Sharon Salzberg

Meditation trains the mind the way physical exercise strengthens the body.

Each opportunity to interrupt the onslaught of thoughts and return to the object of meditation is, in fact, a moment of enlightenment

We live in a network of inter connectivity.

Love exists in itself, not relying on owning or being owned.

Every time we forget to breathe or our minds wander or we__e hijacked by feelings or sensations, we gently bring ourselves back to the breath, again and again.

When we don__ allow setbacks to defeat us, they become opportunities for learning, acceptance, flexibility, and patience.

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.

There is so much we just can't see or know right now, including precisely how our actions will ripple out.

Compassion is born out of lovingkindness.It is born of knowing our oneness, not just thinking about it or wishing it were so. It is born out of the wisdom of seeing things exactly as they are.

The manifestation of the free mind is said to be lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.

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. Significantly, when we do metta practice, we begin by directing metta toward ourselves. This is the essential foundation for being able to offer genuine love to others

I see real love as the most fundamental of our innate capacities, never destroyed no matter what we might have gone through or might yet go through.

You can see your thoughts and emotions arise & create space for them even if they are uncomfortable.

The breath is the first tool for opening the space between the story you tell yourself about love.

Mindfulness practice helps create space between our actual experiences and the reflexive stories we tend to tell about them.

I believe that there is only one kind of love__eal love__rying to come alive in us despite our limiting assumptions, the distortions of our culture, and the habits of fear, self-condemnation, and isolation that we tend to acquire just by living a life.

Loving kindness practice helps us move out of the terrain of our default narratives if they tend to be based on fear or disconnection. We become authors of brand-new stories about love.

Our minds tend to race ahead into the future or replay the past, but our bodies are always in the present moment.