Loving-kindness is so much more than “just” a feel-good practice. It is a force that can connect, inspire, and motivate us to transform the world. Here world-renowned mindfulness teacher Sharon Salzberg, one of the foremost teachers of loving-kindness, helps to pave the way.
Who is Sharon Salzberg?
Sharon Salzberg is a world-renowned meditation teacher and a New York Times best-selling author. As one of the foremost teachers of loving-kindness, she emphasizes the ability of loving-kindness to connect, inspire, and motivate people to transform the world.
Sharon Salzberg first encountered meditation in 1969, in an Asian Philosophy course at the State University of New York, Buffalo. The course sparked an interest and motivated her to travel to India in 1970 with the simple intuition that the methods of meditation would bring some clarity and peace. It was in 1971, in Bodh Gaya, that she attended her first meditative course and spent the next few years engaged in intensive study with highly respected meditation teachers. Her intuition paid off when she returned to the US in 1974 and established the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) with Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield in Barre, Massachusetts, which now ranks as one of the most prominent and active meditation centers in the Western world.
Today, she is the author of eleven books, including Real Happiness and Real Change. She is also the host of her own podcast, The Metta Hour, which features more than 100 interviews with some of the top leaders and voices in the meditation and mindfulness movement.
Sharon Salzberg on Why Loving-Kindness Takes Time
Sharon Salzberg reflects on the first time she tried loving-kindness meditation and the important lesson on patience she learned along the way.
The first time that I ever did loving-kindness practice was without a teacher. We first opened up the center; a group of us decided to do a self retreat here for a month and I had never done loving-kindness before although I had heard about it. I thought it was a perfect opportunity to do it.
I sat up in my room and I knew that it was done in successive stages and I began by dedicating a week of sending myself loving-kindness. All day long, I would go around the building—sitting in my room, sitting in the hall—saying the whole thing: May I be happy. May I be peaceful. May I be liberated. And I felt absolutely nothing.
At the end of the week, something happened to someone in the community and a number of us, quite unexpectedly, had to leave the retreat. Then I felt doubly bad—not only did nothing happen but I never even got beyond myself, which was really selfish.
I was running around upstairs in the flurry of having to leave. I was standing in one of the bathrooms and I dropped a jar of something, which shattered into a thousand pieces. The very first thought that came up in my mind was: “You are really a klutz, but I love you.” And I thought, “Oh wow! Look at that.” All those hours, all those phrases where I was just dry and mechanical and I felt like nothing was happening. It was happening. It just took a while for me to sense the flowering of that and it was so spontaneous that it was quite wonderful. So: Not to struggle, to try to make something happen. Let it happen. It will happen.
What is Loving-Kindness Meditation?
Loving-kindness is a practice and technique in which the central object we rest our attention on is the silent repetition of certain phrases. The phrases are a way of offering, gift-giving, and switching our attention. So for example, if we normally think about the mistakes we’ve made, what we did wrong, and when we failed, we’re going to switch our attention and just wish ourselves well.
You may use the phrases: May I be safe. May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I live my life with ease.
Many people ask, “Well, who am I asking?” We’re not asking anybody, we’re offering. We’re gift-giving. And then we wish others well. It may be people who’ve helped us, who we take for granted, tend to overlook, or people we don’t really know. There are many phases and stages of the practice, but we begin with the offering of loving-kindness to ourselves. Next we offer loving-kindness to a neutral party, and we end with the offering of loving-kindness to all people everywhere.
How to Find Your Loving-Kindness Phrases
Loving-kindness is meant to be done in the easiest way possible so that the experience springs forth naturally. To do it in the easiest way possible means finding phrases that are personally meaningful. The traditional phrases as are taught, begin with oneself:
May I be free from danger. May I know safety. Danger in that sense is both inner danger from the force of certain mind states, and outer danger. So, May I be free from danger. May I have mental happiness. May I have physical happiness. May I have ease of well-being—which means may I not have to struggle terribly, day by day, with livelihood or with family issues.
May I be free from danger, may I have mental happiness, but really, you should use any phrases that are powerful for you. They need to be meaningful not just in a very temporary way—May I get to this course OK—but something profound that you would wish for yourself and wish for others. Thoughts are very important in doing loving-kindness—not to struggle to get a certain kind of feeling. Let your mind rest in the phrases. You can be aware of the phrases either with the breath or just in themselves—the focus of the attention is on the phrases. Let your mind rest within them. The feelings will come and go.
Sometimes, practicing loving-kindness will feel very ordinary, very dry, or very mechanical—but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean that nothing is happening or that it’s not working. What’s important is to do it, is to form that intention in the mind because we’re uniting the power of loving-kindness and the power of intention.
How to Practice Loving-Kindness Meditation
Meditation practice is like a skills-training in stepping back, getting a broader perspective, and gaining a deeper understanding of what’s happening. Mindfulness, one of the tools at the core of meditation, helps us not be lost in habitual biases that distort how we interpret our feelings. Without mindfulness, our perception is easily shaped by barely conscious thoughts, such as, “I’m shaking and my stomach is roiling with what seems to be fear, but I can never allow myself to admit that. I’ll pretend it never came up.” If we do that, it is a great struggle to be kind. There is no ready access to kindness without awareness.
Mindfulness also helps us to see through our prejudices about another person by showing us that a conclusion is simply a thought in our own mind. Mindfulness enables us to cultivate a different quality of attention, one where we relate to what we see before us not just as an echo of the past or a foreshadowing of the future, but more as it is right now. Here, we find the power of kindness because we can connect to things as they are.
Mindfulness enables us to cultivate a different quality of attention, one where we relate to what we see before us not just as an echo of the past or a foreshadowing of the future, but more as it is right now.
Making the effort to truly see someone doesn’t mean we never respond or react. We can and do attempt to restore a failing marriage, or protest at loud cell phones in public places, or try with everything in us to rectify injustice. But we can do it from a place that allows people to be as textured as they are, that admits our feelings to be as varied and flowing as they are, that is open to surprises—a place that listens and lets the world come alive.
One essential step in learning to see each other more genuinely is to bother to look. If someone yells at us, or annoys us, or dazzles us with a gift, we do pay attention to them. Our challenge then is to see them as they are, not as we project or assume them to be. But if they don’t make much of an impression on us, we have a different challenge: it is all too easy to look right through them.
In particular, the meditation exercise of offering loving-kindness to a neutral person confronts our tendency to look through people we do not know. We choose a person whom we don’t strongly like or dislike; we feel rather neutral or indifferent toward them. Very often it helps to select a near-stranger, or someone who plays a certain role or function in our lives—the checkout person in the grocery store, for example, or the UPS delivery person. We may not know much about them, not even their name.
Sending Loving-Kindness to Others
When we send a neutral person loving-kindness, we are consciously changing a pattern of overlooking them, or talking around them, to one of paying attention to them. The experiment in attention we are making through these benevolent wishes asks of us whether we can practice loving “thy neighbor as thyself” when we don’t know the facts about someone’s dependent, elderly parent, or at-risk teenager, and so our heartstrings have not been tugged.
When we think of our neutral person, we haven’t learned the story of their suspicious mole or empty evenings. We have no knowledge of their inspiring triumphs or their admirable philanthropy, and so we are not in awe of them. We aren’t seeing their tension after a disappointing job interview, or their sadness after their lover leaves. We practice wishing them well anyway, not knowing any of this, but simply because they exist, and because we do know the beauty, the sorrow, the poignancy, and the sheer, unalterable insecurity of existence that we all share.
On trains and on the streets, in our homes and in our communities, we practice paying attention—through developing mindfulness, through developing loving-kindness, through letting go of projections—because a more complete attention proffers many special gifts. These gifts can penetrate through the exigencies of social roles and even through terrible hurt. They can remove the seeming hollowness of chance encounters.
Paying attention in this way provides the gift of noticing, the gift of connecting. We find the gift of seeing a little bit of ourselves in others, of realizing that we’re not so awfully alone. We can let go of the burden of so much of what we habitually carry with us and receive the gift of the present moment.
Through paying attention we learn that even when we don’t especially know or like someone, we are nonetheless in relationship with them. We come to realize that this relatedness is in itself like a vibrant, changing, living entity. We discover the gift of caring, of tending to this force of life that exists between us, and we are immeasurably enriched by that.
In Conversation with Sharon Salzberg
On October 8th, 2020 we hosted a conversation with Sharon Salzberg:
Sharon Salzberg shares her favorite practices, deep insights, and inspiration about loving-kindness meditation. She’s joined by her good friend Barry Boyce, longtime meditation teacher and Mindful‘s founding editor.
On November 5th, 2020 Sharon Salzberg joined us for a live collective meditation:
Mindfulness Meditations Guided by Sharon Salzberg
A 10-Minute Guided Meditation to Connect with Loving-Kindness
A Meditation to Connect with Loving-Kindness—Sharon Salzberg
- Begin by thinking about someone who has helped you; maybe they’ve been directly generous or kind, or have inspired you though you’ve never met them. When you think of them, they make you smile. Bring an image of the person to mind, or feel their presence as if they’re right in front of you. Say their name to yourself, and silently offer these phrases to them, focusing on one phrase at a time.
May you live in safety.
May you have mental happiness (peace, joy).
May you have physical happiness (health, freedom from pain).
May you live with ease.
- Don’t struggle to fabricate a feeling or sentiment. If your mind wanders, simply begin again.
- After a few minutes, move on to a friend. Start with a friend who’s doing well right now, then switch to someone who is experiencing difficulty, loss, pain, or unhappiness.
- Offer loving-kindness to a neutral person who you don’t feel a strong liking or disliking for: a cashier at the supermarket, a bank teller, a dry cleaner. When you offer loving-kindness to a neutral person, you are offering it to them simply because they exist—you are not indebted to or challenged by them.
- Offer loving-kindness toward a person with whom you have difficulty. Start with someone mildly difficult, and slowly work toward someone who has hurt you more grievously. It’s common to feel resentment and anger, and it’s important not to judge yourself for that. Rather, recognize that anger burns within your heart and causes suffering, so out of the greatest respect and compassion for yourself, practice letting go and offering loving-kindness.
- Finish by offering loving-kindness to anyone who comes to mind: people, animals, those you like, those you don’t, in an adventurous expansion of your own power of kindness.
A 15-Minute Compassion Practice for Opening the Heart
A Compassion Practice for Opening the Heart—Sharon Salzberg
- Imagine you’re encircled by people who love you. Sit comfortably, eyes open or closed, and imagine yourself in the center of a circle made up of the most loving beings you’ve met. There may be some people in your circle who you’ve never met but have been inspired by. Maybe they exist now or they’ve existed historically, or even mythically.
- Receive the love of those who love you. Experience yourself as the recipient of the energy, attention, care, and regard of all of these beings in your circle of love. Silently repeat whatever phrases are expressive of that which you most wish for yourself, not just for today but in an enduring way. Phrases that are big and open, something like: May I be safe, be happy, be healthy. Live with ease of heart. May I be safe, be happy, be healthy. Live with ease of heart.
- Notice how you feel when you receive love. As you experience yourself in the center of the circle, all kinds of different emotions may arise. You may feel gratitude and awe, or you might feel kind of shy, like you would rather duck down and have all of these beings send loving-kindness to one another and forget about you. Whatever emotion may arise, you just let it wash through you. Your touchstone is those phrases—May I be happy. May I be peaceful… or whatever phrases you’ve chosen.
- Open yourself up to receiving love. Imagine that your skin is porous and this warm, loving energy is coming in. Imagine yourself receiving. There’s nothing special that you need to do to deserve this kind of acknowledgment or care. It’s simply because you exist.
- Send loving care to the people in your circle. You can allow that quality of loving-kindness and compassion and care you feel coming toward you to flow right back out to the circle and then toward all beings everywhere, so that what you receive, you transform into giving. You give the quality of care and kindness that does actually exist in this world. That can become part of you, and part of what you express or return. When you feel ready you can open your eyes or lift your gaze to end the session.
A 3-Minute Guided Meditation to Be Kind to Yourself
Be Kind to Yourself—Sharon Salzberg
- You can start by taking delight in your own goodness—calling to mind things you have done out of good-heartedness, and rejoicing in those memories to celebrate the potential for goodness we all share.
- Silently recite phrases that reflect what we wish most deeply for ourselves in an enduring way. Traditional phrases are:
May I live in safety.
May I have mental happiness (peace, joy).
May I have physical happiness (health, freedom from pain).
May I live with ease. - Repeat the phrases with enough space and silence between so they fall into a rhythm that is pleasing to you. Direct your attention to one phrase at a time.
- Each time you notice your attention has wandered, be kind to yourself and let go of the distraction. Come back to repeating the phrases without judging or disparaging yourself.
- After some time, visualize yourself in the center of a circle composed of those who have been kind to you, or have inspired you because of their love. Perhaps you’ve met them, or read about them; perhaps they live now, or have existed historically or even mythically. That is the circle. As you visualize yourself in the center of it, experience yourself as the recipient of their love and attention. Keep gently repeating the phrases of loving kindness for yourself.
- To close the session, let go of the visualization, and simply keep repeating the phrases for a few more minutes. Each time you do so, you are transforming your old, hurtful relationship to yourself, and are moving forward, sustained by the force of kindness.
An 8-Minute Guided Meditation to Offer Loving-Kindness to Yourself and Others
Offering Loving-Kindness to Yourself and Others—Sharon Salzberg
- To begin, you can sit comfortably. Many of you may have your own loving-kindness practice, and it’s fine just to continue on. Common phrases you would repeat are things like, may I be safe, be happy, be healthy, and live with ease. Live with ease means: May the things in day-to-day life not be a struggle.
- May I be safe, be happy, be healthy, live with ease. You can silently repeat these phrases or whatever phrases you’ve chosen. Gather all of your attention behind one phrase at a time. You don’t have to try to force a special feeling, the power of the practice is in that gathering. And when your attention wanders—because it will—don’t worry about it. See if you can gently let go and just return your attention to the phrases.
- Then, see if you can call to mind someone who’s helped you. Maybe they’ve helped you directly and helped pick you up when you had fallen down. Maybe you’ve never met them, and they’ve inspired you from afar. So if someone like that comes to mind, you can bring them here. An adult, a child, a pet, whoever it might be, see if you can visualize an image of them, or say their name to yourself. Get a feeling for their presence and offer the phrases of loving-kindness to them. May you be safe, be happy, be healthy, live with ease. Even if the words don’t seem perfect. It’s fine. It’s the conduit for the heart’s energy.
- Now let’s have a gathering. Just with whoever comes to mind: friends, family, colleagues, pets. And offer loving-kindness to the group, to the collective. May you be safe, be happy, be healthy, live with ease.
- Then, shift your attention to all beings everywhere, all people, all creatures, all those in existence, near and far, known and unknown. May all people be safe, be happy, be healthy, live with ease.
Sharon Salzberg in Mindful Magazine
Meditation Teacher Sharon Salzberg Talks About the Power of Loving-Kindness
In the June 2020 issue of Mindful magazine, we talked to Sharon Salzberg about attention, resilience, anger, and the need to be kinder to ourselves and the world.
Barry Boyce: You’ve been practicing mindfulness for quite some time and I’ve heard you talk about how meditation and kindness are inseparably linked. Can you explain?
Sharon Salzberg: Let me start with a little background. Nowadays, if you want to practice meditation, there are meditation centers and studios all over the place, or you could take a course. You can go on online and find 50 or 100 books on meditation.
When I started, in the early ’70s, lots of us went to Asia. I chose India.
When I traveled there as an 18-year-old to meet great meditation teachers, I felt like I knew a lot. I had read plenty of Eastern philosophy and was pretty sure I had gained a good understanding. I was in for a bit of a surprise. The first thing I was taught when I went on my first meditation retreat was to pay attention to my breath.
“What,” I thought, “this is it? Pay attention to my breath? I could have done that back in Buffalo.” In Buffalo, I could even see my breath on many days. I figured I would be able to follow many breaths, maybe hundreds at a sitting. Why not? What’s the big deal?
I soon came to find out that it was not so easy as that.
In fact, I had a lot of trouble paying attention to even one breath without my mind going off into many, many thoughts. I found myself having thoughts like, why there are roundabouts on highways. Who came up with that idea? What? Why am I having such thoughts at all? I’m not a traffic engineer. It was pretty humbling to see just how hard it was to simply pay attention, and how the thoughts came tumbling down like a waterfall.
That’s where kindness needed to kick in.
I quickly discovered that if I was going to keep going with meditation, I would need to go much easier on myself. I would need to accept the inevitability of these thoughts and have some faith that my attention could indeed find its way back.
Barry Boyce: When people don’t have faith that their attention will find its way back, do you find that they will think they simply can’t meditate?
Sharon Salzberg: Oh yes. The experience of being overwhelmed by thoughts is hardly unique to me. Anyone who begins meditating will find this very thing happening to them. Feeling inadequate. So many thoughts! So little attention on the breath. I cannot meditate. Other people can do it. I cannot. And this kind of thought loop may happen again and again, and each time we can be kind to ourselves about being human beings who have thoughts.
Sometimes when people are introduced to mindfulness meditation, they come to think of it as a dry, technical exercise, a kind of hard work or mental struggle. In fact, for meditation to take hold, early on, we need some warmth and kindness toward ourselves.
It’s not a dry exercise at all. It’s learning how to be with ourselves, and when we are with ourselves in this very simple way, the attention and the kindness go together, hand in hand. Some self-compassion must arise if we are to keep going.
Barry Boyce: What else is essential to keep going?
Sharon Salzberg: Frequently in instructing meditation, we say “rest” your attention on the breath. It’s a quality of resting and settling right from the start, a gentle act, not a labored struggle. And as a result of the practice, we develop increased concentration. That is a key factor.
But we also develop greater awareness of what’s going on with ourselves, what’s happening with our emotions, and when we see a thought, we don’t push it away. We notice it. We see it for what it is. That’s how we begin to get to know ourselves better, and by extension experience what’s happening with others more. We feel our connection to them more. Paying attention is one of the kindest things we can do—for ourselves and for others.
Barry Boyce: How is it possible to rest, to develop awareness and concentration, in the midst of turmoil and anxiety?
Sharon Salzberg: With coronavirus circling the globe; schoolchildren, churchgoers, protesters, and concertg