Quotes from Sharon Salzberg

Like a subliminal message being played under the predominant music, a sense of possibility, no matter how faint, drives a wedge between the suffering we may wake up with each day and the hopelessness that can try to move in with us on a permanent basis. It inspires us to envision a better life for ourselves. It is this glimmer of possibility that is the beginning of faith.

When we identify the thoughts that keep us from seeing others as they truly are we prepare the ground for real love.

Famed basketball coach Phil Jackson, a meditator himself, arranged to have his players—first the Chicago Bulls, and then the L.A. Lakers—learn meditation as a way to improve their focus and teamwork. Jackson finds that mindfulness assists players in paying attention to what's happening on the court moment by moment. Such precise training in attention has paid off during tense playoffs; Jackson has led more teams to championships than any coach in NBA history. Meditation

How many pleasures escape our notice because we think we need big, dramatic sensations to feel alive? Mindfulness can allow us to experience fully the moment in front of us—what Thoreau calls "the bloom of the present"—and to wake up from

The secure attachment of Western psychology is actually akin to Buddhist non-attachment; avoid-ant attachment is the inverse of being mindful and present; and anxious attachment aligns with Buddhist notions of clinging and grasping.

You don't have to love yourself unconditionally before you can give or receive real love.

Thich Nhat Hanh: "To dwell in the here and now does not mean you never think about the past or responsibly plan for the future," he says. "The idea is simply not to allow yourself to get lost in regrets about the past or worries about the future.

In some ways to be able to forgive, to let go, is a type of dying. It is the ability to say, ' I am not that person anymore, and you are not that person anymore.' Forgiveness allows us to recapture some part of ourselves that we left behind in bondage to a past event. Some part of our identity may also need to die in that letting go, so that we can reclaim the energy bound up in the past

Whatever language we use use to describe healthy relationships, when we're in them, we feel nourished by them, in body as well as mind.

Fairness is a muddled mix of beliefs, traditions and multiple and sometimes opposing truths.

IF WE TRY to block off or deny a big part of what we experience, our wakeful, connected relationship to ourselves gets sharply whittled down. How then can we possibly feel alive?

Science tells us that love not only diminishes the experience of physical pain but can make us—and our beloveds—healthier.

Any time we find ourselves relying on the ideas of an absolute, frozen state of right and wrong—or fairness versus unfairness—that we are used to, we can compare the habit to distraction during meditation.

All beings want to be happy, yet so very few know how.

It's tough to have an authentic relationship with awe in the age of awesome, a word that has become so overused as to be drained of its meaning.

I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is vengeful, fearful, envious, resentful, deceitful. The other wolf is loving, compassionate, generous, truthful, and serene." The grandson asks which wolf will win the fight. The grandfather answers, "The one I feed.

Wherever the responsibility lies, shame creates a solid and terrible feeling of unworthiness that resides in our bodies: the storehouse of the memories of our acts, real or imagined, and the secrets we keep about them.

What makes awe such a powerful call to love is that it's disruptive. It sneaks up on us. It doesn't ask our permission to wow us; it just does. Awe can arise from a single glance, a sound, a gesture.

Without equanimity, we might give love to others only in an effort to bridge the inevitable and healthy space that always exists between two people.

But to take delight in our generosity helps us immeasurably in our spiritual practice.

The heart contracts when our bodies are overcome by shame.

Shame weakens us. It can make us frightened to take on something new. We start to withdraw from whatever might give us pleasure, self-esteem, or a sense of our value.

To imagine the way we think is the singular causative agent of all we go through is to practice cruelty toward ourselves.

When we develop our ability to love in one realm, we simultaneously nourish our ability in others, as long as we remain open to the flow of insight and compassion.