Metta Hour With Sharon Salzberg

Taken from the 2010 Open Your Heart in Paradise retreat, Sharon relates the act of meditation to an alchemical process in which we convert the conceptual into the felt presence of direct experience. The array of what we might encounter in meditation is broad, but we welcome it all. Meditation is a skills training in learning to gather energy. Our attention is brought into focus and we begin to connect the fragments of our lives. When we tap into our ‘inner abundance’, our experience changes and we naturally settle into a more compassionate state of awareness.

In this talk, Sharon touches on the concept of the Buddha as a human being, who had real questions, much like our own. What he discovered was found through the power of his own awareness, and through his teachings we too can uncover our own innate compassion. Retreat provides a rare opportunity to break from the fragmented nature of day-to-day, and allows us to settle back into the truths of our own lives. Through the process of concentration we begin to piece together the energy required for self-actualizing our own capacity toward freedom.