582 Quotes by Sharon Salzberg

We spend our lives searching for something we think we don’t have, something that will make us happy. But the key to our deepest happiness lies in changing our vision of where to seek it.

You are capable of so much more than we usually dare to imagine.

At 9:10 I’m going to be filled with self-hatred.

We cannot instantaneously force ourselves to forgive – and forgiveness happens at a different pace for everyone and is dependent on the particulars of any given situation.

Things don’t just happen in this world of arising and passing away. We don’t live in some kind of crazy, accidental universe. Things happen according to certain laws, laws of nature. Laws such as the law of karma, which teaches us that as a certain seed gets planted, so will that fruit be.

Find a gap between a trigger event and our usual conditioned response to it and by using that pause to collect ourselves and shift our response.

The man felt that she had not been a very good mother and was not a good person. At one point, Nisargadatta advised him to love his mother. The man replied, “She wouldn’t let me.” Nisargadatta responded, “She couldn’t stop you.” No external condition can prevent love; no one and no thing can stop it. The awakening of love is not bound up in things being a certain way. Metta, like the true nature of the mind, is not dependent; it is not conditioned.

Embracing what is We’re conditioned to believe that painful feelings are “bad” and that pleasurable ones are “good.” It’s often easier – though not healthier – for us to avoid grief and sorrow, while only embracing sensations like happiness, confidence, and love.

If we fall, we don’t need self-recrimination or blame or anger – we need a reawakening of our intention and a willingness to re-commit, to be whole-hearted once again.