Quotes from Sharon Salzberg

We cannot simply forgive and forget, nor should we.

Training attention through meditation opens our eyes.

The poet Rumi says: How long will we fill our pockets like children with dirt and stones? Let the world go. Holding it, we never know ourselves, never are airborne.

Cultivating loving kindness for ourselves is the foundation of real love for our friends and family, for new people we encounter in our daily lives, for all beings and for life itself.

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

When you recognize and reflect on even one good thing about yourself, you are building a bridge to a place of kindness and caring.

When we learn to respond to disappointments with acceptance, we give ourselves the space to realize that all our experiences—good and bad alike—are opportunities to learn and grow.

Trying to impose our personal agenda on someone else's experience is the shadow side of love, while real love recognizes that life unfolds at its own pace.

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.

Letting go is an inside job, something only we can do for ourselves.

If we have nothing material to give, we can offer our attention, our energy, our appreciation. The world needs us. It doesn't deplete us to give.

The Dalai Lama has said: "My religion is kindness." If we all adopted such a stance and embodied it in thought and action, inner and outer peace would be immediate, for in reality they are never not present, only obscured, waiting to be discovered. This is the work and the power of lovingkindness, the embrace that allows no separation between self, others, and events—the affirmation and honoring of a core goodness in others and in oneself.

The key to cultivating confidence in ourselves is understanding our right to make the truth our own.

The Buddha actually described at some length what he meant by being a good friend in the world. He talked about a good friend as someone who is constant in our times of happiness and also in our times of adversity or unhappiness. A friend will not forsake us when we are in trouble nor rejoice in our misfortune. The Buddha described a true friend as being a helper, someone who will protect us when we are unable to take care of ourselves, who will be a refuge to us when we are afraid.

Forgiveness can be bittersweet. It contains the sweetness of the release of a story that has caused us pain, but also the poignant reminder that even our dearest relationships change over the course of a lifetime.

There is no reason for a feeling of separation from anything or anyone, because we have been it all and done it all. How then can we feel self-righteous or removed from anyone or any action? Ther is no spot on this earth where we have not laughed, cried, been born and died. So in some sense, every single place we go is home. Everyone we meet we know. Everything that is done we are capable of.

We can free ourselves from the old stories that have reduced us & allow real love for ourselves to blossom.

It is awareness of both our shared pain and our longing for happiness that links us to other people and helps us to turn toward them with compassion.

look at the world with quiet eyes.

Kindness is really at the core of what it means to be and feel alive.

Only when we start to distinguish reality from fantasy that we can humbly, with eyes wide open, forge loving and sustainable connections with others.

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.

With mindfulness, loving kindness, and self-compassion, we can begin to let go of our expectations about how life and those we love should be.

We have the power to improve our work lives immeasurably through awareness, compassion, patience & ingenuity.