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

Sharon Salzberg

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" While you are meditating, if your mind wanders, gently bring it back to the present moment. "

Sharon Salzberg

" In Buddhist teaching, ignorance is considered the fundamental cause of violence - ignorance... about the separation of self and other... about the consequences of our actions. "

Sharon Salzberg

" 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. "

Sharon Salzberg

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

Sharon Salzberg

" 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's a rare and precious thing to be close to suffering because our society - in many ways - tells us that suffering is wrong. If it's our own suffering, we try to hide it or isolate ourselves. If others are suffering, we're taught to put them away somewhere so we don't have to see it. "

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

" There are many different ways to practice meditation; it's good to experiment until you find one that seems to suit you. "

Sharon Salzberg

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

Sharon Salzberg

" Even on the spiritual path, we have things we'll tend to cover up or be in denial about. "

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

" 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

" My ideal registration system would be an opt-out one, where every single person is registered once they turn 18. In Australia, I'm told, everyone is registered to vote and you pay a fine if you don't vote. "

Sharon Salzberg

" I think so many people tend to think of faith as blind adherence to a dogma or unquestioned surrender to an authority figure, and the result is losing self-respect and losing our own sense of what is true. And I don't think of faith in those terms at all. "

Sharon Salzberg

" We can have skills training in mindfulness so that we are using our attention to perceive something in the present moment. This perception is not so latent by fears or projections into the future, or old habits, and then I can actually stir loving-kindness or compassion in skills training too, which can be sort of provocative, I found. "

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

" 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. "

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

" I think the associations people have with kindness are often things like meekness and sweetness and maybe sickly sweetness; whereas I do think of kindness as a force, as a power. "

Sharon Salzberg

" Dedicating some time to meditation is a meaningful expression of caring for yourself that can help you move through the mire of feeling unworthy of recovery. As your mind grows quieter and more spacious, you can begin to see self-defeating thought patterns for what they are, and open up to other, more positive options. "

Sharon Salzberg

" We apply our effort to be mindful, to be aware in this very moment, right here and now, and we bring a very wholehearted effort to it. This brings concentration. It is this power of concentration that we use to cut through the world of surface appearances to get to a much deeper reality. "

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

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

Sharon Salzberg

" We are taught that revenge is strong and compassion is weak. We are taught that power is more important than love. "

Sharon Salzberg

" If we have a very strong commitment, so that we can trust ourselves and be beacons of trust for others no matter what the circumstance, then we're protected from suffering the consequences of many actions. We can be protected from that pain. "

Sharon Salzberg

" 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. "

Sharon Salzberg

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

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

" 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

" In our own lives and in our communities, we need to find a way to include others rather than exclude them. We need to find a way to allow our pain and suffering, individually and collectively. "

Sharon Salzberg