228. Sharon Salzberg (meditation and mindfulness teacher) – on balance

Think Again - a Big Think Podcast

Big Think / Panoply

Arts, Society & Culture

4.6 • 594 Ratings

🗓️ 1 February 2020

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Since 1976, Sharon Salzberg has been sharing ancient meditation and mindfulness practices in a voice the contemporary West can understand. Her warm, funny, down-to-earth books, dharma talks, and guided meditations have helped struggling meditators worldwide establish a strong practice and reduce the suffering in their lives. In this episode master teacher Sharon Salzberg considers whether it's ok to teach mindfulness to the armed forces, how practitioners of meditation and mindfulness should balance openness with discipline, and so much more. Sharon’s latest book is Real Happiness: a 28 day program for realizing the power of meditation, now thoroughly updated and revised for its 10th anniversary. Note: This will be the last original episode of Think Again with show creator and host Jason Gots. Throughout February and March he’ll be running a retrospective of favorite episodes with new commentary. On May 12, 2020, he’ll launch a new, independent show: Clever Creature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi there. I'm Jason Gots, and you're listening to Think Again, a Big Think podcast.
0:10.2	I rarely open Facebook these days, and whenever I do, it reminds me harshly and immediately of why I don't.
0:16.8	The other day, the first thing Facebook showed me was a post from a good old friend,
0:23.6	a guy I know to be thoroughly kind and decent in real life. It said, the world is on fire. It's not about your personal journey of self-discovery.
0:29.6	I understood where he was coming from, but it pissed me off nonetheless.
0:32.6	No, I didn't leave a comment, not until now.
0:35.6	The world might be on fire, but we are not fire hoses.
0:39.0	The world is us.
0:40.4	So everything we do, good, bad, and in between, depends on what we know about people, which
0:45.9	starts with knowing ourselves.
0:47.7	In other words, it is about your personal journey of self-discovery.
0:51.8	I'm here today with Sharon Salzberg.
0:53.5	In the 70s with her colleagues
0:55.2	Joseph Goldstein and Jack Cornfield, she was instrumental in bringing Taravadan Buddhism to the West.
1:01.0	For over four decades since, she's been teaching and writing warm, wise, and witty books
1:05.3	on meditation and mindfulness. Her latest is Real Happiness, a 28-day program for realizing the power of meditation,
1:12.5	now thoroughly updated and revised for its 10th anniversary.
1:16.1	Welcome to think again, Sharon.
1:17.3	Thank you so much.
1:18.8	I mean, maybe we can start with that phrase about the world on fire.
1:22.4	We're in a time where indeed the world is on fire in many ways, literally and figuratively, and sort of how that
1:30.3	relates to the personal journey of what he's calling self-discovery or what Buddhism might
	...

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