Enlightened Perspectives: Sharon Salzberg Cultivates Loving-Kindness

As a world-renowned Buddhist meditation teacher and New York Times bestselling author, Sharon Salzberg has motivated thousands of people to find their own path to inner awareness. She began studying meditation in India in 1971, has been teaching internationally since 1974, and was a key player in bringing meditation practices into mainstream Western culture. Salzberg, one of the cofounders of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, is known for her gentle, pragmatic perspective about the mundane as well as the momentous. Here, she talks with contributing editor Karen Brailsford about her adventures over the decades and reveals how we can meet this unprecedented moment in history with compassion, mindfulness, and loving-kindness.

Karen Brailsford: I love your Zoom profile photo: “Simply meditate and carry on.”

Sharon Salzberg: Isn’t it cool?

KB: I did exactly that before jumping on this call. We’re talking at an interesting time, as the presidential election campaign is heating up. Just yesterday, you and American Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman held a workshop that ties into what’s happening right now.

SS: The workshop was based on a book we wrote together that came out 10 years ago. There’s a new edition this year and we also recorded an audio version. Love Your Enemies is really a fit for our time. The formulation is Tibetan Buddhism and came from Bob. It describes four kinds of enemies. Outer enemies are people who seek to harm us. Inner enemies show themselves when we’re overcome and guided by anger and fear. Then there’s the secret enemy, self-preoccupation or selfishness, which is this sense of a separate individual completely disconnected from itself that is in charge. And finally there’s the supersecret enemy, which is self-loathing and feeling unworthy.

The teaching is to use the outer enemy to help you with the inner enemy. When you’ve got an adversary, someone trying to hurt you, use that as the spark for coming through your own anger and fear to another place. The other place is not weakness and giving in and saying it doesn’t matter or that you don’t count. It’s finding other sources of strength because our anger is going to burn us out eventually, so that is not an effective way to actually make a difference.

I teach loving-kindness meditation and people often say to me, “Why should I have loving-kindness or compassion for the person who doesn’t think people like me should exist?” It depends on our notion of what loving-kindness and compassion are. If it means submitting and taking it, then it’s ridiculous. Why get up in the morning to cultivate that? But if you see it as a source of strength where your own self-worth is going to insist on boundaries, then that’s a more correct interpretation of loving-kindness. It was an incredible time to be teaching that particular topic.

KB: Were people open and receptive to this idea?

SS: It’s obviously a self-selecting group. If we were doing this in the middle of Times Square, I don’t know how it would go.

KB: Politically, have we seen this kind of chaos before?

SS: I don’t think so. I’m a giant advocate of voting because I believe everyone has a voice, and that voice should never be taken away from us. I’ve done voter registration. I don’t tell people who to vote for even though I have my own views. But I think that engagement, that participation, is absolutely essential. While different groups have historically been denied the right to vote, this is a time where several efforts (often in a sneaky kind of way) are in play. I do think that the very nature of democracy and what they call the American experiment is on the line.

KB: I know of people fleeing to other countries. But I’m not so sure another country would be a safe haven. What’s happening here has ramifications elsewhere, so for me it becomes about anchoring and shifting the consciousness right where one is.

SS: Globally, there’s clearly a lot going on. Somebody told me that more than 50 of the world’s nations are having elections this year. As a meditator, I believe that ultimately one’s sense of safety lies within because there are no guarantees. We live in a very unsteady, unstable world. I think the years of isolation under Covid did not help our mental health and our level of fear and anxiety. Even before the pandemic, I kept reading that there was an epidemic of loneliness. I’d read about the healing effects of social connection and various clinical conditions. I kept thinking, It can’t just be a numbers game—I have only three friends, I need eight. It’s also about some inner sense of connection, of belonging to one another, of belonging to the whole, which seems to have really been disrupted. As for physically moving to another place, I resort to a loving-kindness prayer: May you find safety.

KB: Where are you right now?

SS: I’m in Barre, Massachusetts. I have a house that’s next door through the woods from the Insight Meditation Society, the retreat center I cofounded in 1976 [with Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield]. I also have a very small rental apartment in New York City. I was there in March of 2020. There was so much fear on the streets. I knew a lot of people whose parents were getting sick and dying. I thought I’d come here for two weeks and ride it out. I arrived around March 14 and three days later, the center closed. I was here for eight months before I left at all. I’ve only been to New York and back since then. I haven’t been on an airplane.

KB: I’m intrigued by the journey to India that set you on a lifelong inner journey. Where do you feel at home?

SS: I grew up in New York City and went to college in Buffalo, New York, when I was 16. In my sophomore year, I took an Asian philosophy course because it was a philosophy requirement, and it fit nicely into my schedule. The course totally changed my life. I’d had a very traumatic childhood and my family system, like for many people, was one that was never spoken about. I had all of these feelings roiling inside of me, and no external voice saying, “We understand,” or “No wonder you feel that way.”

In the course, they were talking about the Buddha and how suffering is a natural part of life. For many people that’s kind of a depressing message. But for me it felt like the first time in my life I really belonged. I thought, You’re not so weird, you’re not so different. It was this tremendous, even breathtaking, message of inclusion. I learned about these practices called meditation, and that if you did them you could be a whole lot happier. I was totally timid, but something came over me, and I thought, I’ve got to go to India to learn how to meditate. I was on fire. This was in 1969. I created an independent study project, and I went off to India.

So where do I feel at home? I feel at home in New York City. There’s something about the rhythm of it—it’s like my internal rhythm—as crazy as it is. I feel at home in Barre. This is the only place I’ve ever voted. I felt tremendously at home in India. When I landed, I thought, I’m breathing differently. This feels familiar in a strange way. This feels right.

KB: You have been credited with bringing meditation to the West.

SS: Well, I don’t believe we brought meditation to the West exactly. There have always been Asian practitioners and teachers here. But I think we did play a pivotal role in aspects of it hitting the mainstream.

KB: How has meditation shifted in terms of what you were doing then and people’s response to it?

SS: When I came back to the states in 1974, I’d be at a party and when people would ask, “What do you do?” and I said, “I teach meditation,” they’d go, “That’s sort of weird.” Or they’d ask, “Did you meet the Beatles over there?” Now when I’m introduced as a meditation teacher, they commonly say, “I should try that. I’m so stressed out.” Partly because we have a much greater understanding of stress and its consequences, the conversation around meditation has moved from a belief system or a philosophy to science.

Occasionally they say, “I tried it once, I failed at it.” There’s a lot of confusion about what progress looks like. For example, a lot of people will say, “I’m really bad at meditation because I can’t make my mind totally blank. I can’t keep anxiety from arising.” Mindfulness is a relational activity. It doesn’t mean you don’t have any thoughts. It means you may not be swept up in them, or you may not be fighting them and ashamed of them in the same old way. You develop a new relationship to your thoughts, your body, your sensations, your emotions.

KB: Has your own practice evolved?

SS: Yes, and it continues to evolve in different ways. The first instruction I received was in mindfulness—awareness of the breath and then bodily sensations before moving on to thoughts and emotions. I started practicing in January 1971, in India. It was only in 1985 that I went to Burma on a three-month retreat and got formal instruction in loving-kindness meditation, which is a corresponding, supportive but distinct method that’s become a predominant part of my practice.

So that’s one framework. Another framework is that there are a couple of ways we look at meditation. One is a formal dedicated period of practice, like 10 or 20 minutes a day when you’re sitting or you’re walking, and you’re devoting that time to deepening awareness and loving-kindness. The other aspect of meditation is what one teacher once called “short moments, many times.” So you drink a cup of tea—while you’re not checking your email—and you’re feeling the warmth of the teacup while smelling and tasting the tea. Or as I’m walking down the street in New York, I often silently offer loving-kindness to the people I pass: “May you be happy!”

In the beginning, of course, everything for me was about that formal practice, because I was learning it. It was so exciting! As time went on, I began to infuse meditation into my daily activity more. When I came back up to Barre in the beginning of the pandemic, I wasn’t walking down the streets of New York anymore. Life really shifted and I started doing a lot more formal practice during the day.

KB: Did you have an inkling as a child that you would embark on a spiritual path?

SS: There was a voice I heard even in my despair. I knew things could get better. I knew there was another kind of life waiting for me. How I knew, I don’t know. I was numb. I was cut off. I was frightened. I guess I was depressed, although I was never diagnosed clinically. But I knew how to get through school. I knew how to survive. It may be that all children hear that voice, but they don’t always listen, or trust it.

KB: We often call individuals heroic for overcoming obstacles, but I think we’re meant to transcend circumstances. Even if you’re born to a seemingly intact family, you have challenges. Meditation is an empowering way to handle them.

SS: It has a lot of benefits. If I had to describe myself in one word before I went to India, it would be fragmented. What I yearned for, although I didn’t have the word, was integration. I wanted to feel whole. A benefit of meditation is that sense of cohesiveness, of centeredness. Life is change. Meditation gives you a greater ability to ride the waves. Not that you don’t enjoy the ups or feel sorrow with the downs, but maybe not to the annihilation of your being.

And then there is a sense of connection. I always consider that one of the greatest ironies because maybe you meditate alone, maybe you do it with your eyes closed, but it’s not an isolating activity. You connect so deeply to yourself, and you also feel so much more connected to others. I guess there’s less fear, less old habit operating, and you really pay attention differently. So if you’re in a conversation with somebody and you’re not really listening, you gather your attention. It’s what we do in meditation. And once you are paying attention, there’s the possibility of some real sense of connection.

KB: Do you have a favorite among your books?

SS: Faith is probably my favorite. It was the hardest to write, and I think it was honestly the best written.

KB: In your works, you distill stories and poems and messages in a way that is uniquely Sharon Salzberg. And you’ve befriended and collaborated with a number of illustrious individuals, like Bob Thurman and Jack Kornfield and [feminist icon] bell hooks.

SS: I once received a negative review that I bring in too many voices. But those relationships, those friendships, are the biggest blessings of my life.

KB: What do you fear?

SS: I fear for the country. I fear massive suffering. I’ve had some real health crises in the last several years, and like many people, I fear being a burden to others.

KB: What are you loving right now?

SS: I wrote in one book how much the musical Hamilton meant to me. And I was thinking last night, in light of current events, maybe I should rewatch it.

KB: Who in history would you like to meet?

SS: Dipa Ma, my teacher in India who told me to teach meditation in 1974. “That’s ridiculous. I can’t do that,” I told her. I’d like to see her again and say, “Well, it kind of worked out.”

Sharon Salzberg is a cofounder of the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies and the Insight Meditation Society. She is the author of 13 books, including New York Times bestseller Real Happiness, Lovingkindness, and 2023’s Real Life and Finding Your Way. Recently, Salzberg has begun to record her books, giving voice to her meditations. She also hosts a podcast called The Metta Hour. Visit sharonsalzberg.com.

This article appeared in the Nov/Dec 2024 issue of Spirituality & Health: A Unity Publication®. Subscribe now.