Sharon Salzberg (b.1952) is an American Buddhist author and teacher of vipassana (insight) and metta (loving-kindness) methods of the Theravāda Buddhist tradition. She is a founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, with Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein.
Born to a Jewish family in New York City, Salzberg enrolled in a Buddhist philosophy course at the State University of New York-Buffalo. Inspired by the Buddha’s teachings on suffering, she took an independent study trip to India. There, she attended an intensive, ten-day meditation retreat led by vipassana meditation teacher S. N. Goenka at Bodh Gaya, the Buddha’s enlightenment site. Under Goenka’s direction, Salzberg took refuge in the Buddha, returned to America, and became a prominent Western Buddhist teacher.
Salzberg’s books include Loving-kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness (1995,) Voices of Insight (2001,) Real Happiness—The Power of Meditation (2010,) Real Happiness at Work (2013,) and Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves (2020.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Sharon Salzberg
Often we can achieve an even better result when we stumble yet are willing to start over, when we don’t give up after a mistake, when something doesn’t come easily but we throw ourselves into trying, when we’re not afraid to appear less than perfectly polished. By prizing heartfulness above faultlessness, we may reap more from our effort because we.
—Sharon Salzberg
Topics: Mistakes
The mind thinks thoughts that we don’t plan. It’s not as if we say, “At 9:10 I’m going to be filled with self-hatred.”
—Sharon Salzberg
Abiding faith does not depend on borrowed concepts. Rather, it is the magnetic force of a bone-deep, lived understanding, one that draws us to realize our ideals, walk our talk, and act in accord with what we know to be true.
—Sharon Salzberg
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