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We are all too often told by someone that we are too old, too young, too different, too much the same, and those comments can be devastating.

Sharon Salzberg

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Sharon Salzberg
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 5
Author
Writer
New York City
New York
Young
Different
Devastating
Much
Comments
Comment
Meditation
Told
Often
Someone

More quotes by Sharon Salzberg

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Find a gap between a trigger event and our usual conditioned response to it and by using that pause to collect ourselves and shift our response
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There are many different ways to practice meditation it's good to experiment until you find one that seems to suit you.
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The meditation traditions I started and have continued practicing have all emphasized inclusivity: anyone can do this who is interested.
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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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My earliest experiences in meditation were in a context of intensive retreats.
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We need the courage to learn from our past and not live in it.
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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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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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Training our mind through meditation does not mean forcibly subjugating it or beating it into shape.
Sharon Salzberg
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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.
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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
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When we are devoted to the development of kindness, it becomes our ready response, so that reacting from compassion, from caring, is not a question of giving ourselves a lecture: 'I don't really feel like it, but I'd better be helpful, or what would people think?'
Sharon Salzberg
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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
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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
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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
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It doesn't matter how long we may have been stuck in a sense of our limitations. If we go into a darkened room and turn on the light, it doesn't matter if the room has been dark for a day, a week, or ten thousand years - we turn on the light and it is illuminated. Once we control our capacity for love and happiness, the light has been turned on.
Sharon Salzberg
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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
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From the Buddhist point of view, it is true that emptiness is a characteristic of all of life - if we look carefully at any experience we will find transparency, insubstantiality, with no solid, unchanging core to our experience. But that does not mean that nothing matters.
Sharon Salzberg
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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
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Meditation may be done in silence & stillness, by using voice & sound, or by engaging the body in movement. All forms emphasize the training of attention.
Sharon Salzberg