Quotes from Sharon Salzberg

Mindfulness won't ensure you'll win an argument with your sister. Mindfulness won't enable you to bypass your feelings of anger or hurt either. But it may help you see the conflict in a new way, one that allows you to break through old patterns.

Instead of catching ourselves after we first felt angry, we develop a visceral sensitivity to what's happening within us in the moment & through mindfulness, we can shape our reaction right away.

Mindfulness is the agent of our freedom. Through mindfulness we arrive at faith we grow in wisdom & we attain equanimity.

Having' something makes us think we can control it.

While happiness is an end in itself, it is also the state of mind we can have right now.

The difference between a life laced through with frustration and one sustained by happiness depends on whether it is motivated by self-hatred or by real love for oneself.

Effort is the unconstrained willingness to persevere through difficulty. It is not a harsh, straining, desperate effort but, rather, an ardent and wholehearted remembrance of our capacity for freedom. Right Effort is willingness to open where we have been closed, to come close to what we have avoided, to be patient with ourselves, and to let go of our preconceptions.

I've been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened," Mark Twain once said.

Pain & suffering requires time, awareness, and an intentional practice of self-love to disentangle.

The combination of realizing our distinctiveness along with our unity is seeing interdependence.

When we bring deep awareness to whatever's bothering us, the same things might be happening, but we are able to relate to them differently.

The overarching practice of letting go is also one of gaining resilience and insight.

Cultivation of positive emotions, including self-love and self-respect, strengthens our inner resources and opens us to a broader range of thoughts and actions.

Even as we recognize our resentment, bitterness, or jealousy, we can also honor our own wish to be happy, to feel free.

To celebrate someone else's life, we need to find a way to look at it straight on, not from above with judgment or from below with envy.

The starting place for radical re-imagining of love is mindfulness.

Everything is impermanent: happiness, sorrow, a great meal, a powerful empire, what we're feeling, the people around us, ourselves.

Albert Einstein goes, "The problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.

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

When we forgive someone, we don't pretend that the harm didn't happen or cause us pain. We see it clearly for what it was, but we also come to see that fixating on the memory of harm generates anger and sadness.

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

We can discover the capacity of the mind to be aware, to love, to begin again

We know that people who consistently meditate have a singular ability to cultivate positive emotions, retain emotional stability, and engage in mindful behavior

To truly love ourselves, we must open to our wholeness, rather than clinging to the shivers of ourselves represented by old stories. Living in a story of a limited self – to any degree – is not love.