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My earliest experiences in meditation were in a context of intensive retreats.

Sharon Salzberg

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Sharon Salzberg
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 5
Author
Writer
New York City
New York
Context
Experiences
Meditation
Retreats
Intensive
Earliest
Retreat

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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.
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Metta sees truly that our integrity is inviolate, no matter what our life situation may be. We do not need to fear anything. We are whole: our deepest happiness is intrinsic to the nature of our minds, and it is not damaged through uncertainty and change.
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Every day seems to reveal a new piece of research about meditation, or new clinical applications of mindfulness or compassion practice, or new corporations or foundations or non-profits bringing mindfulness to work.
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By prizing heartfulness above faultlessness, we may reap more from our effort because we're more likely to be changed by it.
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As we practice meditation we are bringing forth ease, presence, compassion, wisdom & trust.
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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?
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Mindfulness, also called wise attention, helps us see what we’re adding to our experiences, not only during meditation sessions but also elsewhere.
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The cultivation of generosity is the beginning of spiritual awakening. Generosity has tremendous force because it arises from an inner quality of letting go. Being able to let go, to give up, to renounce, and to give generously all spring from the same source, and when we practice generosity ... we open up these qualities within ourselves.
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Some things hurt, you know, and there's pain. But we magnify the suffering of it often, I think, by our reactions.
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The movement of the heart as we practice generosity in the outer world mirrors the movement of the heart when we let go of conditioned views about ourselves on our inner journey. Letting go creates a joyful sense of space in our minds
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My experience working with lots of creative people is that they don't lose their artistic edge when they lose a fierce level of anguish. They just create from a different place.
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By practicing meditation we establish love, compassion, sympathetic joy & equanimity as our home.
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Vulnerability in the face of constant change is what we share, whatever our present condition.
Sharon Salzberg
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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.
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At 9:10 I'm going to be filled with self-hatred.
Sharon Salzberg
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Compassion allows us to bear witness to suffering, whether it is in ourselves or others, without fear it allows us to name injustice without hesitation, to act strongly, with all the skill at our disposal.
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Throughout our lives we long to love ourselves more deeply and to feel connected with others. Instead, we often contract, fear intimacy, and suffer a bewildering sense of separation. We crave love, and yet we are lonely. Our delusion of being separate from one another, of being apart from all that is around us, gives rise to all of this pain.
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Love and concern for all are not things some of us are born with and others are not. Rather, they are results of what we do with our minds: We can choose to transform our minds so that they embody love, or we can allow them to develop habits and false concepts of separation.
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Whatever life presents us, our response can be an expression of our compassion.
Sharon Salzberg
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Metta is the ability to embrace all parts of ourselves, as well as all parts of the world. Practicing metta illuminates our inner integrity because it relieves us of the need to deny different aspects of ourselves.
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