How to Have the World—and the Life—We Want

LION’S ROAR: What’s your response to people who say that meditation and mindfulness are just ways of checking out and feeling good, no matter what’s going on around us?

SHARON SALZBERG: Sometimes, of course, meditation does feel good, because it’s a respite from our normal, anxiety-driven thoughts. But that doesn’t mean those thoughts aren’t happening. It means we’re creating a different relationship to them, so we feel space. We get some rest even as our conditioning is playing out. What most people don’t understand about meditation is that it’s not about cutting out all thinking, or just sitting there in bliss or peace. It’s about developing a different relationship to whatever is happening. We learn to have a way of experiencing joy, wonder, and delight that we may not have had before because of always being so distracted. We learn to have a different relationship to pain, so we don’t isolate ourselves when we’re experiencing it and we don’t isolate others when they are. And we learn not to endlessly seek stimulation in order to feel alive.

Changing society is a slow process, so if we want to affect any real change, we have to be in it for the long haul. How do we cultivate the patience and persistence we need to do that?

It’s always good to be mindful of one’s expectations. Being older now, I have seen there were times when I thought nothing was being accomplished, only to find