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Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's own way. Viktor Frankl |
Sharon Salzberg (born 1952) is a New York Times Best selling author and influential teacher of Buddhist meditation practices in West. She co-founded the Insight Meditation Society at Barre, Massachusetts with Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein, in 1974. Her emphasis is on vipassanā (insight) and mettā (loving-kindness) methods and has been leading meditation retreats around the world for over three decades. All of these methods have their origins in the Theravada Buddhist tradition. Her book include Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness (1995), A Heart as Wide as the World (1999) and Real Happiness - The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program (2010), which was on the The New York Times Best Seller list in 2011.
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Born in New York City to Jewish family, Salzberg had a troubled early life after her parents divorced when she was 4, and her father abandoned the family. At 9, her mother died and she went to live with her father's parents. Though her father returned when she was 11, but he soon overdosed, and was subsequently put in the hospital and soon moved into the mental health system for the rest of his life. By 16 Sharon had lived with five different families.
Salzberg was first exposed to Buddhism in 1969, while taking a course in Asian philosophy in her sophomore year at the State University of New York, Buffalo. This led to her taking an independent study trip to India in 1970, where in January 1971, she attended her first intensive meditation course at Bodh Gaya. She spent the next years in intensive study with from various Buddhist teachers. Returning to US in 1974, she started teaching vipassana (insight) meditation.
A student of Dipa Ma, Anagarika Munindra and other asian masters, Salzberg together with Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein, founded the Insight Meditation Society at Barre, Massachusetts in 1974. She also co-founded (with Goldstein) the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in 1989. In 1998 they co-founded The Forest Refuge as a long-term meditation retreat center and is today a notable teacher of the Vipassana movement.
An in-depth interview with Salzberg appears in the book Meetings with Remarkable Women: Buddhist Teachers in America, by Lenore Friedman. (Boston:Shambhala, Revised and Updated edition, 2000. ISBN 1570624747)
Sharon Salzberg was honored by the New York Open Center in 1999 for her "Outstanding Contribution to the Mindfulness of the West"
Sharon Salzberg
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