Ep. 285 – Engaged Compassion: Anu Gupta
Metta Hour with Sharon Salzberg
Be Here Now Network
4.6 • 682 Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2026
⏱️ 72 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Buddha taught a path of awakened living, but how does that manifest in today’s world of constant connectivity and widespread suffering? How do we keep our hearts open without being defined or hardened by the pain that surrounds us, whether personal, collective, or historical? How do we navigate the paradox of holding both pain and joy, without mistaking suffering for punishment or personal failure? Can we infuse our compassion with wisdom and perspective to find the agency to take meaningful action in our communities? In her new series, Engaged Compassion, Sharon delves into these questions and more, engaging in candid conversations with a diverse group of teachers, activists, and changemakers.
For the third episode in the series, Sharon speaks with Anu Gupta, marking his fourth appearance on the Metta Hour. Anu Gupta is an educator, lawyer, scientist, and the founder and CEO of Be More with Anu. His work has reached 300+ organizations, trained more than 80,000 professionals, and impacted over 30 million lives. As a gay immigrant of color, Anu came to the work of breaking bias due to lifelong experiences with racism, homophobia, and Islamophobia. He is a trained meditation and yoga teacher with over 10,000 hours of meditation practice and has a JD from NYU Law and BA in International Relations and Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies. As a peer-reviewed author, Anu has written and spoken extensively, including on the TED stage, the Oprah Conversation, Fast Company, and Newsweek. His first book, “Breaking Bias” came out in 2024 from Hay House and he currently shares his writings via his Substack, Soul Force for the 21st Century.
In this conversation, Sharon and Anu speak about:
- How to cultivate goodwill
- Bearing witness to suffering
- Working with anger and delusion
- Teachings from the Bhagavad Gita
- Compassion’s near and far enemies
- Non-attachment in activism
- Joseph Goldstein’s essential teachings
- Equanimity in practice
- Combining the spiritual, personal, and political
- Collective consciousness as an ocean
- Wisdom from Margaret Mead, Gandhi, and MLK Jr.
- Boundaries around media
- Buddha’s five remedies for anger
- The lifelines of Sangha (community)
Additional Resources
To close out the episode, Anu leads a guided meditation. You can learn more about Anu’s work right here and check out his Substack writings right here.
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Transcript
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| 1:43.5 | Hello and welcome to the Metta Hour podcast with Sharon Salzberg. |
| 1:50.1 | I'm Lily Kushman. I produce this podcast. |
| 1:53.8 | And today we're returning with the third episode of our engaged compassion series. |
| 2:00.4 | Sharon's sitting down today with Anu Gupta, who's been on the |
| 2:04.1 | podcast many times before, but we wanted him to be part of this important series that is looking |
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