Notes from a Meditation Workshop with Sharon Salzberg

A little over a month ago I had the fortunate opportunity to attend a Meditation Workshop with Western Buddhist teacher and author Sharon Salzberg.

The event was held in a local yoga studio near where I live, and though there were over 200 people in attendance, the yoga studio set it up to create a feeling of intimacy as Ms. Salzberg sat in the center of the room.

The workshop itself was a combination of guided meditation practice led by Ms. Salzberg (including a loving-kindness or metta practice), and 2 dharma talks stemming from themes in her upcoming book Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection which is to be published in June.

As a long-time reader of Sharon Salzberg, and having spent time at The Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts that she helped co-found, I was through the roof excited to attend this workshop.

So of course I took copious notes during Ms. Salzberg's two dharma talks--that included question and answer with the audience--in order to take some of the wisdom she was generously sharing for further contemplation in my own quiet moments.

As I know many of you also share my heart-felt appreciation for the work of this unique Western Buddhist thinker (and woman), I thought I'd pass on some of these notes from the workshop.

Enjoy!

(p.s. the dark blue words are my attempts at direct quotes)

• When you 'evaluate' your meditation practice: look at your life as a whole, not merely the quality or experience in the actual 20 minutes that you sat.
• Meditation means 'cultivation' which is why garden metaphors frequently accompany discussions of meditation.
• Do not start your meditation practice from a feeling state of 'deficiency.'
• In meditation we are making a 'home.'
• Your breath is very portable...With a breath you return to yourself, you return to the moment, you return to your values.
• In meditation 'rest' your attention on an object.
• When your mind wanders, and you return your attention to the object in meditation that's the place where we learn to begin again.
• Meditation practice is both resiliency training and self-compassion training.
• It's not easy to start over without some kindness for oneself.
• Meditation helps us because the same stressors can be happening in our lives, and we can still be free by relating differently to them.
• Look for ways in which we add more pain to the moment by 'adding-on' a narrative or story about the painful moment.
• During meditation [or life], when you realize 'I'm not here,' gather that scattered energy and return.
• Only when we pay attention do we have a sense of connection- like our lives have something to do with one another.
• The Buddha said: if you truly loved yourself, you'd never harm another.
• The best kind of generosity comes from a sense of inner abundance...a sense of inner resource which allows us to extend.
• You have this huge aspiration, you forget it, and you begin again.
• Lucy (from the Peanuts cartoon) is the name Sharon Salzberg has given to her 'self-critical voice' in her own head.  In the workshop Ms. Salzberg asked: do I believe Lucy 'utterly' or can I let her be or bring lightness and humor to her.
• Having a sense of sufficiency, a sense of abundance and inner resource, is loving yourself- it is not narcissism.
• It may be helpful to ask yourself: is this behavior 'onward-leading?'
• Think of 'letting go' as a muscle to be exercised and strengthened.
• Consider this: what if everybody is included and everyone is consequential?
• A loving-kindness practice is a wholehearted heart energy.
• The universe is not yours to control.
• Individuals, and especially caregivers, have a need for balance and a need for replenishment.
• Despair does not serve anyone.
• Loving-kindness is a practice for the transfiguration of our own minds that changes our motivation for action.
• When giving a gift, you cannot decide how someone else receives the gift- it must be freely given.