Sharon Salzberg

*Note: This auto-transcript is only lightly edited. You might find some typos! 

Tasha
What’s up guys? Welcome back to the consciousness explorers podcast. This is the pod that’s all about mind body continuum practices. So we’re just surfing consciousness however we can. We’re your hosts. I’m Tasha Schumann. This is Jeff Warren.

Jeff
Hello, good to be here.

Tasha
And we’re stoked to have you along for the ride today, Jeff, give us a little rundown of who we got.

Jeff
So we have a master in the house. This particular podcast, we have Sharon Salzberg on who anyone knows anything about meditation will have heard her name. She is a luminary in the world of meditation. You know, really one of the people that brought meditation to the west. I mean, famously, along with Joseph Goldstein, and Jack Kornfield. Meditation was here already in different ways, but she kind of helped popularise it back in the 70s. And that’s who we get the hang out with here. She founded the Insight Meditation Society, she’s written, you know, half a dozen kind of seminal books, which really helped shape my understanding of practice. It’s like kind of going to the headwaters of loving kindness. That’s her famous practice that he teaches. And that’s what she guides us in today.

Tasha
You know this practice can very easily become kind of a bypassing or, you know, sugar coated kind of practice, but I loved how grounded and how earthy it was, and how she really, you know, brought us through the understanding that this is an antidote to fear to the fear in our lives.

Jeff
I think we can’t say that point enough. Like this is about what it means to genuinely live without fear in the world. And it’s it’s mind blowing to think about that, and that that this practice is, this is what it addresses like, like really changing that at the root.

Tasha
So without further ado, here’s Sharon Salzberg.

Jeff
Welcome to the consciousness explorers podcast. We are really honoured to have you here.

Sharon Salzberg
Wow. Thank you so much. I’m honoured to be here.

Tasha
Thank you. I’m excited to get into practice. Do you want to tell us a little bit about what you want to lead us through today and maybe some background behind it?

Sharon Salzberg
Sure, I thought I would do a loving kindness meditation. That’s what I often do. And I first heard of loving kindness as a meditation method. When I first started meditating, which was January 1971, in Bodh Gaya, India.

Tasha
I love how you know the exact month.

Sharon Salzberg
I can tell you the exact date actually ,January 7th 1971 is when I first began an intensive 10 day meditation retreat, and the teacher was SN Goenka who is a Burmese Buddhist who had just come to India, and he taught loving kindness is almost a kind of ceremonial way of saying goodbye, a little exercise at the end. And it was only quite some years later in 1985, that I got to go to Burma, and do an intensive three month retreat in a very systematic way to explore this particular method of meditation. And I found it really transforming. And so it’s something I actually love to teach. So the practice is done, often stunned by the silent repetition of certain phrases. And the phrases are a different way of paying attention. That’s what they function as. So if, for example, when you usually think about yourself, at the end of the day, if you only pretty well remember the mistakes you made, and the things you did wrong, what you could have said better. This is making a shift, I call it a stretch, to wish ourselves well. And the feeling tone is gift giving, it’s offering its blessing, may you be happy, may I be happy. And so through the silent repetition of these phrases, we are making this offering of beneficence of wishing well of connection to ourselves, and to a variety of different beings culminating in all beings everywhere I say being because there’ll be a puppy, for example, doesn’t have to be a human person.

And the practice is done by gathering all of our attention behind one phrase at a time. And then the next. And then what I consider to be the magic note of every kind of practice, is recognising our minds will wander, dwell in the past or dwell in the future, and judgement speculation all over the place. And then comes the moment we recognise that like, whoo, I’ve been gone, you know, that is the moment we have the chance to be really different, where instead of judging ourselves or blaming ourselves, we can practice letting go and coming back to whatever our original object was. So loving kindness, we repeat these phrases and over time people, of course make up their own phrases they need to be big enough, are generally enough so that mostly we can use the same phrases, no matter who we’re making the offering to not always, but you sort of don’t want to be sitting there thinking, “what about you?” you know, because then we lose all all concentration.

So, common phrases, the ones I’ll suggest, for our sitting, are beginning with oneself, may I be safe, or may I feel safe, be happy, be healthy, live with ease. Live with ease means and the things of day to day life like livelihood or family may not be such a struggle. May I live with these man, be safe, be happy, be healthy, live with ease. And it’s not again, you know about wishful thinking or insistence, or denying, you know, some very difficult states, but it’s that gift, it’s that offering that we’re moving into that space and you don’t have to struggle at all to try to create a feeling or manufacture anything, just gather your attention behind one phrase at a time, your mind will wander that’s almost a guarantee. That’s okay. See if you can let go and come back.

Okay, so let’s practice together.

[Meditation]

Tasha
I just want to say how… what a simple but really profound joy it is to do loving kindness meditation with like, the guru of loving kindness.

It’s so simple but it’s just really profound.

Jeff
And I had questions and reports.

Tasha
Good. Good. Me too.

Jeff
Do you want to start Tasha?

Tasha
No, go for it. You sound primed.

Jeff
Yeah. Okay, so maybe I’ll just give a little report that contains a few pieces that we can pack. And I’m sure it’ll overlap in some ways with Tasha’s.

So at first, as always, with these loving kindness practices, there’s a sort of rote-ness, where I’m saying the words, but I’m not really connected to them. It’s like, they’re just words, my mind’s flitting this way in that and, and, and so there’s this initial kind of needing to let go almost, to kind of let them be seeds, or something that you’re putting out there. And it’s okay, if you’re not connected to them yet. That’s kind of what I do. It’s like, I’m just putting them out there anyway, like, and I in the gift framework is enormously helpful, actually.

So I’m doing that. And, particularly as I get into my benefactor, in this case, is my little toddler son, who I could hear running around upstairs, you know, that I’m feeling the more I suppose, you know, I know feeling them isn’t the isn’t necessary, per se. But again, the words are just words. And then there’s a sort of moment where I’m like, Well, do I need to connect to the feeling of safety, and as different from ease as different from happiness and, and then what am I going to use to support this, so I start to actually visualise him and I visualise giving him a hug.

And I did the same with my friend who’s having, who’s not having a hard time and, and visualising the hugging, made it more real. Or as if I just was, in the words, it wasn’t as real. And then I got to the challenging person. And, as always happens with the challenging person, there is this compassion. But in this case, this person, their partner has just been diagnosed with MS, they have a little four year old girl, they’re very, you know, it’s progressive MS. It looks like it’s happening very rapidly. The whole their whole world is, you know, falling apart in a way or changing. And it’s very hard to unhook the wishing well from the wanting to fix, or from the realism that says, this is just going to this is going to be a thing in their life for a long time. You know, how is it somehow phoney of me to wish them into kind of want them? Well, when it’s that kind of goes against the stream of the realism of what’s happening, which is going to be hard for a bit. I know you get this question. That’s why I am. And I know this will be something other people have felt in our audience so anyway, then it kind of got into the whole group, and it was great. And that’s my report. I may say other things but I don’t want to talk too much, because there’s a few questions in there. And I’ll let Tasha go.

Tasha
Should we talk about yours before I report mine, there’s some overlap with mine.

Sharon Salzberg
Okay, whenever you like.

Tasha
Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, you can you can address some of what Jeff reported. I mean,

Sharon Salzberg
I mean functionally, almost technically, I think any meditation practice is resting on not only the ability to let go and begin again, which I think is phenomenally important. But it’s resting on the kind of multiplicity of qualities we’re developing in the process of doing the meditation, some of which are really about calm and peace and letting go and relaxing and some of which are about energy and alertness and connection and investigation, you know, like real aliveness. And we’re developing both sides of those qualities, and at least from time to time bringing them together, in a state of balance.

And so, in loving kindness, when things are really rote, you know, and kind of almost dead, and we need to do something to help make it more alive, we have to make it pop. So those images, you know, imagine yourself hugging somebody, or maybe it’s, if you’re good at visualisation, it might be getting even more cute with the sense of the recipient. It could be active imagination, like, what would it look like, if you were happy? You know, you know, because it will make it come alive. And that’s very important. Partly, it’s self knowledge, it’s knowing your own mind, it’s seeing your tendencies, I know that I can’t do that too much, without really losing the concentration, because my mind will just go off. And not only will I think, you know, for a few moments, like, what would it look like if you were happy, but I’ll be redecorating a new apartment? I’ll just say that’s what you need.

Jeff
So when you talk about concentration, do you mean just the repetition of the phrases or concentrating on the feeling it’s generating or concentrating on the intention to say the phrase like, what are you concentrating on?

Sharon Salzberg
They say that in any moment, it’s one of three things that are predominant. One is the phrase, one is the feeling it’s generating. And one is the sense of the recipient, which may be visual or it may be almost like you feel them like they’re right here.

In terms of the feeling, the emotional connection, the sense of connection, warmth, that’s not always there. And my really genuine experience has been that although I’ve despaired at those moments-more than moments-when I felt nothing happening, something was actually happening. And it was only when I could look back and say, Oh, look at that, you know, I thought that was a waste of time, or worse, you know, where’s my heart, I have no heart. Something was actually happening. And it may not be emotional. Sometimes it’s a shift in worldview, a sense of inclusion, a sense of caring to listen, you know, meeting someone differently. Realising I’m not holding that old impression of them so tightly. I’m at least open to being surprised. Or I watch myself chastising myself again, and also laugh, or something like that. And then the sense of the recipient, we definitely need to sharpen when we’re in a fog, or it feels like it’s just so spaced out. And sometimes we want to do it anyway, because it picks up the energy and makes it more alive. But that’s not always there, either. So the phrases like the bottom line, we can always be repeating the phrases. And so that’s what I tend to emphasize, but really concentrate on any of the three.

Tasha
Yeah, I had a lot of overlaps actually, with Jeff, but actually the Benefactor choosing a benefactor. It was this moment for me, because, you know, I come from the Tibetan tradition. And usually, the immediate benefactor you choose is your teacher. Yeah, we’re always like, my teacher has been generous to me, and is my gateway to kind of enlightenment and stuff. And it’s really easy for me to do that. Because, you know, my teachers are incredible and wonderful. And I thought, Okay, wait, I’ve wished them so much loving kindness, let’s see if I can pick another benefactor just for today. And because you’d mentioned the puppy, I went with my cat. And it was, you know, I love my cat. And we’re, like, inseparable. So I was like, you know, let me give her this love. And in saying these sentences, you know, to her, in my mind, something really special happened, which is that I realised how much age agency she has, you know, which is weird, because we think of our pets as like, I take care of you. I’m the reason you’re alive. I feel your bowl every day. What would you do without me, you know? And just like saying to this being who is really reliant on me, may you be happy, may you be safe. You know? You just realized that even though yes, I’m the one filling your bowl and like giving you a shelter, there is still you have this rich life. That’s like so I don’t know she’s What is she doing right now? I have no idea. She’s out there like eating bugs or something like that, you know? And so it she just took on this whole other quality that was just so it was beautiful to just kind of sit there and just really feel like she was a benefactor with her own agency. So that was really cool for me.

And then in moving to the friends, I had kind of the same experience that Jeff did where you’re like, Well, what should I do to help this person actually, but actually in saying that I’m a doer, I’m like the kind of person, I want to fix things. So I’m naturally always like, here’s the 11 ways I’m helping you today. But in saying these phrases, it kind of released me from that, you know, I think a part of wanting to fix things for people is kind of like an egotistical thing, where it’s like, this is what I can do for you, you know, and just being able to kind of relax into that and saying, May you be happy was this acknowledgement of like, you know, the limitations of what I can do, but the openness of my heart, and I hope that you were surrounded by other other avenues for help as well and stuff. So it was actually just this melting of this type a kind of, let me fix everything, you know. And so there was like, joy in it for me in just to be able to support someone from my heart without immediate action.

Sharon Salzberg
Yeah, I think that’s beautiful. I meant to say, you know, also, with Jeff and your friend who has the new diagnosis, I think it’s really interesting for any one of us to look at what’s going on in our minds and hearts when we do pull away, and we don’t want to be there anymore, you know, just in presence. And I think it’s really generally speaking, it’s much more around the frustration of not being able to be in control and fix it. Yeah. Yeah. than anything else. And so I agree, you know, my experience also touches been the, it’s when I know, not what to do, you know, I do this. Yeah. And it keeps me connected and present and open. To see what emerges out of out of that sense of being there.

Tasha
It just reminded me actually kind of like being on the other side of that, like when I when I need help as a person. And so many times, you know, a friend has come and tried to help. And it’s almost like, there’s a timeline on how, you know, they got to fix it. And so, you know, if they give me advice, and then it’s still not better, suddenly, they’re frustrated, and now I’m dealing with my own problem and their frustration.

Sharon Salzberg
That’s right, I wrote in one of my books about the time after Ram Dass had a massive stroke and he was still living in California and I went to visit him in his living room was piled high with things people had sent him these herbs and nostrums and drops and things like that. And, and it was really beautiful. It was beautiful evidence of how much he meant to people and how much they cared. But every once in a while there was a note attached, that would have a lot of the flavour, you know, what you’re just describing, and like, you know, take 15 drops of this, and you will definitely be walking again in you know, two weeks and, and I could feel that for him. The internal message was, what if I fail you? You know, like, what if I’m not walking in two weeks? Are you still there? Do you still love me? Have I disappointed you. And when I was there, the day I was there, actually one of those messages arrived came with his bottle of Ganges water water from the Ganges River. And it said, Take 15 drops of this, and you’ll definitely be walking again. And I said don’t drink that. Drink that and you’ll get cholera. Don’t drink that whatever you do.

Tasha
Probably the best advice.

Jeff
Well, this brings up a guess very related to this. When we’re talking about this person in a challenging situation, it I am there, I feel like there is a responsibility to be honest about the realism of the situation. And about like this clear seeing of the genuine seriousness of this and the challenge it’s causing. And sometimes, in my imagination of my wrong thinking, imagination, loving kindness, I’m doing this sort of Disney, May everything be well overtop of that. And that seems to be almost an offence to the to the truth. And this is something I hear a lot in activist spaces. You know, we’re talking about the incredible inequities and the environmental challenges and all the things that are out in the world. And so I wonder if you could speak a little to that or how you negotiate that or think of that. I know, I’m creating a bit of a false contrast there. And so I’m curious to hear how you disentangle that because I’m sure it’s a question that you get a lot or an observation.

Sharon Salzberg
Yeah, I mean, it’s, it comes in lots of different times, you know, in that situation, certainly, or ‘may all beings be happy’, like…really? You know that’ll never happen. You know, there are predators and prey and if the predator’s happy the prey is dead. If the prey is happy the predator’s hungry.

Jeff
Mhm, that’s a pretty stark way of putting it [laughs] when you put it like that.

Tasha
[Laughs]

Jeff
It’s true.

Sharon Salzberg
Yeah, well, all beings, right all creatures, so you know, it’s the universe and I mean, there are different levels to it. One is words are complicated, of course, you know, and they mean different things like maybe healthy on the surface means May your diagnosis be refuted? And may you get up and dance, you know, out of your wheelchair around us. But that’s not necessarily what it means. And certainly over time, you know, it’s a very different sense of what is health, what is healing, it might almost mean at some point, maybe love yourself anyway, despite the world’s pronouncement of your now deficiency or, or disability, you know. May that love shine forth.

And talking about activism, you know, that’s, that’s what I’ve seen in people who kind of rise up, you know, like saying, I’m worth more than this. And so I think even using those same old words, they could have that kind of, of meaning. But it’s also possible that we change the words because it’s too laboured. It’s too much of a strain to try to use those words like I’ve, you know, known people. Maybe even as a prelude to that, I’ll say, you know, loving kindness is not coercive, and you don’t have to do it, if it feels, you know, just wrong, or you’re violating something that is more important. But I found it a very profound experiment, you know, to see what would happen in the actual doing of it. You know, so I’ve had people say to me, well, they want to offer loving kindness to their formerly abusive mother, you know, as one example, and the only phrase they felt they could say, with any sincerity was may be free of hatred. And that’s enough, you know, that’s totally fine.

Tasha
Even just to say that piece of, you know, may you be free of hatred, that is another way of saying, may you be healthy, be happy. You know.

Sharon Salzberg
That’s right, that’s right.

Tasha
But it’s the way of saying it, that’s so much more real and immediate for that person.

Sharon Salzberg
Yeah. Yeah.

Tasha
I wonder how much of this practice is just being able to sit in that uncomfortability that Jeff is talking about, you know, wishing somebody well, who you know, is on the surface, and at a deep level, not feeling well, and then sitting with that kind of liminal space between not knowing what to do not doing anything, and just kind of feeling that?

Sharon Salzberg
Yeah, I mean, I think that aspect of the practice, certainly, you know, there’s so many aspects, I mean, not a few people would say, the most difficult person to offer loving kindness to themselves.

Jeff
Definitely went through that.

Sharon Salzberg
You know, or even the benefactor who you think you just dug dancing with delight, you know, it’s like, it can be hard, you know, maybe you haven’t really thought of him in a long time, maybe feel you’ve been remiss, maybe, maybe there was that one time, and you have to reconcile, you know, their imperfection with the role they largely played in your life. And you’re not really trying to think all this through, it’s just the kind of stuff that arises.

Jeff
You know, I, you said something really sort of tantalising there. And I feel like I have this opportunity to ask the master. Because you, you spoke a little bit about sort of the trickle down effect of a practice that even if we don’t notice the effect in the moment, something’s changing, something’s kind of getting down into the depths and shifting and, and then you kind of spoke to the study that is leading towards healing, health and healing. And I guess, this is a very basic question, but what is that for you? What is health and healing? And where can we go? Where do these practices take us? Is it all to different places? Or is it to one space and I just curious how you think about that?

Sharon Salzberg
Um, I think that different practices are designed differently. And so I think they do tend to emphasise different things. So loving kindness, they say the Buddha taught loving kindness as the antidote to fear. And that was certainly my experience.

They also say that the part of the psyche that is most impacted by the practice of loving kindness is the fields of intention, out of which we act, you know. And so if we largely have been saying things or doing things or holding back from saying or doing things because of fear, and you deep in loving kindness, one way or another, just naturally meditation, but if that quality deepens, you will find that you’re acting from a place of connection. That’s what’s motivating you to reach out or hold back or whatever. But that heartspace the motivation or the intention becomes one of a sense of connection rather than fear. And coming from a good mode of a caring, loving, compassionate motive does not mean we have to act in a certain way. Because the decision about what’s skillful or unskillful is very contextual. It’s that Moment? Should I say yes? Should I say no? And people often think they’re the same thing. Like, if you have a loving motive, you can only say yes, you can only give them the car again, you can only let them move back in, you can only kind of lie down and take it, you know, yeah, I’m so really, it doesn’t mean that you can have a very compassionate motive genuinely so. But your discernment, your understanding your read of the room, you know, your, your best guess I usually call it of how to act is not limited. And so people get very squeamish about the idea of loving kindness, you know, like, “I can only say yes. I’ll be sweet and be meek.” But really, we know, there’s such a thing as tough love, we know, there’s such a thing as fierce compassion. And so the motive is what transforms and we’re not bound to, you know, a kind of weird persona. So you,

Jeff
You know, I said at the very beginning how transformative this practice has been for you personally. And I’m, I’m imagining my way into a place where we are connected on that, in that really loving way to very loving intentions. Where we’re living, we’re operating from that place, not from a place of fear, but from a place of genuine, you know, care. Everything changes, if that’s the case, I can, I can just feel so how might you describe how that what that transformation has been like for you? And what and what and what someone doing this practice might expect for themselves and what the trajectory is? Yeah.

Sharon Salzberg
Well, I always come back to this understanding that the Buddha taught, loving kindness is the antidote to fear because it’s also a time where, you know, there’s so much animosity, there’s so much hostility, there’s so much hostility coming toward oneself often, you know, and people say “Why in the world would I want to do loving kindness for somebody who despises me or, you know, is behaving in that terrible way?” And I just say, let’s think about it as the antidote to fear, not as, like acquiescence, or wishing somebody be triumphant and their terrible behaviour or, you know, let’s think of those answers, it’s fear. And certainly, for me, that was the transition.

My first practice, because only did loving kindness, right at the end of that retreat was really a mindfulness practice and, and for many years, and I describe myself, I was 18, when I went to India, I’d had an extremely traumatic childhood. And when I described my early practice, one of the things I say, is, one of the realisations I had was that one of the reasons it was very difficult for me to be with the breath, which was the first instruction that I I had was because almost as soon as this breath was beginning, I’d be mentally leaning forward to get ready for the next 15. I was really hyper vigilant, I was terribly frightened. I was very weary, I didn’t know what might happen next, a lot. It already happened to me in my life, and I felt I had to be ready for everything. And so for me, in those days, just in the context of that method, balanced, looked like settle back, let the breath come to you. I used to say to myself, you’re breathing anyway, all you need to do is feel it, you know, because I had so much performance anxiety, it’s like I’d never done it before. And so I found that loving kindness as a method of meditation, kind of took that same lesson, like settle back, let the breath come to you into life in in a much more generalised way, in countless conversations.

When I first started teaching, which was 1974, I was completely phobic about public speaking, I could not give a talk. I was terrified. And the first retreat, we were invited to teach in this country, it was Joseph Goldstein and I and it was a month long retreat. And the format of our retreats is that people practice all day, and there’s teacher contact, and there’s questions and answers. And there’s one lecture every night, that’s the formal talk. So it was a 30 day retreat, could not do single talk. Joseph had to do them all. And wow, people were going up and yelling at him saying, why won’t you let her have a voice? Why won’t you let her speak? And he said, “I’d love having a night off, tell her, you know”.

I could not do it. I was terrified. And what I was really afraid of was that I’d be speaking and my mind would go blank, and like, just be sitting there in front of everybody and look really foolish. And then one day, you know, so this is before long before I went to Burma. I had the thought, you know, there was that practice loving kindness. There’s a guided meditation you could do so maybe I could give that one talk. And if my mind goes blank, I can launch into the guided meditation and no one will know that just a blooper. So I have piles and piles and piles of cassette tapes of me giving one talk. Because that was the only thing I could talk about. And then one day, I thought, You know what? They’re all kinds of loving kindness talks, because there’s just about connecting to people. No one’s here, because, you know, they want to hear me impart my expertise in something we just want to connect and be able to practice together. And that was the day to begin to talk publicly. Wow.

Jeff
Do you have any fear left now? Like about anything like in there, like, underneath any anything? Yes. Unconscious ways of relating to the world fearfully. I don’t mean, like, you’re fearful when a dog runs up to you. They’re about to get hit by a bus.

Sharon Salzberg
I’m sure. I mean, it’s so different, though. You know, like, I thought you were gonna ask them at any fear of public speaking. And I said, Well, I didn’t like when I had you on a panel with the Dalai Lama, for example. I liked it. It was kind of scary. Yeah, stakes are high, there times the stakes are high. And I get afraid, for sure. Yeah, I mean, I would never want to say that something did not come up in my mind anymore. You know, but the relative spaciousness with which I can hold things, compared to taking them so deep into my heart and saying, This is who I am, this is all I’ll ever be. I mean, that’s not the same at all.

Jeff
Can loving kindness, help generate that spaciousness all on its own? Or do you need to have mindfulness practices and other practices accompanying it?

Sharon Salzberg
That’s a little hard for me to say, because I had like 14 years of mindfulness practices basically, before I, you know, be afraid of loving kindness. I think it does generate it, but in a different way. In the signals for qualities that are taught together, loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, which is joy in the happiness of others. That’s why I put in the friend who’s doing well, right now. And equanimity. The term in Pali, the language of the original Buddhist texts is the Four Brahma Viharas, which the word Vihara means dwelling, or abiding or home. And so Brahma means like, supreme or best, and those four qualities are set to form our best home. And I think that’s what happens, you start to feel at home, when you’re having that sense of caring connection, and you start to feel weird, you know, like something is, something’s off when I’m berating myself for the 15th hour, when I’m holding rigidly to the idea of somebody else, instead of listening. It just starts to feel off. And so we come back to a sense of wanting to be at home. But mindfulness is a tremendous tool that way, you know, in seeing, first of all, even knowing what we’re feeling like before we’ve sent the email, and, you know, to be kind of on top of what’s really cooking.

Tasha
There’s mindfulness built into this practice anyway, like, as we’re doing it, you know, so it’s… we’re kind of flexing that muscle at the same time. Yeah.

Jeff
Sharon, amazing. It’s so great to chat with you. It’s such a pleasure. You know…

Sharon Salzberg
Now I’m going to spend the rest of the day thinking what am I afraid of these days?

Jeff
[laughs] Sorry about that. I just totally made Sharon Salzberg neurotic.

Tasha
You’re not gonna be able to write this next book.

Sharon Salzberg
50 years of practice down the drain [laughs].

Jeff
So, any last words of encouragement for anyone who wants to keep exploring this loving kindness practice? Or any bits of advice, or what you’d suggest, what that might look like?

Sharon Salzberg
Yeah, I mean, it’s again, you know, I think it’s a tremendous experiment and thinking of it as an experiment, and not a compulsion. And with any kind of practice, I usually suggest people do what’s reasonable, you know, in terms of commitment, and like, is it 10 minutes a day? Is it 15 minutes a day for two weeks or whatever, but give it a shot, and then assess it, you know, at the end of that period, and when you are assessing it, look at your life, because that will be where if anything has happened, that’s what will be displayed. And that’s where it needs to happen.

Jeff
Beautifully said, Sharon, thank you so much.

Tasha
Thank you so much. It was such a joy to have you on.

Sharon Salzberg
Oh, well, thank you so much. I wish we could continue. We’ll have to continue someday.

Jeff
We will, we’ll do a second one. Then we’ll do a really hard one.

Sharon Salzberg
Fear!

Tasha
Yeah, let’s do one on fear.

Jeff
One hour of solid fear. We’ll do it in like a pen filled with slathering dogs. Well, we’re okay, thank you so much.

Tasha
Thank you so much. Have a great day.

Sharon Salzberg
Thanks, you too.

Tasha
Thanks for tuning in to the Consciousness Explorers Podcast. Don’t forget to subscribe. And if you’d like this episode, give us a five star rating on Apple podcasts. See you next week for a whole new adventure.