we can see that to protect others is to protect ourselves, and to protect ourselves is to protect others. "

Sharon Salzberg

" It's interesting that people bring different things to oppressive and difficult situations, when they're reduced to the barest terms of survival. That's what provides tension in a lot of films. "

Sharon Salzberg

" Everyone's mind wanders, without doubt, and we always have to start over. Everyone resists or dislikes the thought of or is too tired to meditate at times, and we have to be able to begin again. "

Sharon Salzberg

" Chanting is a simple practice. When you notice you are thinking about something else during the chant, let go of the thought and come back home, to the chant, to that place where we are expressing our inner purity. "

Sharon Salzberg

" As we work to reweave the strands of connection, we can be supported by the wisdom and lovingkindness of others. "

Sharon Salzberg

" We can't give the truth to someone as an object, we can only point to it, inviting inspection. It is in that spirit that we can hear or read a teaching and then look at our own lives, at our own experiences to see whether anything might have been revealed about them. "

Sharon Salzberg

" Once in a while, you have to let your mind just go. "

Sharon Salzberg

" I've always said that lovingkindness and compassion are inevitably woven throughout meditation practice even if the words are never used or implied, no matter what technique or method we are using. "

Sharon Salzberg

" It is so powerful when we can leave behind our ordinary identities, no longer think of ourselves primarily as a conductor, or writer, or salesclerk, and go to a supportive environment to deeply immerse in meditation practice. "

Sharon Salzberg

" The first of the four noble truths of Buddhism, that there is suffering in life, was enormously important to me. No one had ever said it out loud. That had been my experience, of course, but no one had ever talked about it. I didn't know what to do with all the fear and emotions within, and here was the Buddha saying this truth right out loud. "

Sharon Salzberg

" Protection, as we use the word in Buddhism, is actually wisdom, it's insight. Protection is seeing and knowing deeply that all things in our experience arise due to causes, due to conditions coming together in a certain way. "

Sharon Salzberg

" Meditation is not the construction of something foreign, it is not an effort to attain and then hold on to a particular experience. We may have a secret desire that through meditation we will accumulate a stockpile of magical experiences, or at least a mystical trophy or two, and then we will be able to proudly display them for others to see. "

Sharon Salzberg

" Compassion isn't morose; it's something replenishing and opening; that's why it makes us happy. "

Sharon Salzberg

" We can always begin again. "

Sharon Salzberg

" What is important is not getting intoxicated with a good feeling or getting intoxicated even with an insight. These take many forms in our practice. We go through times of great release, where there has been physical holding for what feels like forever, and something opens up and releases. "

Sharon Salzberg

" In a single moment we can understand we are not just facing a knee pain, or our discouragement and our wishing the sitting would end, but that right in the moment of seeing that knee pain, we're able to explore the teachings of the Buddha. What does it mean to have a painful experience? What does it mean to hate it, and to fear it? "

Sharon Salzberg

" We live in this world of great promise, where everything seems to offer an unchanging final happiness, if we can only get enough of it. It is very intoxicating. "

Sharon Salzberg

" Everyone loses touch with their aspiration, and we need the heart to return to what we really care about. All of this is based on developing greater lovingkindness and compassion. "

Sharon Salzberg

" I've spent quite a bit of my life as a meditation teacher and writer commending the strengths of love and compassion. "

Sharon Salzberg

" Some people have a mistaken idea that all thoughts disappear through meditation and we enter a state of blankness. There certainly are times of great tranquility when concentration is strong and we have few, if any, thoughts. But other times, we can be flooded with memories, plans or random thinking. It's important not to blame yourself. "

Sharon Salzberg

" What you learn about pain in formal meditation can help you relate to it in your daily life. "

Sharon Salzberg

" We need to redefine community and find a variety of ways of coming together and helping each other. "

Sharon Salzberg

" 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. "

Sharon Salzberg

" I think we spend so much of our lives trying to pretend that we know what's going to happen next. In fact we don't. To recognize that we don't know even what will happen this afternoon and yet having the courage to move forward - that's one meaning of faith. "

Sharon Salzberg

" We come to meditation to learn how not to act out the habitual tendencies we generally live by - those actions that create suffering for ourselves and others, and get us into so much trouble. "

Sharon Salzberg

" We can learn the art of fierce compassion - redefining strength, deconstructing isolation and renewing a sense of community, practicing letting go of rigid us-vs.-them thinking - while cultivating power and clarity in response to difficult situations. "

Sharon Salzberg

" When you're wide open, the world is a good place. "

Sharon Salzberg