This week on The Upgrade we spoke with author and meditation instructor Sharon Salzberg about love.
Sharon Salzberg is one of the people who brought Buddhist meditation and mindfulness practice to the West and into mainstream culture. She co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and is the author of nine books, including the New York Times best seller Real Happiness, her seminal work Lovingkindness and Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection.
Sharon joined us in the studio to talk about Real Love, meditation, love, shame, heartbreak and compassion.
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This Week’s Discussion
We covered a tremendous amount of territory during the episode, including:
- Why the meaning of the word “love” has been degraded
- How love is a force, not a feeling
- The difference between mindfulness meditation and lovingkindness meditation
- The difficulty of “coming back to love”
- Why shame is an inefficient motivator
- Where the effects of meditation actually show up (hint: it’s not during meditation)
- The connection between the stories we tell ourselves and our experience of love
- Why it’s so hard for us to welcome our own emotions
- How practising lovingkindness helps dissolve our sense of “self” and “other”
- How we can (and why we should) have compassion for people in our lives who have wronged us
Our Upgrades of the Week
Every week we like to let you in on the upgrades we’ve made in our own lives. This week we’re talking about tweaks to our morning hygiene habits, and a worthy replacement for after-work booze.
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