110+ Sharon Salzberg Quotes On Happiness, And Marriage And Being

Sharon Salzberg is an American meditation teacher and New York Times best-selling author. She is one of the key teachers to introduce mindfulness and insight meditation practices to the West, and has been leading meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. Salzberg is the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and the author of ten books, including her most recent, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Sharon Salzberg on life, love, happiness.

Top 10 Sharon Salzberg Quotes

1. Life is like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope - a slight change, and all patterns alter.
2. Mindfulness isn't difficult, we just need to remember to do it.
3. We spend our lives searching for something we think we don't have, something that will make us happy. But the key to our deepest happiness lies in changing our vision of where to seek it.
4. What comes up is not nearly as important as how you relate to what comes up.
5. If you go deeper and deeper into your own heart, you'll be living in a world with less fear, isolation and loneliness.
6. You are capable of so much more than we usually dare to imagine
7. All beings want to be happy, yet so very few know how. It is out of ignorance that any of us cause suffering, for ourselves or for others
8. Mindfulness allows us to watch our thoughts, see how one thought leads to the next, decide if we're heading down an unhealthy path, and, if so, let go and change directions.
9. Meditation is the ultimate mobile device; you can use it anywhere, anytime, unobtrusively.
10. 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 Short Quotes

• Each decision we make, each action we take, is born out of an intention.
• In those moments when we realize how much we cannot control, we can learn to let go.
• Voting is the expression of our commitment to ourselves, one another, this country and this world.
• Resilience is based on compassion for ourselves as well as compassion for others
• Its never too late to take a moment to look.
• Meditation is a tool for helping us accept the profound fact that everything changes all the time.
• I call myself a meditation teacher rather than a spiritual teacher.
• Let the power of intention lead the way.
• Seeking is endless. It never comes to a state of rest; it never ceases.
• Meditation trains the mind the way physical exercise strengthens the body.

Sharon Salzberg Quotes About Life

We can travel a long way in life and do many things, but our deepest happiness is not born from accumulating new experiences. it is born from letting go of what is unnecessary, and knowing ourselves to be always at home. — Sharon Salzberg

Meditation clarifies our minds and opens our hearts, and brings us to unusual depth and stability of happiness, whatever life brings. — Sharon Salzberg

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

Voting is like alchemy - taking an abstract value and breathing life into it. — Sharon Salzberg

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

Whatever life presents us, our response can be an expression of our compassion. — Sharon Salzberg

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

I've spent quite a bit of my life as a meditation teacher and writer commending the strengths of love and compassion. — Sharon Salzberg

We don’t need any sort of religious orientation to lead a life that is ethical, compassionate & kind. — Sharon Salzberg

When we practice metta, we open continuously to the truth of our actual experience, changing our relationship to life. — Sharon Salzberg

Sharon Salzberg Quotes About Love

To be truly happy in this world is a revolutionary act...It is a radical change of view that liberates us so that we know who we are most deeply and can acknowledge our enormous ability to love. — Sharon Salzberg

Loving kindness is the spirit of friendship toward yourself and others. — Sharon Salzberg

To reteach a thing its loveliness is the nature of metta. Through lovingkindness, everyone & everything can flower again from within. — Sharon Salzberg

Detachment is not about refusing to feel or not caring or turning away from those you love. Detachment is profoundly honest, grounded firmly in the truth of what is. — Sharon Salzberg

By practicing meditation we establish love, compassion, sympathetic joy & equanimity as our home. — Sharon Salzberg

For all of us, love can be the natural state of our own being; naturally at peace, naturally connected, because this becomes the reflection of who we simply are. — Sharon Salzberg

Loving-kindness and compassion are the basis for wise, powerful, sometimes gentle, and sometimes fierce actions that can really make a difference - in our own lives and those of others. — Sharon Salzberg

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. — Sharon Salzberg

To relinquish the futile effort to control change is one of the strengthening forces of true detachment & thus true love. — Sharon Salzberg

With the practice of meditation we can develop this ability to more fully love ourselves and to more consistently love others. — Sharon Salzberg

Sharon Salzberg Quotes About Happiness

True happiness is born of letting go of what is unnecessary. — Sharon Salzberg

By engaging in a delusive quest for happiness, we bring only suffering upon ourselves. In our frantic search for something to quench our thirst, we overlook the water all around us and drive ourselves into exile from our own lives. — Sharon Salzberg

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

We do good because it frees the heart. It opens us to a wellspring of happiness. — Sharon Salzberg

What unites us as human beings is an urge for happiness which at heart is a yearning for union. — Sharon Salzberg

Each of us has a genuine capacity for love, forgiveness, wisdom and compassion. Meditation awakens these qualities so that we can discover for ourselves the unique happiness that is our birthright. — Sharon Salzberg

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. — Sharon Salzberg

The difference between misery and happiness depends on what we do with our attention. — Sharon Salzberg

We all want to be happy. We need to expand the notion of what that means, to make it bigger and wiser. — Sharon Salzberg

Sharon Salzberg Quotes About Transformative

It is in the act of offering our hearts in faith that something in us transforms... proclaiming that we no longer stand on the sidelines but are leaping directly into the center of our lives, our truth, our full potential. — Sharon Salzberg

We learn and grow and are transformed not so much by what we do but by why and how we do it. — Sharon Salzberg

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

Sharon Salzberg Quotes About Heartfulness

If we fall, we don't need self-recrimination or blame or anger - we need a reawakening of our intention and a willingness to re-commit, to be whole-hearted once again. — Sharon Salzberg

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 — Sharon Salzberg

By prizing heartfulness above faultlessness, we may reap more from our effort because we're more likely to be changed by it. — Sharon Salzberg

Everyone loses touch with their aspiration, and we need the heart to return to what we really care about. All of this is based on developing greater lovingkindness and compassion. — Sharon Salzberg

To offer our hearts in faith means recognizing that our hearts are worth something, that we ourselves, in our deepest and truest nature, are of value. — Sharon Salzberg

Sharon Salzberg Quotes About Effort

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

It is taught, we too can be enlightened, every one of us. We can be completely freed from the bonds of limitation and conditioned confusion through our own endeavor, inspiration, effort and development. There is a path, and we can traverse it. — Sharon Salzberg

Effort is the unconstrained willingness to persevere through difficulty. — Sharon Salzberg

Sharon Salzberg Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

Patience doesn't mean making a pact with the devil of denial, ignoring our emotions and aspirations. It means being wholeheartedly engaged in the process that's unfolding, rather than ripping open a budding flower or demanding a caterpillar hurry up and get that chrysalis stage over with. — Sharon Salzberg

Meditation has made me happy, loving, and peaceful-but not every single moment of the day. I still have good times and bad, joy and sorrow. Now I can accept setbacks more easily, with less sense of disappointment and personal failure, because meditation has taught me how to cope with the profound truth that everything changes all the time. — Sharon Salzberg

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

Meditation is a microcosm, a model, a mirror. The skills we practice when we sit are transferable to the rest of our lives. — Sharon Salzberg

The art of concentration is a continual letting go. We let go of what is inessential or distracting. We let go of a thought or a feeling, not because we are afraid of it or because we can’t bear to acknowledge it as a part of our experience; but, because it is UNNECESSARY. — Sharon Salzberg

Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what’s happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what’s happening, stories that get in the way of direct experience. Often such stories treat a fleeting state of mind as if it were our entire and permanent self. — Sharon Salzberg

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. — 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

Restore your attention or bring it to a new level by dramatically slowing down whatever you're doing. — Sharon Salzberg

Mindfulness, also called wise attention, helps us see what we’re adding to our experiences, not only during meditation sessions but also elsewhere. — Sharon Salzberg

An ordinary favor we do for someone or any compassionate reaching out may seem to be going nowhere at first, but may be planting a seed we can't see right now. Sometimes we need to just do the best we can and then trust in an unfolding we can't design or ordain. — Sharon Salzberg

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

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

Pure generosity emerges when we give without the need for our offering to be received in a certain way. That’s why the best kind of generosity comes from inner abundance, rather than from feeling deficient and hollow, starved for validation. — Sharon Salzberg

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. — Sharon Salzberg

We long for permanence but everything in the known universe is transient. That's a fact but one we fight. — Sharon Salzberg

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

There are many different ways to practice meditation; it's good to experiment until you find one that seems to suit you. — 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 usual mind state, we are continually activating the process that in Buddhist terminology is known as 'bhava,' which literally means 'becoming.' In this space of becoming, we are subtly leaning forward into the future, trying to have security based on feeling that we can hold on, we can try to keep things from changing. — 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

Because the development of inner calm and energy happens completely within and isn't dependent on another person or a particular situation, we begin to feel a resourcefulness and independence that is quite beautiful - and a huge relief. — Sharon Salzberg

We like things to manifest right away, and they may not. Many times, we're just planting a seed and we don't know exactly how it is going to come to fruition. It's hard for us to realize that what we see in front of us might not be the end of the story. — Sharon Salzberg

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. — Sharon Salzberg

True giving is a thoroughly joyous thing to do. We experience happiness when we form the intention to give, in the actual act of giving, and in the recollection of the fact that we have given. Generosity is a celebration. When we give something to someone we feel connected to them, and our commitment to the path of peace and awareness deepens. — Sharon Salzberg

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

We can't control what thoughts and emotions arise within us, nor can we control the universal truth that everything changes. But we can learn to step back and rest in the awareness of what's happening. That awareness can be our refuge. — Sharon Salzberg

The most common response I hear when I tell people I teach meditation is, "I'm so stressed out. I could use some of that!" A response I also sometimes hear, which amuses me a lot is, "My partner should really meet you!" — Sharon Salzberg

There is no 'thing' to let go of, but a concept, an idea of an ego that burdens us. As soon as we posit a 'thing' to let go of, we're in trouble. We need to change our view of reality, not attack a nonexistent entity. — 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

People turn to meditation because they want to make good decisions, break bad habits & bounce back better from disappointments. — Sharon Salzberg

There are many times when I have to remind myself that people who harm others are coming from a place of profound disconnection. It is not easy to recognize the pain such a person is in, especially because they may not be conscious of it themselves. They may present themselves to the world as just fine. If you believe human beings have a potential for deep connection, wisdom and love; the limitation in those peoples' lives becomes clearer. — Sharon Salzberg

As we practice meditation, we get used to stillness and eventually are able to make friends with the quietness of our sensations. — Sharon Salzberg

We find greater lightness & ease in our lives as we increasingly care for ourselves & other beings. — 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

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

Even in the midst of devastation, something within us always points the way to freedom. — Sharon Salzberg

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

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

In a situation of potential conflict, let compassion guide you. — Sharon Salzberg

Fearful of wasting a second, we hoard time as if it were money. — Sharon Salzberg

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

Mindfulness needs to not be judgmental to really be mindfulness, which means it needs a basis of loving kindness. — Sharon Salzberg

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

With attachment all that seems to exist is just me & that object I desire. — 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

Some things hurt, you know, and there's pain. But we magnify the suffering of it often, I think, by our reactions. — Sharon Salzberg

Compassion grows in us when we know how the energy of love is available all around us. — Sharon Salzberg

Let the breath lead the way. — Sharon Salzberg

When we see the relatedness of ourselves to the universe, that we do not live as isolated entities, untouched by what is going on around us, not affecting what is going on around us, when we see through that, that we are interrelated, then we can see that to protect others is to protect ourselves, and to protect ourselves it to protect others. — Sharon Salzberg

You might have extensive bouts of thinking exceedingly nasty thoughts, but because you are relating to those thoughts with mindfulness and compassion, that's considered good meditation. — Sharon Salzberg

I’m learning that to be at home everywhere, I have to be sure to include the place I actually live. — Sharon Salzberg

I think what we (as a society) need from artists of all kinds is courage, a willingness to explore, and a really big sense of possibility. — Sharon Salzberg

We use mindfulness to observe the way we cling to pleasant experiences & push away unpleasant ones. — Sharon Salzberg

Meditation teaches us to focus and to pay clear attention to our experiences and responses as they arise, and to observe them without judging them. — Sharon Salzberg

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

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

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

Distraction wastes our energy, concentration restores it. — Sharon Salzberg

Our path, our sense of spirituality demands great earnestness, dedication, sincerity & continuity. — Sharon Salzberg

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. — Sharon Salzberg

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

Often we can achieve an even better result when we stumble yet are willing to start over, when we don't give up after a mistake, when something doesn't come easily but we throw ourselves into trying, when we're not afraid to appear less than perfectly polished. By prizing heartfulness above faultlessness, we may reap more from our effort because we — Sharon Salzberg

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

Life Lessons by Sharon Salzberg

1. Sharon Salzberg teaches the importance of self-compassion and kindness, emphasizing that we should be gentle with ourselves and practice self-care.
2. She encourages us to be mindful of our thoughts and emotions, and to cultivate a sense of inner peace and contentment.
3. Salzberg also emphasizes the importance of cultivating relationships with others, and of being open to receiving and giving love.