Sharon Salzberg

Sharon Salzberg was born in New York in 1952. She first met Buddhism in an Asian philosophy course at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and in 1970 she went to India. Her first intensive course came at Bodh Gaya, a retreat led by S. N. Goenka. She stayed in India and Burma for several years and studied with a number of teachers. Her Influences page describes Anagarika Munindra, the Indian teacher who had spent years in Burma, and his student Dipa Ma, who lived in Calcutta. She also describes a three-month retreat in Barre with the Burmese monk Sayadaw U Pandita, and in 1991 she studied with Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche in Nepal. She also names Kalu Rinpoche among her teachers.

She returned to America in 1974. With Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield she co-founded the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts, which opened in February 1976. Lion’s Roar adds Jacqueline Mandell as a fourth founder. In 1979 Mahasi Sayadaw conducted a teacher authorisation ceremony for the founding teachers. In 1989 she and Goldstein co-founded the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, and in 1998 the Forest Refuge, a long-term retreat centre on the IMS property.

Her teaching centres on metta, the practice of cultivating goodwill, alongside insight meditation. Her site calls Lovingkindness (Shambhala, 1995) her seminal work; Real Happiness (Workman, 2010) was a New York Times bestseller. She hosts the Metta Hour podcast.