A Quote by Sharon Salzberg
One of the things that I think makes it hard in this society for us to tell the truth is the kind of conventional relationship to adversity. Things aren't always easy and rather than being taught to have kindness to ourselves and others in the light of that we're taught something very different; that it's wrong and rejected - that's a lot of conditioning to step away from.
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Mum always taught us that compassion and kindness were the most important things in life, that it was better to be kind than right.
Being taught to despise your body is being taught to perhaps admire someone else's body more than yours - being taught that your body is good for certain things and not for others.
I come from a highly moral family. I was very much taught what was right and wrong, and in my perception of things, I did something that was very wrong. To know that, and to then be so publicly exposed, was very hard.
I was brought up by a Victorian Grandmother. We were taught to work jolly hard. We were taught to prove yourself; we were taught self reliance; we were taught to live within our income. You were taught that cleanliness is next to Godliness. You were taught self respect. You were taught always to give a hand to your neighbour. You were taught tremendous pride in your country. All of these things are Victorian values. They are also perennial values. You don't hear so much about these things these days, but they were good values and they led to tremendous improvements in the standard of living.
Rather than being taught to ask ourselves who we are, we are schooled to ask others. We are, in effect, trained to listen to others’ versions of ourselves.
Babies aren't born knowing differences in color, gender, religions. They're taught those things. They're taught them at home. They're taught in the schools. They're taught in the churches. They're taught in the mosques, in the synagogues.
Something similar happens on the other side of the equation: Giving kindness does us as much good as receiving it. . . . The true benefit of kindness is being kind. Perhaps more than any other factor, kindness gives meaning and value to our life, raises us above our troubles and our battles, and makes us feel good about ourselves.
It's a rare and precious thing to be close to suffering because our society - in many ways - tells us that suffering is wrong. If it's our own suffering, we try to hide it or isolate ourselves. If others are suffering, we're taught to put them away somewhere so we don't have to see it.
Of all the things people have taught me regarding life lessons or anything that would benefit me, I don't think anything helped me learn more about life than football. You go through so many different things: adversity, how to handle adversity, how to handle success, how to lead, how to be a teammate, how to communicate.
We are not terrorists. We're not criminals, we're not motivated by money, we're not motivated by greed. Nor are we simply nice kids gone wrong. We're deeply committed to a different kind of society and a different world. I think that is something very hard to understand for a lot of people.
Buddha taught kindness towards lower beings; and since then there has not been a sect in India that has not taught charity to all beings, even to animals. This kindness, this mercy, this charity - greater than any doctrine - are what Buddhism left to us.
We tell girls to be themselves, but then they have role models - sometimes too many role models - in popular culture who incarnate that kind of disconnectedness from oneself. We are taught to self-hate; we are taught to doubt. Our culture doesn't help us recognize ourselves as amazing beings without changing ourselves.
A person can learn a lot from a dog, even a loopy one like ours. Marley taught me about living each day with unbridled exuberance and joy, about seizing the moment and following your heart. He taught me to appreciate the simple things-a walk in the woods, a fresh snowfall, a nap in a shaft of winter sunlight. And as he grew old and achy, he taught me about optimism in the face of adversity. Mostly, he taught me about friendship and selflessness and, above all else, unwavering loyalty.
Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.
The love of God is not taught. No one has taught us to enjoy the light or to be attached to life more than anything else. And no one has taught us to love the two people who brought us into the world and educated us. Which is all the more reason to believe that we did not learn to love God as a result of outside instruction. In the very nature of every human being has been sown the seed of the ability to love. You and I ought to welcome this seed, cultivate it carefully, nourish it attentively and foster its growth by going to the school of God's commandments with help of His grace.
We’re taught to do things the right way. But if you want to discover something that other people haven’t, you need to do things the wrong way. Initiate a failure by doing something that’s very silly, unthinkable, naughty, dangerous. Watching why that fails can take you on a completely different path. It’s exciting, actually. To me, solving problems is a bit like a drug. You’re on it, and you can’t get off.
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