From Sharon Salzberg: The most compelling part of my practice right now comes in the form of my writing. For a long time, I’ve focused my teaching and writing on lovingkindness. Now as I look more deeply into lovingkindness, I find that it actually rests on another foundation, the expression of faith.
Faith is the topic I am exploring most in teaching and writing. Today there is a tremendous upsurge of interest in a new kind of faith, based on a practice where people can experience a direct spirituality, one without rigid dogma or compulsory belief in a specific cosmology. This is a spirituality that rests on personal transformation.
Vipassana allows us to take a method of mind training and craft a way of life that is more compassionate, more ethical and more powerful than our unawakened lives. The Buddha’s teachings give us an immediate experience of what we can do to change. Faith in the teachings means we align ourselves with a vision of our greatest possibilities. This is the heart of the practice.
Sharon Salzberg’s Mindfulness Meditations
Sharon Salzberg leads a guided loving-kindness meditation. She urges to feel loving, care and acceptance of self. To grasp happiness within, not too tight and not too negligent.
Sharon Salzberg leads a short meditation on Mindful Eating. Having tea can be a time for meditation. First observe the cup, then the tea. and the smell.
Sharon Salzberg leads a guided meditation- Mindful Walking. Before you begin a meditation, find a long room or a quiet park trail where you can listen.
Sharon Salzberg talks about Perspective. That there are so many possibilities for a shift in perspective. She further tells stories about how the world judges using a flawed perspective.
Sharon Salzberg talks about Real Happiness at Work- Mindfulness at Work. Sharon talks about its impermanence and how we can achieve it with gratefulness and loving-kindness.
Sharon Salzberg talks about Metta- the Practice of Loving Kindness. The kind of loving kindness that does not select but wishes goodwill to all you know.
Sharon Salzberg talks about Equanimity and Faith. Equanimity is the evenness of mind, especially in difficult circumstances. Develop a mind that’s filled with so much love and resembles space.
Sharon Salzberg talks about Mindfulness of Aspiration, not as a synonym of desire, but as a harnessing of our imagination, sense of daring, and boldness.
Sharon Salzberg talks about Dealing with Doubt. Doubt can be intentionally cultivated and serve as an exploration of truth.
Sharon Salzberg talks about How to Feel Balanced. It’s the truth that liberates, not the efforts to be free. The form of practice is tyranny. The end is balance.
Sharon Salzberg talks about Faith in Ourselves. Thoughts are impermanent, they come and go at whim. It causes us to be forgiving to ourselves or have faith.
Sharon Salzberg talks about Going Home; to reach the balance in living a life of mindfulness and compassion; to aspire to become fully liberated being.
Sharon Salzberg explores intimacy within the context of how we relate to ourselves in Being Present. How do you relate intimately to yourself?