I attended Sharon Salzberg's workshop on Lovingkindness during the Holidays at MNDFL's neat, stylish but small space in Greenwich Village, NYC. I wasn't feeling super connected to the theme of the talk but I'd wanted to see Sharon speak for some time and jumped at the opportunity. She later playfully revealed that the prompt for the evening was given to her by MNDFL co-founder and author Lodro Rinzler and that she would do her best to adhere to the topic. She said what immediately came to mind was accepting differing opinions and loving people from afar when you need to, or taking time for yourself despite the pressure to be the super-host constantly surrounded by family.
Photo by MNDFL
She opened the workshop with a meditation, walking everyone through the process. First, she had us tune in with our bodies, listen to the sounds in the room and then focus on the breath on a spot of our choosing within the body. 8 minutes flew by in silence and when we all opened our eyes she said, "it's different now, right? I always notice the difference in the room."
Lovingkindness meditation, which Sharon is probably the most well-known teacher of, focuses on developing feelings of goodwill and love towards others as a way of finding inner peace for yourself. During her retreats, she teaches people to offer love in their practice over long periods of time to someone they love, then to a neutral person they have no feelings toward (like the checkout person at the local grocery store) and finally to someone they have trouble with.
She has an amazingly practical and dry approach to speaking, and took care with slow, unhurried stories that more often than not ended with a wry joke or anecdote. Longtime and native New Yorkers will relate to her deeply as she is a quintessential New Yorker though she now lives near the retreat center she founded, Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts.
At the workshop she mentioned that if you have the urge to give something away, do it - unless it's going to be harmful to you and your family. "My example is that you should never give away your rent controlled apartment - that example doesn't work everywhere," she said to room-wide understanding, laughter and silent nods.
She told a lot of stories and anecdotes she's heard from friends, students and famous colleagues ("My friend Ram Das..." is something that was casually said without pretense). Someone told her when she was growing up that people get the concepts of 'Love' and 'Like' mixed up - that we think we can only love a chosen few and can like many people, but it's actually reversed. We can treat everyone with love in our heart, but it doesn't mean we have to like them. We can like our chosen few friends, partners and family members (hopefully) and not be a bad or isolated person.
We ended the hour and a half session with a (mostly-silent) Q and A period and another, shorter meditation during which we were told to inject some lovingkindness for ourselves every time we found ourselves off track and needing to go back to our breath.
Sharon is an amazing teacher for meditation and Lovingkindness rookies and is always traveling across the country but is most often found at her retreat center and on the east coast. Find her at her website or read one of her many, highly accessible books. Rookie tip: start with Real Happiness, which comes with guided meditation recordings and lays out clear steps for a 28 day practice.
