This is a transcript from our podcast episode with Sharon Salzberg about meditation and love.

Axel Wennhall
Hi, and welcome to the Swedish podcast “Meditera Mera”, which in direct translation means “meditate more”, with me Axel Wennhall and producer Gustav Nord. This is a podcast made by the Swedish meditation app Mindfully. I’m very happy to introduce our next guest, one of the pioneers bringing mindfulness and loving-kindness practices to the West, Sharon Salzberg. Sharon Salzberg lives in Bair, Massachusetts and in New York City, and she is an American meditation teacher and author. In 1971, in Bodhgaya in India, Sharon attended her first intensive meditation course. She spent the next years engaged in intensive study with highly respected meditation teachers. She returned to America in 1974 and began teaching Vipasana, also known as Insight Meditation. In 1976, she established together with Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield the Insight Meditation Society, which now ranks as one of the most prominent and active meditation centers in the Western world. Sharon is a New York Times bestselling author, including several books such as “Loving Kindness”, “Real Happiness” and “Real Love The Art of Mindful Connection”. Sharon is also the host of her own podcast, The Metta Hour, featuring 100 interviews with the top leaders and voices in the meditation and mindfulness movement. In our episode, Sharon and I will discuss meditation and loving kindness. What is real love? And why is it so hard for people to love oneself? How can we practice and cultivate more love in our lives? And what advice do Sharon have for all of us who wants to meditate more and live a compassionate life? Thank you so much for joining the podcast.

Sharon Salzberg
You’re very welcome.

Axel Wennhall
It’s a pleasure meeting you. And I reckon you hear this pretty often, but you’re one of all of those teachers I had the fortune to have that but I’ve never had the chance to meet and say thank you to. So and I think when I first kind of found you in the spiritual world was I had a really good introduction to meditation, but still everything was new. And I read a couple of books that didn’t really resonate with me. And then I read the book, your book, Real Happiness, and that had a profound impact. It actually was one of the books that sort of helped me also to change my career in working with meditation.

Sharon Salzberg
So that’s wonderful. I’m so glad.

Axel Wennhall
Yeah, it was very clear and kind of also down to earth. I remember it in terms of how to practice meditation and what meditation actually can give you in your life. And yeah, so thank you for writing that.

Sharon Salzberg
Yeah, well, thank you. It’s quite a long time ago now. It feels like 10 years ago maybe I wrote that.

Axel Wennhall
And are you up with a new book now?

Sharon Salzberg
I have two books coming out next year. One is coming out in April called Real Life. And one is coming out in October of 2023. But that’s a different publisher and they don’t like the title. So it’s a book in search of a title. I can’t describe it. Okay, that’s good.

Axel Wennhall
Sharon, so nice to meet you. And how are you?

Sharon Salzberg
I’m well, thank you. It’s very nice to meet you also.

Axel Wennhall
Thank you. So I’m very familiar to your work and your books and reading your book Real Happiness was really profound for me when I discovered meditation. But would you perhaps want to tell a bit about yourself and how you discovered meditation for those who are new to you and your work?

Sharon Salzberg
Well, I went to college in New York State at a young age. I went when I was 16. And in my sophomore year, my second year, there was a philosophy requirement and I chose this class on Asian philosophy. And it was fascinating for a couple of different reasons. One was in talking about the Buddha and the Buddha’s perspective on life. The professor talked about the Buddha and his relationship to suffering. How suffering was universal. It’s just a part of life. That it’s in many ways workable, depending on how we relate to that suffering. We can have actually a special kind of happiness. For example, if something is really difficult in your life, but you don’t feel so alone, you feel like you’re part of a family or a group or community facing this issue. It’s a very different experience than if you feel absolutely isolated and apart. Or deal, you know, same difficulty, but a very different way of relating to it. Or if you have other things going on, even as simple as you’re not sleeping. And then you have no, no kind of stamina. You have no physical energy with which to meet the difficulty. It’s different than when you do. And so I really kind of I got the hint in this class that we actually that suffering was universal, which was very important because. Like many people, I had a family with a lot of challenge and loss. And like many people, mine was a family where this was never, ever spoken about. So I didn’t really know what to do with all of those feelings I had within me. And yet here I heard, it’s not just you, you know, it’s everybody. And that was actually very important for me. Then I heard you could do something about your mind. You can do something about the kind of emotional pain that you’re in. And in this context, it’s called meditation. There are methods, there are tools. So I was going to college in this large city in New York State called Buffalo. And I looked around Buffalo. I could not find it anywhere. And so I created an independent study project for the university. I said, I’d like to go to India for a year and study meditation. And they said, okay. So off I went. So I went in 1970 and I began meditation in January of 1971.

Axel Wennhall
Yeah. And you’ve been a teacher for now almost 50 years. Is that correct? Wow. So what happened when you went to Asia and then also came back to the States?

Sharon Salzberg
Well, I started, I went to India. Very naive. I didn’t even realize India had not been a Buddhist country for centuries. I got to India at around the same time as S. N. Goenka was leaving Burma and beginning to teach. And his form was always 10-day intensive retreats, 10-day immersion retreats. And I had been in India for a couple of months when I heard about him. It sounded like exactly what I was looking for. I wanted something very practical, very direct, like how to do this. You know, this is how you do this. And I went to, the town was Bodhgaya. And it is the town that has grown up around the descendant of the tree. It is said the Buddha was sitting under when he became enlightened. So it’s a very holy town. And Goenka was teaching a 10-day retreat. The first night of the retreat. So this is really like my foundation. You know, my early, early understanding. The first night, Goenka said the Buddha did not teach Buddhism. The Buddha taught a way of life. So this is open to anybody. You don’t have to become a Buddhist. You don’t have to reject anything else. This is about the power of awareness. which the Buddha displayed. And you actually have some too. You know, it may be buried and hard to find, but it’s there. And so that’s what this experience is about. And because it was such an early message, it’s become so important for me in my own understanding and my own teaching. So I, like many people, stayed in India for more than a year. Well, basically, I stayed away from Buffalo more than a year. And I did go back and did what I needed to do for the university in order, in the end, to get like two years of independent study credit. Then I went back to India to continue practicing and studying. And in 1974, I was coming back to the States for what I was convinced was a very brief visit before I went back to India for the rest of my life. I went to see one of my teachers, a woman named Deepa Ma, it’s her nickname, Deepa’s mother, Deepa Ma, who was living in Calcutta, to get her blessing for my very, very, very short trip back to the U.S. before I moved back to India. She said to me, When you go back, you’ll be teaching. And I said, No, I won’t. And she said, Yes, you will. I said, No, I won’t. And she said, Yes, you will. I said, No, I won’t. And Joseph Goldstein, whom I had met at my first retreat, was already back in the States. More specifically, what Deepa Ma said was, When you go back, you’ll be teaching with Joseph. And I said, No, I won’t. And I thought it was just ludicrous. Then she said two things to me that were very important. One was, you really understand suffering. That’s why you should teach. And like I said, I had a very, very difficult childhood. And it had never occurred to me that that was something that could help me help others ever. I never thought that way. And then she said to me, You can do anything you want to do. It’s your thinking you can’t do it that’s going to stop you. So I was sitting there in her room. She basically had a room. And thinking, No, I won’t. It’s so silly. I never. And I walked down these four flights of stairs in the end and came back and never thought she was right. But of course, she was correct. You know, as things evolved and I went to visit Joseph and then we got invitations to teach together and met Jack Kornfield and things just kept moving in that direction. And one day I woke up and I thought, Oh, she was right.

Axel Wennhall
So in your almost 50 years as a meditation teacher, what are the common mistakes you see of practitioners face?

Sharon Salzberg
I think a lot of it has to do with expectation. And I think it’s not a bad thing to really try to understand what you expect to accomplish and also to be reminded. So, for example, many, many times people have said to me if they have heard I’m a meditation teacher. Oh, I tried that once. I failed at it. And I’ll say, Why do you think you failed at it? Because we don’t believe you can fail at it. You know, you might have a surprising experience or challenging experience, but not a wrong experience. And usually people say, I failed at it because I could not make my mind blank. I couldn’t wipe out all thoughts. Couldn’t keep anxiety from coming up. I couldn’t keep sleepiness from coming up, but mostly around thoughts. And I think it just takes some understanding and some reminding that our goal is not to wipe out thinking or to have a frozen blank mind. Our goal is really to change our relationship to everything, thoughts, emotions, sensations, so that we have a little more space, we have a little more balance, and we have a much greater kind of sense of empowerment, sense of agency. So, for example, we know we don’t want to take every thought to heart and build a future around every self, you know, build a self-image around it. Some thoughts, when we can see them quickly enough, we realize, Oh, that is like a really old habit. You know, that is just something I’ve been carrying around for so long. I don’t need to. I can let that one go. You know, but we have to be aware of it before we can have that kind of choice. And we can’t be upset about it. We need a kind of balance, because if you’re caught in a reaction, then that’s what’s going to be predominant. That’s what’s going to take over as the reaction, rather than saying, Yeah, I don’t need that. You know, like, so it’s a training. It’s a real skills training.

Axel Wennhall
Yeah, I remember reading one, one phrase from you that sort of was very profound and and simple in one way, but really also in terms of the meditation shifted a lot in the beginning for me from a more of a goal oriented meditation, and that was that the magical moment of meditation is when we realize we’ve been lost. Just as you say, we all get lost in thoughts and it’s not really about never being lost in thought, but how do you respond or how do you, what’s your relationship to being lost and can we instead of criticize ourselves for something that we don’t really control over, instead feeling kind of perhaps even gratitude and kind of a joy for for being aware again, being present.

Sharon Salzberg
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and I think that’s really true. Like I kept hearing, especially these days, because the word is very popular, that meditation is a kind of resilience training, that you develop resilience through meditation, and and resilience is actually a difficult word to define, but, um, many, many definitions would talk about bouncing back, coming back. You know, there’s disruption, there’s something, um, broken apart or or shifting, even shifting radically and intensely. How do you come back? And you know, they talk about, obviously, resilience of natural systems. There’s a forest fire. How does the forest fire affect the forest? Can the forest come back and be resilient or is it now a wasteland, you know, and cities and systems and water systems and leadership and people? So resilience is a very popular word. And people always would talk about it in terms of meditation. And I think, why is that? You know, and then I realized we experience it in the tiniest of moments, but it’s powerful. Maybe you sit down in your meditation and you want to settle your attention on, say, the feeling of the in and out breath, which was actually the first instruction I ever received. Sit down and feel your breath. And as many people have heard me say, I thought that is so stupid. Like, you know, when I come all the way to India for this, you know, I want something more magical and esoteric and special. And then I thought, how hard can this be? You know, what will it be like 800 breaths or 900 breaths before my mind starts to wander into my absolute shock? It was like one breath, then I’d be gone. And so that is the common condition, you know? So how are we when we realize, oh, it’s been quite some time since I last felt a breath, or I’ve been, you know, making a vacation plan, intricate, detailed, I’m not going on vacation, you know, whatever it is. And if we dive right into a lot of judgment, then we are prolonging the period of the distraction. And we also get so exhausted that we can’t bounce back. We can’t start over so well. But learning how to let go, learning how to begin again right there is the point. And it’s like a life skill we bring right into our every day. You know, so it seems like a nothing instruction. It’s so kind of small, you know, in a way, but it’s very powerful.

Axel Wennhall
Yeah, the skill of beginning again when you start to realize what profound impact it can have in your life. Yeah. And also seeing the correlation between actually practicing it in meditation and then seeing it in your daily life. So I reckon everyone listening to this knows the feeling of like waking up on the wrong side on the bed. You start, you have a bad, you have a bad day.

Sharon Salzberg
Yeah.

Axel Wennhall
But the interesting thing is when you start practicing it like, okay, well, and perhaps it’s even better to ask it as a question. Can I begin again now?

Sharon Salzberg
Yeah.

Axel Wennhall
Can I let go? And is it possible? Just explore with that. And the more we practice, the more we tend to actually start over fresh again.

Sharon Salzberg
Yeah. Yeah, no, definitely. And it’s a little bit startling sometimes to realize how many times a day we actually do begin again. You know, maybe we have a set solution in our minds to some work problem and something happens. We hear some other information or something happens. So we realize, oh, maybe I need a correction. You know, I’m going in the wrong direction. Like, let me move over here. Or we really like, we just feel incapable and we kind of fall down in a way and we have to either pick ourselves up or let others help us up and we start over again and again and again and again and again and again.

Axel Wennhall
So I’ve heard that you had a conversation with the Dalai Lama about self-hatred.

Sharon Salzberg
I did.

Axel Wennhall
And people in the West having a hard time to actually love oneself. Could you just please share that dialogue and the reason why do you think people have such a problem loving oneself?

Sharon Salzberg
That’s a very interesting question. This was maybe something like 1989, maybe 1990, some year like that. And I was in India at a very small conference hosted by the Mind and Life Institute, which had been founded originally to help bring the Dalai Lama together with scientists. And then it has since grown to sponsor a lot of research and, you know, too much wider range of activities. But they would periodically bring the Dalai Lama together with psychologists or scientists or, you know, people around a certain topic that he was interested in having a dialogue with. So, um, this one was about emotion. This particular conference was about emotion, for which there is no word in Tibetan, by the way. Um, so that was interesting and, uh, I had the opportunity to ask the Dalai Lama question. So I said, Your Holiness, What do you think about self-hatred? And he said, What’s that? So that was really interesting. And there are a bunch of psychologists in the room and everyone was jumping up and down. He was just like, I don’t quite get it. And that’s not to say it is a perfect culture. Uh, or that you know, not to sort of deify Tibetan culture or Asian culture, because it is far from perfect. But I think if you were trying to assess, like, what is the fundamental thing you will find within yourself, underneath your personality, underneath those habits, what is like rock bottom at the core? Somebody, say somebody from Tibet, would say Buddha nature, like a potential, a capacity to grow, to understand, to have clarity, to have peace, to have love in your life, not fully formed, but as a potential, like a seed. And it’s because of that potential that they believe in, say, the practice of meditation. Because we can actually, it’s not just doing some stupid activity, you know, that it’s going to get you nowhere, but because we have that capacity inside of ourselves. Whereas in the West, I don’t think we would say that, you know, I don’t know what we would say, but it wouldn’t be the sense of a positive potential that we would consider so fundamental. So that’s the level on which I think that is all happening. And the Dalai Lama came here to speaking to you from my house, which is next door to the Insight Meditation Society in Baring, Massachusetts, the center I co-founded. And the Dalai Lama came for a visit here in 1979. It was his first trip to North America. And we were very young and very naive. And we heard he was coming nearby to Amherst, Massachusetts, to teach a series of lectures. So we sent off a letter to the private office and said, maybe he’d like to visit us too. And then we got a letter back saying, yeah, he would. So he came to visit. And it was crazy, you know, but amongst the events of that day, we had a retreat that was happening. So we invited the Dalai Lama to come into the meditation hall and give a talk, which he did. And then he asked for questions. So this young man raised his hand. He’d been meditating for about two weeks at that point. And he said to the Dalai Lama, I’ve decided I can’t do it. Like, this is not going to work for me. Maybe it’s worked for people for thousands of years, but it’s not going to work for me because I don’t have any ability to love, to have understanding. I just don’t have it. And the Dalai Lama looked so, uh, puzzled in a way. Remember, this is his first trip to North America. So he looks at this young man and he said, well, you’re wrong, you’re just wrong. Which is very funny because a number of people came up to me later and said, oh, the Dalai Lama should not have said that. That’s not skillful to tell somebody you’re wrong, you know. But what was even more interesting was that for the young man, it was the perfect thing to say. It was like it cut through a lot of layers, you know, confusion and so on and self-hatred and like, oh, I guess I’m wrong, you know. And so it was actually very useful for him, which is the whole point, you know. So it’s kind of like that. Like, what do we believe fundamentally about who we are and how do we then interpret things because of that fundamental belief? And just because it’s a longstanding belief doesn’t mean we have to carry it into the future either, you know. We can change our minds about that.

Axel Wennhall
Also, what I’ve kind of seen is that the belief also comes from a change of experience. For me, that would be one of the definitions of a spiritual awakening to see that, aha, all right, okay, I thought I was this person. But now in my direct experience, I can actually observe this kind of thought patterns, this kind of emotional reactions, those kind of, you could call it perhaps even sub-personalities that I thought I was. But there seems to be something underneath it or around it. And it’s here when I’m completely present and aware and it’s alive and it’s, huh, it seems it’s a bit loving too. And it’s always hard to describe it right and put it into words. It’s impossible. But that kind of experiential factor. And I think that’s one of the most beautiful things with, I mean, the love you’ve been doing and for doing for so many years that giving that people that insight, that direct experiential insight. Because I think that changes also the belief that one is not worthy or of love or whatever.

Sharon Salzberg
Yeah, no, I think that’s very true. And also just developing different understandings, seeing, oh, that thought pattern I take so seriously, like you can’t do anything right or some nasty thought like that, you know. And it’s just a thought. Look at that. It actually was receiving and I grabbed it and brought it back so I could suffer some more, you know, with it. It’s like, and you just get to see, look at these things really are changing and I couldn’t stop it from coming. That’s not a power anybody has, but I don’t have to believe it. You know, I can let it go. And look at that. You know, this is what happens when I dive right in and then I end up in a storm of anxiety about something that has not happened. That may never happen, but I’m all freaked out about it, you know? And we get to observe ourselves. And then it’s very self, it’s based on a lot of compassion for ourselves that we begin to make certain choices. You know, like when I hear that thought, you can’t ever do anything, I sort of pat it on the head, you know, and say, You know, sit and have a cup of tea, just get comfortable, Don’t bother me right now.

Axel Wennhall
I think It’s a pretty good Definition of self-compassion to not Take your thoughts too seriously or not believe every thought. It’s just, Yeah, Yeah, it’s, uh, Probably the most important thing I learned in life.

Sharon Salzberg
Yeah, I agree with that. I understand that.

Axel Wennhall
Yeah, So you wrote a beautiful book called Real Love. What do you mean by real love and what’s not real love?

Sharon Salzberg
Well, some of the inspiration from for writing that book actually came from a movie. This movie was, um, Maybe 12 years ago now. It’s called Dan in Real Life, and my goddaughter had a tiny little part in the movie which- sorry, saw the movie quite a number of times- and, uh, there’s a line in the movie which was, um, love is not a feeling, love is an ability. Love is not a feeling, love is an ability, and of course love is a feeling as well. But I was very taken, taken with the idea of love as an ability because it resonated with the kind of experiences I had in meditation, especially doing loving kindness meditation, where you know, normally we think of love almost as like a commodity and it’s something in someone else’s hands. So if somebody gives me like a little package of love, then there’s love in my life and I can be happy. But if somebody takes it away, then I’m nothing. Whereas if we see love as an ability, it’s within us, it’s inside of us, and other people for sure may help ignite it or inspire it or threaten it, but ultimately it’s our own, because otherwise I get this image of like, um, some delivery person standing at my doorstep looking down at this package, looking at the address and saying, no, I think I’ll go over there instead. You go, wait a minute, then there’s no love in my life. But if it’s within us, then it’s also our responsibility. Ultimately, if we want love to be present in a conversation, maybe we have to be the ones to bring it in. If we want love present in finding an answer to a problem, maybe we have to be the ones to bring it in. And it’s clearly empowering, you know, to feel it’s one’s own, to tend to nurture. So that was the basis of writing the book, was that one line.

Axel Wennhall
So where do you see people kind of confuse love or sort of misunderstand the word love and especially perhaps re-love?

Sharon Salzberg
Well, I mean, to some extent it’s not even necessarily a misunderstanding so much as a narrowing, you know, like when I had the proposal, the book proposal for that book that was being sent to various possible publishers, somebody from some publishing house said, um, the love market is saturated. We don’t need another book on love. And I realized what they meant by that was that the romance market was saturated. How to find a relationship, how to keep a relationship, how to end a relationship. It was all about kind of romantic entanglement. And that’s not generally speaking what we mean when we say love in a spiritual context, more the kind of deep understanding of how interconnected our lives are. That we live in a world of connection, not of isolation, although it may feel different than connection. It is ultimately all about connection. And that’s reality. That’s the truth. It’s not making it up or being sentimental about it. And so there’s a kind of fulfillment just in realizing how things are. Because we are in a way united with one another again through that understanding.

Axel Wennhall
I think one of the most important things for me, because as you mentioned there, the word love is filled with so much different kind of opinions perhaps even or beliefs or whatever. It’s to open up the word to a more, a bigger experience. And it can also sound a bit grandiose in a way. Oh, now we’re going to love the whole world. But what I found is it’s very simple. It’s very pragmatic. It’s this kind of everything from enjoying life, smiling to to the bus chauffeur, to to accept myself and the situation I am at right now to even as we spoke about before, to accept the thoughts I have and not be in conflict with them. And also we spoke a bit about in the beginning about suffering and pain. And I’ve seen that if it’s possible for me, love is also that which can be with the fear or that which can be with anxiety. So it really it’s connected to or perhaps an attribute of awareness itself.

Sharon Salzberg
Yeah. I mean, another way of phrasing it is you could say like maybe love is present in the room, but we pile a number of things on top of it so we can’t quite see it. We trust that it’s there. And it’s only by letting go of the holes of some of those things that we can see the love that’s actually there. You don’t have to struggle to try to make love happen at all, but you might notice the obstacles and the challenges that we are putting in. And that’s just everything that mindfulness is said to exist to help us with. If you feel sadness. That’s just one example. And maybe your cultural conditioning, your family conditioning, is such that it’s not considered allowed, almost, you know, to feel that. So you’re meditating and sadness arises and you see the tendency, let me hide it, let me disguise it, let me push it away, let me pretend it’s not there. And if you can catch that, then you just relax. You say, Yeah, it’s sadness. That’s what’s happening right now. So all that other stuff doesn’t have to be also something that we’re carrying around. I shouldn’t be able to stop this. Why do I feel this? I shouldn’t feel this. I’ve been meditating for so many years. Why is this still here? I’m a disgrace. I’m such a loser. I can’t even meditate well. What if anyone ever found out? So much stuff compared to, Oh, yeah, there’s sadness. That’s what’s happening right now.

Axel Wennhall
So there are various ways we can practicing and cultivating more love in our lives. And one way that you’ve been a key person to introduce to the West is Metta or loving kindness. Could you please just explain a bit about Metta and loving kindness for those who haven’t really experienced it?

Sharon Salzberg
Yeah, I mean, there are different ways of looking at meditation practice in general and different ways of making distinctions between styles of practice. So there are many practices, like all mindfulness practices, that are really about trying to see more clearly what our experience actually is. Rather than sadness plus shame at feeling sadness. What is sadness like when I’m not adding all that shame and distress? So those practices are really about bringing us closer to our experience, seeing it without so many filters or expectations, and learning, getting a different level of insight. Then there are other practices that are more like what I call the stretch. You know, it’s realizing, oh, I have a certain habit. Maybe I come home for work and I go through a list of my day, like how did I do today? And all I think of is the mistakes I made and what I did wrong and how I was not good enough day after day after day. It’s a big habit. So I’m going to experiment with stretching. Like when that starts, I’m going to say to myself, anything else happened today? Like anything good happened today? And it can feel awkward and uncomfortable. It’s not forcing and it’s not pushing, but it’s realizing I give very little airtime to the positive. I pretty well only think about the negative. So what’s it like if for less than a minute I think about the positive? It’s the same as gratitude, meditation or reflection. Like what do I have to be grateful for from today? And people, well, I will say in all honesty, it doesn’t come easily for me. It’s not a natural thing to do. All of my conditioning is such that I’m more likely to come to the end of the day and think about what I can complain about. You know, and I didn’t show up in the way I wanted, and that person disappointed me. And back when I was traveling, which I’m not right now, there’s always an airline, you know, or a phone service. But I can also say to myself, what else happened today? It’s not that there’s nothing wrong. It can be quite a lot wrong, but it’s not all wrong. You know, if I’m breathing, I have something to be grateful for. And, you know, so we can pay attention to that. And so it’s a stretch. It’s moving from more familiar terrain, like let me complain again, you know, to what do I have to be grateful for? And loving kindness is a big example of that. You know, we so rarely wish ourselves well. We’re more judging ourselves pretty harshly. So what happens when we wish ourselves well? Or maybe we have, in loving kindness practice, we use phrases and the silent repetition of phrases, like may you be happy, may you be peaceful. It’s an example of gift giving or offering. It’s a freely given gift. May you be safe. May you be happy. And we offer those phrases and everything that comes with it to a variety of different categories of beings. Those we know very well, those we don’t know so well, and so on. So with each category, there’s a kind of stretch. You know, maybe we have a benefactor, someone who’s helped us, someone who’s inspired us. And we begin to offer loving kindness to them through the repetition of the phrases. May you be safe. May you be happy. And so on. And then we realize, boy, I take that kind of person for granted, don’t I? You know, I don’t really often stop and think, how many people helped me just today? It’s a lot. You know, so we kind of see a lot like that all along the way.

Axel Wennhall
Yeah, you mentioned the word reminding oneself, and I’ve seen that also in the metapractices that if I think about my best friend and I think about that, I or I send him phrases to just have a life filled with peace and love or enjoyment. And then kind of just realize, well, yeah, of course I want. I’m just reminding myself of something that I’m usually not thinking about or pondering about. And that feeling just connects you to a self-experience of just well-being. It feels nice to wish others well. And also what I also seen being super helpful in the loving kindness practice is to kind of find or see the obstacles I have. So you mentioned, oh, I took this person for granted, but it can also be, oh, it’s not flowing here. There is some rocks here. There’s some obstacles in that kind of like love. It might be a conflict. It might be a past memory or something that’s just stopping that natural flow of love and compassion coming. And that is also super helpful because it’s there’s something in me, there’s a blockage in me. And what I noticed in my own practice is the more I practice, the more I come in touch with what’s true and that I actually actually wishes them to have a good life filled with love and peace, the less the obstacles within me are there. So it is, uh, it is a. In one way, it’s really a selfish practice.

Sharon Salzberg
Yes, but you know what I say. People say to me, is that greed? You know, like you know, I want to feel good, I want to, you know, is that like craving or greed? And I say, no, it’s not greed, it’s science, it’s understanding there are laws of this universe. And if you’re mean to other people and you just get more and more afraid and more and more lonely, and it’s not a happy life, it just isn’t. Whereas it’s possible, even with strangers, to just have this sense of connection and caring. And it’s a very different quality of life.

Axel Wennhall
How would you speaking about that the room is filled with love and we can kind of experience that, how would you see the difference between a more of a loving kindness practice versus a more of a finding that which is already compassionate and loving?

Sharon Salzberg
I think people will find their way, you know, like I like the idea, not everybody does, but I like the idea of training, so to speak, that we don’t have a limited amount of love, for example, and we develop it, we help grow it, not because we’re forcing it, but because if we pay attention differently, this greater love will be a consequence. It’s like, it’s a way and it’s simple. It’s like if you’re at a gathering and you’re talking to somebody and you’re not really listening, you’re thinking about the email you need to write or what you need to do, there’s not going to be any sense of connection with them. And so what we’re calling love, which is this profound acknowledgement of how our lives are connected, it’s just not going to be there. But the answer is not to force yourself to, you know, read love sonnets and, you know, write them up home. You don’t know them. But to listen, to be present. And it makes a difference. You know, if we are present, we can be connected. And another question is, what do we pay attention to? Like, these are the examples I was using before. If with yourself, you pretty well only go down that list of your faults again and again and again and again. The thing that always surprises me about that is that we don’t even find a new fault, which is the same list, you know, again and again and again and again. It’s going to be depressing. You’re going to be exhausted. So think of one good thing within you. That’s hard for us. Or one good thing that has happened for you and like gratitude, you know, it’s hard for us, but it makes such a huge difference to have a more holistic perspective. So I like that idea that there are actually, you could say, exercises or methods that we could use as an experiment. And you see what happens when I give myself a little break and I’m nice to myself, you know, for two minutes. And we keep paying attention.

Axel Wennhall
Listening with just full presence is one of the most beautiful expression of love. And it’s simple, but it’s not easy. And as you said, like, that’s really, I think that’s one of the best meditations there is to just listen. Yeah. Just listen. And then realize, oh, wait a minute. Now I’m listening to my crazy thoughts again. Okay, begin again. Just listen. That’s the practice. Like it’s meditation, it’s mindfulness, it’s love, it’s everything in there.

Sharon Salzberg
I agree.

Axel Wennhall
So in the meta practice, there’s also usually the wish for someone that you have negative emotions to, perhaps someone that you’ve been in conflict with in the way that, I don’t know if it’s a goal or whatever you want to call it, but in the end, the intention to wish every sentient beings peace and love. And happiness. So right now in Europe where I live, a war is going on in Ukraine and you can see, read and feel the tension and the hatred. And I would say, especially in the part of the west where I live, a real hatred towards, for example, Vladimir Putin. How would you guide someone to use the meta practice, even perhaps towards him?

Sharon Salzberg
Well, there are certain parts of the loving kindness practice where we get very creative, you know, and I go back myself to teaching of the Buddha where it said that the Buddha taught loving kindness practice as the antidote to fear. And I remind myself of that many times because if I or we were to think of loving kindness practice as being the same as giving in or wishing someone triumph, you know, in their terrible action or it makes no sense. But if you think about it as the antidote to fear, it starts to make sense. A little less fear in this dynamic might be useful. And then the creativity comes both verbally with the silent repetition of the phrases and in terms of imagery or active imagination. So like I had of a student, for example, who wanted to do meta, so that’s another thing. It’s not coercive. No one’s forcing you to do this, but he wanted to do it and he needed to change the phrases. When he came to his mother, who had been quite abusive toward him when he was like a child. So he said his phrase was, May you be free of hatred. May you be free of hatred. And he could repeat that. It was very sincere and it made a really big difference. So if you feel moved to try, that’s the kind of thing we do. The measure of success in the practice is not like a wild burst of like enormous loving, warm feeling. The measure of success is that you can do the practice. And if somebody is just horrible in your mind, so painful in your mind, then it’s not that easy to do the practice. And so you have to see what can actually work. So it really is about if you find something on the internet, wherever you find it, you know. But the phrase can change according to your own needs. The other thing is active imagination. It’s like sometimes people will tell me things like, I put my difficult person, which is the phrase, you know, or the category. I put my difficult person on this island. There’s food. I don’t want to starve them, but there’s no bridge. There’s no boats. There’s no rowboat. No aqueduct. There’s no way in the world that person could get close to me. And then I could do the practice. Then I could offer them loving kindness. So you can kind of have fun too. It’s the architecture and all kinds of things.

Okänd
Yeah. Yeah.

Axel Wennhall
Yeah. The intention and the sincerity is, I reckon, is the key, right? Yeah, yeah, okay. So it’s been lovely talking with you and in the end of our conversation you’ve been so kind enough to to guide the meditation. So I’ll, I’ll hand over the mic to you.

Sharon Salzberg
Okay, uh, do you have a preference as to kind of meditation or Wow, this is like coming into the candy shop.

Axel Wennhall
Perhaps, perhaps it would be nice, we’ve spoken a bit about the meta, so of course that would be nice, perhaps, perhaps explore, I love the phrase that there is love in the room, so perhaps something with space and love.

Sharon Salzberg
Okay, okay, I think I’ll try to do that in a simple way. Uh, we can sit comfortably, you can, I’m depending on your circumstance, close your eyes or not. Can start by listening to sound, which may be the sound of my voice or other sounds. I hear rainfall, but I don’t know if it’s reaching you through the wires. Um, Listening to sound is one of the activities that helps increase our sense of space. And feel your posture, feel your body sitting, see if you can feel the earth supporting you. And feel space itself touching you. Usually we think about touching space, we think about picking up a finger and poking it in the air. But space is already touching us, it’s always touching us. Bring your attention to the feeling of your breath, just the normal, natural breath. Wherever you feel it most distinctly. At the nostrils, at the chest or at the abdomen. You’d find that spot, bring your attention there, just rest. Just one breath. You don’t have to be concerned with what’s already gone by. Or lean forward for even the very next breath, just this one. And for those times that your mind slips away, you get lost in thought, spun out in a fantasy or you fall asleep. Notice how you speak to yourself. And if that voice is harsh or critical, remind yourself this is natural. And you can always say, I’m drawing upon the love that exists and offering some to myself. You don’t have to give yourself a hard time. You realize you’ve been gone. See if you can let go gently of whatever. Bring your attention back to the feeling of the breath. Nothing’s been ruined, nothing’s been lost. And when you feel ready, you can open your eyes or lift your gaze and we’ll end the meditation.

Axel Wennhall
Thank you.

Sharon Salzberg
Thank you.

Axel Wennhall
Yeah, that was nice. Good reminder of the love that’s here. Okay, Sharon, thank you so much for joining our podcast. It’s been a pleasure.

Sharon Salzberg
Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me.

Axel Wennhall
Okay, take care.

Sharon Salzberg
Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Axel Wennhall
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Swedish podcast, Meditera Mera, with Sharon Salzberg. We hope you have been inspired by our conversation and by Sharon’s meditation. This is a podcast from the Swedish meditation app, Mindfully, and our purpose is to help people live an awakened and compassionate life. And if you enjoyed this episode, please share it to your friends so we can inspire even more people to discover meditation and get in touch with their own loving kindness. And if there’s something we will bring with us from our conversation with Sharon, is it that the room is always filled with love? The question is, can we see through the obstacles? Take care and be well.