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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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Sharon Salzberg
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 5
Author
Writer
New York City
New York
Meditation
Doe
Mean
Mind
Forcibly
Beating
Shape
Shapes
Training

More quotes by 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.
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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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As an ability, love is always there as a potential, ready to flourish and help our lives flourish. As we go up and down in life, as we acquire or lose, as we are showered with praise or unfairly blamed, always within there is the ability of love, recognized or not, given life or not.
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.
Sharon Salzberg
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Whatever life presents us, our response can be an expression of our compassion.
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Mindfulness can play a big role in transforming our experience with pain & other difficulties it allows us to recognize the authenticity of the distress & yet not be overwhelmed by it.
Sharon Salzberg
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What comes up is not nearly as important as how you relate to what comes up.
Sharon Salzberg
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The Buddha said that no true spiritual life is possible without a generous heart. . . . Generosity allies itself with an inner feeling of abundance - the feeling that we have enough to share.
Sharon Salzberg
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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.
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.
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Faith is not a commodity we either have or don't have-it is an inner quality that unfolds as we learn to trust our own deepest experience.
Sharon Salzberg
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Our path, our sense of spirituality demands great earnestness, dedication, sincerity & continuity.
Sharon Salzberg
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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
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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.
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
Sharon Salzberg
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Meditation is a cyclical process that defies analysis, but demands acceptance.
Sharon Salzberg
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Once someone appears to us primarily as an object, kindness has no place to root.
Sharon Salzberg
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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.
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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.
Sharon Salzberg