“My first thought was: That’s so stupid,” says Sharon Salzberg, reflecting on the first exercise of an independent study program to learn meditation in India when she was 18. She was to place her attention on the sensation of her in and out breath. Once her attention shifted, she was to release the thought and return to her breath. “I came all the way to India. What do you mean, ‘feel my breath?’ I could have stayed in Buffalo to feel my breath.”

Then, she thought, “Well, how hard can this be? Will it be 800 or 900 breaths before my mind wanders? Of course, it was one breath or half a breath. I felt like the biggest failure. I put myself down and heard from my teachers: ‘It’s okay. The important thing is to be able to let go and start over.’ That’s the skill set.”

It’s one of the most impactful lessons Salzberg learned in meditation practice, and the teaching she offered me too: Meditation is a process of recovery.

Five decades after that first session, Salzberg continues to devote her life to spreading mindfulness and loving-kindness meditation. She’s a world-renowned teacher, cofounder of The Insight Meditation Society, and author of 13 books, such as Real Life and Real Happiness at Work. 

Here, she shares how to cultivate discernment, redirect the fear movie playing in your head, and build the inner resources to navigate challenges.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

You describe meditation as the cultivation of balance. It struck me that for a group to be balanced, each member has to be balanced. How do you think about balance for the collective? What is essential to create and sustain it?

I use the word balance, not in the more conventional sense of work-life balance, which many people are saying may be too elusive for us. It’s an ability to have more perspective on things, not to be so fixated, say in a meeting, on a certain outcome. You may be convinced that it’s the correct outcome. But, you can also listen. That’s a state of greater balance.

Also, balance in being able to recover. Maybe, you’ve made a mistake or fallen down in some way—certainly to see that honestly for lessons learned or how to make amends, but not to castigate yourself endlessly, rather to be able to recover and have resilience.

One of the ways it’s brought out in a group is people being able to be honest and authentic. Everyone honored for their own skill and what they bring. My favorite question to ask going into an organization to teach is: How many other people need to do their job well for you to do your job? It’s an interdependent unit, even though we might not think that way ordinarily. There’s a balance that comes when we honor that sense of interdependence and move forward, not disregarding our own personal excellence, but not fixating on it to the exclusion of recognizing that we are a team.   

You highlight the improv exercise, “Yes, and,” as a way to reframe situations and become more open to others’ perspectives. Let’s say you and I have different perspectives on how to solve a challenge. How can we disagree mindfully?

In our own minds, we tend to rigidly categorize somebody, not just for now, but even based on the last conversation, like: You’re the fool I had to talk to last week, who holds that horrible position on some situation. Then we aren’t present and don’t listen further. We can check that in ourselves, like: Am I holding on rigidly to something? 

Listening doesn’t mean giving up your own point of view. I don’t believe that every view has equal weight. Some people, myself included, are burdened by ignorance and not clear seeing. So, it’s not that you say that all views are valid or equal. You might have very strong feelings about something and that’s your genuine experience. But, you can still listen to somebody else.

Sometimes, there’s an inquiry. It’s taking an interest in somebody. I have said to people: Wow, that’s a very strong position you’re taking. I wonder what led you to that. What sources of information are you using? Is it okay if I probe? What is the agreement between us or in the group about speaking and asking questions? 

For example, the assumption in the scientific community is that everyone is seeking the truth. I’ve seen many neuroscientists do presentations about ways they’ve tested the results of meditation in the brain. I saw one friend do it, then take a deep breath. Then, the other scientists would say: Well, how do you know that the research subject wasn’t just wiggling his eyebrows? (Because what they were finding, in terms of brainwaves, could also be a result of somebody making a physical movement.)

I said to my friend afterward: Boy, you have to really believe that there’s a common value you’re all sharing. You can’t be sitting there thinking: That guy is trying to steal my research money. That’s why he’s asking those questions. You have to come back to that fundamental: We are looking for the truth. If you see something that I’m not seeing, I want to hear it. Ideally, there would be a culture created where that’s what the ethic is.

You’ve shared that “classically, the main benefit of mindfulness was not so much inhabiting our lives. It was understanding our lives. It’s for the arising and evolution of wisdom or insight because if we’re paying attention, we see more deeply.” How does mindfulness help us cultivate greater discernment?

The popularization of mindfulness has largely rested on inhabiting our lives more fully. We’re drinking a cup of coffee, feeling the warmth of the cup, smelling and tasting it, which is different from bolting it down while we’re on Zoom and checking our email. It is very much a sense of a life not fully lived. Being more present and mindful has been a tremendous corrective to that.

But, the greater benefit is wisdom. One of the key components of mindfulness, which is not always talked about, is that it’s not only noticing what’s going on. It’s noticing with a certain balance. So, a strong emotion is arising. Our tendency would be to get consumed and overwhelmed by it. Another tendency would be to be so upset, ashamed, or frightened about the emotion that we push it down and pretend it’s not there. In either case, there isn’t a lot of learning going on.

Whereas if we can have a more balanced relationship to the emotion, let’s say it’s anger, we can see more deeply into it—not so much why it’s there, which is another kind of analysis, but what is it? What does anger feel like in my body? You see what I call the anger movie playing out. You see moments of fear, sadness, and likely helplessness.

When anger arises in my meditation and I can look at it in that way, and I get to that place of helplessness, that’s the moment that I resolve to take some kind of action. It’s an antidote to the helplessness, which will channel the anger. We see so many things when we’re paying attention. Then, when we take action, it can be in a comprehensive way.

Mindfulness helps us to pause, rather than rush headlong into a reaction. The pause will help the discernment because we’re giving enough time to see more layers and dimensions. Also, we remember things in that pause, like: I didn’t get any sleep last night. It’s too hasty for me to make a decision. Or, I never felt good at public speaking. Therefore, I’ve got to turn down this incredible opportunity. If you pause, that’s an old thought that has no relevance in my skill set 40 years later. I can let that go.

Speaking of the anger movie, you shared a question I often ask myself: “What am I adding to this experience that makes it harder?” What questions might we ask ourselves to interrupt those patterns? Particularly in a group, everyone is playing a different fear movie.  

There can be a common understanding if people want to be part of that, which is first allowing vulnerability. You may not want to disclose everything to everybody you work with. But, there’s the fact that you can be vulnerable. You can say: I don’t know. 

When I first started teaching meditation, I was 21 years old. I was back in the West and almost everybody I was teaching was older than me. I couldn’t imagine saying: I don’t know. So, somebody would ask a question. I would reach back to my studies—nothing I’d experienced, but something I’d read about—and give them the answer as though I knew. It took a lot of maturing for me to say: I don’t know. I love hearing the Dalai Lama saying: I don’t know. If he can say that, I can say that.

Another part of it is that the common thread isn’t what we are afraid of, but the way it might be operating in us, which would be through speculation. It’s what I describe as the stories I tell myself, like: I haven’t been to my apartment in eight months in COVID. Didn’t I read that you can get Legionnaires disease when you turn on a faucet that hasn’t been turned on in a long time? Oh no, what if I have Legionnaires disease and I’m all alone in my apartment, what’s going to happen to me? 

The question I might ask myself is,What do you actually know? Because that’s all imagination. I’ve now created a world where I’m suffering. Not only suffering in my mind, but suffering with Legionnaires disease in my mind.

I have a friend and colleague who describes herself as a recovering catastrophizer, Sylvia Boorstein. As she put it: She’d call one of her adult children. They wouldn’t answer the phone. So, her mind would jump to: They must be dead. She said: It never occurred to me that they’re taking a shower. That’s why she got into meditation practice because her nervous system was so fraught.

It’s not that nothing wrong ever happens, because terrible things can happen. But, she can remind herself: Check it out before you freak out. She has a new mantra, which is: Not every bus ends up in a ditch. I can imagine a group understanding where someone can feel free to say: I am freaked out because I’m thinking maybe this is going to happen. Then, someone could say: Take a breath. Or, Not every bus ends up in a ditch.

You described a fascinating finding that loving-kindness meditation expands our perspective and literally increases our peripheral vision. Why is that and what does the expanded perspective reveal?  

I go back here to the research of Barbara Fredrickson, at The University of North Carolina, who studies positive states, including loving-kindness. She has the Fredrickson theory of broaden-and-build. The idea is that when we cultivate states like loving-kindness, equanimity, generosity, and gratitude (what we’d call positive states), it’s not just to cover pain or to be conflict-avoidant.

First of all, it broadens our perspective. When we are caught in fear, for example, everything shuts down. It’s narrow and constricted. We feel trapped. We can’t imagine resolutions to the problem. Creativity dies.

Whereas in one of these states, there’s a sense of broadening and possibility. We don’t know the resolution, but we sense: Oh, there may be many options. Things can open up. That’s a consequence of strengthening these states. It builds a sense of inner resource.

This goes back to the stress dynamic. There’s the pressure or circumstance. Then, there’s the resource with which it’s met. Say you didn’t sleep last night. You go to work, overhear a comment, and take it to heart. It pierces you and you get upset. In contrast to you had a beautiful night’s sleep and a loving breakfast with your friends or family. You go off to work, overhear that comment, and think: Boy, that person’s having a bad day. Same problem, but you’re meeting it in a different way.

People sometimes hear that and think it means that you’re not going to do anything about an unfair system or an excessive burden at work. That’s not true. My comment is: Why try to make the effort toward change from maximum exhaustion and depletion? Why not build a sense of resource inside?

You shared that loving-kindness isn’t determining the action we’re going to take. It’s determining the heart space we’re going to dwell in. What are your thoughts on that? 

People are squeamish at the thought of developing more loving-kindness because they think: Does that mean I have to let them hurt me or that other person again? Does that mean I have to be sweet and smile meekly all the time? The answer is no.

As you said, it’s not a determination of the action we need to take. It’s about our motivation. Why are we acting? Are we coming from a place of fear and antagonism? Or, are we coming from a place of connection? If we’re coming from a place of connection, that is a much better motivation.

There’s not only why we’re acting, but what’s the context? What are the particular elements of this moment? It’s mindfulness in a broader picture. That’s where discernment comes in.

You may be coming from a compassionate motive and your best guess, as I call it, in this particular moment is that the most skillful thing is to say no. To have a boundary and to be fierce. That doesn’t mean that you’re motivated by ill will. But, compassion also doesn’t mean you have to say yes. We have both the motivation and the skillfulness in the action coming through.