Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Sharon Salzberg

American Author, Teacher of Buddhist Meditation, Co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society

"Generosity’s aim is twofold: we give freely to others, and we give freely to ourselves. Without both aspects, the experience is incomplete. If we give a gift freely, without attachment to a certain result or expectation of what will come back to us, that exchange celebrates freedom both within ourselves as the giver and the receiver… In a moment of pure giving, we really become one."

"Anger can dispel blind spots and help us see beyond social niceties: sometimes the angry person in the room is the one speaking truth to power or refusing to accept hypocrisy."

"All forms of meditation strengthen and direct our attention through the cultivation of three key skills: concentration, mindfulness and compassion or lovingkindness."

"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"

"A way to discover intimacy with ourselves and all of life is to live with integrity, basing our lives on a vision of compassionate nonharming. When we dedicate ourselves to actions that do not hurt ourselves or others, our lives become all of one piece, a "seamless garment" with nothing separate or disconnected in the spiritual reality we discover."

"Any 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."

"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."

"As a teacher I try to stay a practitioner, which helps a lot. I have teachers of my own who connect me to an authentic transmission."

"As I go through all kinds of feelings and experiences in my journey through life ? delight, surprise, chagrin, dismay ? I hold this question as a guiding light: What do I really need right now to be happy? What I come to over and over again is that only qualities as vast and deep as love, connection and kindness will really make me happy in any sort of enduring way."

"As we hone the ability to let go of distraction, to begin again without rancor or judgment, we are deepening forgiveness and compassion for ourselves. And in life, we find we might make a mistake, and more easily begin again, or stray from our chosen course and begin again."

"As I get older, the quality I appreciate more than any is kindness."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"Balance seems to be the key to a life of kindness, a life that sustains our own flourishing alongside whatever contribution we can make to the well-being of others. We need to have a healthy sense of boundaries. We need to remember self-care and the power of joy."

"Buddha ?rst taught metta meditation as an antidote: as a way of surmounting terrible fear when it arises."

"At times when I am myself sitting at a retreat, and at the end I get into my car to drive away, I watch my hand move forward to turn on the radio. When I can be mindful, I notice the fact that I actually don't want in that moment to listen to the news or hear some music."

"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."

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

"By practicing meditation we establish love, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity as our home. It is never too late to turn on the light. Your ability to break an unhealthy habit or turn off an old tape doesn't depend on how long it has been running; a shift in perspective doesn't depend on how long you've held on to the old view. When you flip the switch in that attic, it doesn't matter whether its? been dark for ten minutes, ten years or ten decades. The light still illuminates the room and banishes the murkiness, letting you see the things you couldn't see before. It?s never too late to take a moment to look."

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

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

"Compassion is the trembling or the quivering of the heart in response to suffering. Equanimity is a spacious stillness that can accept things as they are. The balance of compassion and equanimity allows us to care, and yet not get overwhelmed and unable to cope because of that caring."

"Compassion is our caring human response to suffering. A compassionate heart is non-judgmental and recognizes all suffering?our own and that of others?as deserving of tenderness."

"Chanting is a simple practice. When you notice you are thinking about something else during the chant, let go of the thought and come back home, to the chant, to that place where we are expressing our inner purity."

"Compassion allows us to use our own pain and the pain of others as a vehicle for connection. This is a delicate and profound path."

"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."

"Develop a mind so filled with love that it resembles space."

"Contemplating the goodness within ourselves is a classical meditation, done to bring light, joy, and rapture to the mind. In contemporary times this practice might be considered rather embarrassing, because so often the emphasis is on all the unfortunate things we have done, all the disturbing mistakes we have made. Yet this classical reflection is not a way of increasing conceit. It is rather a commitment to our own happiness, seeing our happiness as the basis for intimacy with all of life. It fills us with joy and love for ourselves and a great deal of self-respect."

"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."

"Each decision we make, each action we take, is born out of an intention."

"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."

"Even on the spiritual path, we have things we'll tend to cover up or be in denial about."

"Equanimity is the spacious stillness of mind that provides the ground for the boundless nature of the other three qualities. This radiant calm enables us to ride the waves of our experience without getting lost in our reactions."

"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."

"Even though our tendency might be to remember the things we?ve done wrong, the mistakes we?ve made, and the things we regret, we can consciously shift our attention to include the good within ourselves. We can also do this when we look at others. After a day at work we might recall the late delivery, the disappointing report, the ambiguous commentary. This is not an exercise meant to deny that anything is wrong or regrettable, but if we look at somebody and we think only about the mistakes they have made, then a tremendous sense of self, and others, and us and them, can be reinforced. Whereas if we include even one good thing, if we can think of it, then a bridge is built, it?s more from a stance of being side by side rather than across this huge gulf of seeming separation."

"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."

"Faith is a willingness to take the next step, to see the unknown as an adventure, to launch a journey."

"Faith is the quality of the heart that impels us to seek what is constant and whole. The sense of connection can be found in vastly different ways: in classically religious pursuits or ones that are completely secular; in music or art, meditation or service to others; with groups in city rooms or in the forest on one's own."

"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."

"Faith is not a commodity that you either have or don't have enough of, or the right kind of. It's an ongoing process. The opposite of faith is despair."

"Far more often?indeed, nearly always?anger narrows the mind and shuts down the heart, leaving us confused, bitter, and alone. Mindfulness practice opens up a world of options for working with anger."

"For our work to be of maximum benefit, we need to let it go. For our contribution to help the community, we need to remember it's not about us."

"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."

"I call myself a meditation teacher rather than a spiritual teacher."

"I had a very turbulent and painful childhood, like many people. I left for college when I was 16 years old and up until that point I'd lived in five different family configurations. Each one ended or changed through a death or some terrible loss."

"I think so many people tend to think of faith as blind adherence to a dogma or unquestioned surrender to an authority figure, and the result is losing self-respect and losing our own sense of what is true. And I don't think of faith in those terms at all."

"I deserve to be happy, and so does everyone else."

"I think the associations people have with kindness are often things like meekness and sweetness and maybe sickly sweetness; whereas I do think of kindness as a force, as a power."