Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" While you are meditating, if your mind wanders, gently bring it back to the present moment. "
Sharon Salzberg
Bring
Present
You
Related Quotes:
" Compassion isn't morose; it's something replenishing and opening; that's why it makes us happy. "
Sharon Salzberg
Compassion
Why
Opening
" It is sometimes difficult to view compassion and loving kindness as the strengths they are. "
Sharon Salzberg
Compassion
View
Kindness
" 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
Suffering
Then
Pain
" 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
Crazy
Law
World
" 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
Moment
Hate
Experience
" What you learn about pain in formal meditation can help you relate to it in your daily life. "
Sharon Salzberg
You
Help
Daily Life
" We are taught that revenge is strong and compassion is weak. We are taught that power is more important than love. "
Sharon Salzberg
Strong
Compassion
Power
" 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
Caring
Mind
Positive
" 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
Try
Hide
Precious
" Sometimes people don't trust the force of kindness. They think love or compassion or kindness will make you weak and kind of stupid and people will take advantage of you; you won't stand up for other people. "
Sharon Salzberg
Compassion
Trust
Think
" 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
Cherish
Way
Truth
" I've spent quite a bit of my life as a meditation teacher and writer commending the strengths of love and compassion. "
Sharon Salzberg
Life
Teacher
My Life
" 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
Great
Memories
Thoughts
" 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
Change
Compassion
Courage
" 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
Practice
Good
Great
" When you're wide open, the world is a good place. "
Sharon Salzberg
Place
World
Wide
" 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
Practice
Compassion
Meditation
" There's no commodity we can take with us. There is only our lives, whether we live them wisely or whether we live them in ignorance. And this is everything. "
Sharon Salzberg
Us
Only
Live
" Once in a while, you have to let your mind just go. "
Sharon Salzberg
Your
Mind
Once
" It's difficult to admit to ourselves that we suffer. We feel humiliated, like we should have been able to control our pain. If someone else is suffering, we like to tuck them away, out of sight. It's a cruel, cruel conditioning. There is no controlling the unfolding of life. "
Sharon Salzberg
Suffering
Life
Pain
" Doing nothing means unplugging from the compulsion to always keep ourselves busy, the habit of shielding ourselves from certain feelings, the tension of trying to manipulate our experience before we even fully acknowledge what that experience is. "
Sharon Salzberg
Doing
Habit
Feelings
" 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
Enough
Great
Happiness
" 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
Experience
Fear
Life
" 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
Faith
Losing
People
" There are many different ways to practice meditation; it's good to experiment until you find one that seems to suit you. "
Sharon Salzberg
Meditation
Find
You
" Voting is the expression of our commitment to ourselves, one another, this country and this world. "
Sharon Salzberg
World
Commitment
Country
" As we look around, it's very clear that in this world people do outrageous things to one another all of the time. It's not that these qualities or actions make us bad people, but they bring tremendous suffering if we don't know how to work with them. "
Sharon Salzberg
Time
World
People
" 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
Pay
Australia
Person
" 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
Consequences
Self
Violence
" 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
Freedom
Beautiful
Go