Meditation Expert Sharon Salzberg on Being Present, Letting Go, and Having Faith

Sharon Salzberg (0:00)

I just chose an Asian philosophy course because it suited my schedule.

And lo and behold, it was all there. Like the fact that if you were suffering, if you were frightened, if you were going through a lot, you actually weren't that different because life holds that potential for everybody, and there's suffering in life. This is a part of things. And then I heard in that class that there were things you could actually do. There were tools, there were practical means to change your mind and be happier and feel more whole.

And these were called meditation. And I thought, huh, wow, I need that.

Michael Gervais (0:37)

Thank you All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais. And the idea behind these conversations is to learn from people who are on the path of mastery. And it's been fun. It's been a blast to be able to do this with folks. And we want to understand their psychological framework, which is a rich understanding of how they make sense of the world.

And we also want to understand what it is that they're searching for in their life. What are they driven from? What are they driven towards? And how they organize their life efforts to grow, to get better, to better understand the nuances of their craft, whatever that might be. Then we also want to better understand the mental skills they've used to build and refine their craft under varied conditions.

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Now, this conversation is with Sharon Salzberg. If you know her name, you know exactly where this conversation's gonna go. It's gonna go to mindfulness. And Sharon has played a crucial role in bringing mindfulness practices to the West and into mainstream culture and conversations right now. She first began teaching mindfulness in 1974 She's been at this for a long time.