Sharon Salzberg Quotes

The mantra that you're given in Transcendental Meditation you keep to yourself. The reason being, true happiness is not out there, true happiness lies within.

The secret of happiness is the determination to be happy always, rather than wait for outer circumstances to make one happy.

Happiness is inward, and not outward; and so, it does not depend on what we have, but on what we are.

I was constantly looking for things outside of myself to make me feel good, and I think now that feeling can come from the inside, and that's why I meditate now twice a day.

The mind is the world and the no-mind is freedom from the world. The mind is misery and no-mind is the end of misery and the beginning of ecstasy.

Meditation is nothing but an effort to drop all the foreign elements so that you can see yourself as you were before you were born, mirrored in its purity. It is a great silence and a great joy to be there, and once you start abiding there, there is no death and no time. All fear, all greed, all anger, disappears: one is just there with no idea, no desire.

Meditation is sticking to one thought. That single thought keeps away other thoughts; distraction of mind is a sign of its weakness; by constant meditation it gains strength.

When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it.

By consciously meditating upon spiritual truths and cultivating personal integrity, one need never fear negative circumstances.

If you know how to keep yourself pleasant within, irrespective of what is happening around you, Ultimate Liberation cannot be denied to you.

Authentic happiness is always independent of external conditions. Vigilantly practice polite indifference to that which we can't control. Your happiness can only be found within.

My mind to me a kingdom is, Such present joys therein I find, That it excels all other bliss That earth affords or grows by kind. Though much I want which most would have, Yet still my mind for bids to crave.

A quiet mind is more important than a positive mind.

Prayer is the very highest energy of which the mind is capable.

Learn to feel yourself in other bodies, to know that we are all one. Throw all other nonsense to the winds. Spit out your actions, good or bad, and never think of them again. What is done is done. Throw off superstition. Have no weakness even in the face of death. Be free.

Meditation means: put the mind aside and watch. The first step - LOVE YOURSELF - will help you tremendously. By loving yourself you will have destroyed much that society has implanted within you. You will have become freer from the society and its conditioning.

Awareness, beholding the mind, is the most essential method to have a breakthrough. And once you have gone just a step beyond the mind, you have entered the world of nirvana, you have entered the world of light and eternal life. You have attained to spiritual integrity, freedom, and tremendous ecstasy which the mind cannot even dream about.

When the mind goes beyond the thought of 'the me,' the experiencer, the observer, the thinker, then there is a possibility of a happiness that is incorruptible.

Why do people do yoga? To clear their minds? I embrace the clutter in my head.

Only in prayer do we achieve that complete and harmonious assembly of body, mind, and spirit which gives the frail human reed its unshakable strength.

You've been somebody long enough. You spent the first half of your life becoming somebody. Now you can work on becoming nobody, which is really somebody. For when you become nobody there is no tension, no pretense, no one trying to be anyone or anything. The natural state of the mind shines through unobstructed - and the natural state of the mind is pure love.

When the turbulence of distracting thoughts subside and our mind becomes still, a deep happiness and contentment naturally arises from within.

To make the mind obey you is a spiritual discipline.

When one learns to focus energy through surrender and sensitivity, they become free, and can access the expansiveness of endless possibility.

Just as the pure crystal takes color from the object which is nearest to it, so the mind, when it is cleared of thought-waves, achieves sameness or identity with the object of its concentration.