Metta Hour with Sharon Salzberg Be Here Now Network

For episode 204 of the Metta Hour Podcast, we have the second in a special series celebrating Sharon’s new book, “Real Life.” This interview features a conversation between Sharon and Zainab Salbi, pulled from the Living An Authentic Life Summit.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/metta

Zainab is a humanitarian, author and journalist. Oprah Winfrey identified her as one of the 25 women changing the world to People Magazine and Foreign Policy Magazine called Zainab one of “100 Top Global Thinkers”. She is the co-founder for DaughtersforEarth.com, Chief Awareness Officer at FindCenter.com, and host of Redefined podcast. Zainab is also the author of several books, including the national bestseller Between Two Worlds.

To learn more about Zainab’s work, you can visit her website. To hear this interview in it’s entirety, you can sign up for the Living an Authentic Life Summit right here, which runs online from March 29th – April 2nd and is free to join: https://summit.wisdomforlife.life

In this conversation, Zainab and Sharon speak about:

• How Zainab came to her field

• Joy in the midst of wartime

• Inner turmoil in times of great success

• Zainab sitting first meditation retreat

• Facing our shame with love

• Issues that stem from not knowing our worth

• Zainab’s revelations in her brush with death

• The balance needed for caregiving

• Accepting the shadow of ourselves

• Seven rules for a happy day

• Zainab’s epiphany to tell her own story

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For episode 203 of the Metta Hour Podcast, we have the first in a special series celebrating Sharon’s new book, “Real Life.”

This interview features a conversation between Sharon and Jon Kabat-Zinn, pulled from the Living An Authentic Life Summit. Jon is Professor of Medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he founded the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society, and its world-renown Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Clinic. He is the author of 15 books, including the bestseller Full Catastrophe Living. His latest book published in 2023 is Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief: Practices to Reclaim Your Body and Your Life.

The conversation begins with Jon leading a guided meditation practice, followed by a dynamic interview in which Jon and Sharon discuss:

• Jon’s first exposure to meditation

• mindfulness as a love affair

• what is authentic living

• translating ancient teaching of the Buddha

• Jon’s early teaching at UMass

• freeing ourselves from delusion

• waking up in every moment

• the compassion in mindfulness

• finding freedom from pain

To learn more about Jon’s work, teaching schedule, and latest book, Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief, you can visit his website. To hear this interview in its entirety, you can sign up right here for the Living an Authentic Life Summit which runs online from March 29th – April 2nd and it is free to join.

“When you tune into yourself, you’re actually tuning into the entire universe, of which you are an intimate and insanely beautiful and mysterious part.” – Jon Kabat-Zinn







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For Episode 202 of the Metta Hour Podcast, Sharon is joined by lifelong friend, Jack Kornfield to talk about the power of Community.

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In this conversation, Jack and Sharon discuss the many nuances of community, which is one of the three gems in Buddhism. They speak about:

• What the three jewels are

• The ways that community supported their early life on the path

• What community offers the individual

• What COVID revealed about interconnection

• The epidemic of loneliness

• How to cultivate community today

• Jack’s new endeavor, Cloud Sangha

The episode closes with Jack leading a guided meditation.

Join Sharon, Jack and seven of today's thought leaders in the space of mindfulness and meditation for a free online summit! Take a journey to inner peace, freedom and joy March 29 – April 2, 2023. Enroll for the Living an Authentic Life Summit for free: Join The Free Summit

Jack trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India and Burma. He has taught meditation internationally since 1974 and is one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. He co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and the Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California. Jack’s books have been translated into 20 languages and sold more than a million copies. He holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and is a father, husband and activist.

To learn more about Jack’s work and his many offerings, you can visit jackkornfield.com. To learn about Cloud Sangha, you can visit cloudsangha.co.

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Koshin Paley Ellison joins Sharon for Episode 201 of the Metta Hour speaking about his new book, Untangled: Walking the Eightfold Path to Clarity, Courage, and Compassion.

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Koshin is an author, Zen teacher, Jungian psychotherapist, and ACPE Certified Chaplaincy Educator. After more than a decade as a chaplain and psychotherapist, Koshin co-founded the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care. Koshin is a renowned thought leader in contemplative care and he is the author of several books. In this conversation, Sharon and Koshin speak about:

• What drew Koshin to write on the 8-Fold Path

• The importance of the four noble truths outside Buddhism

• The definition of suffering in Buddhism

• Being with suffering in a loving way

• Writing as a form of gratitude

• The 8-Fold Path as approach to practice

• Shame versus embarrassment

• Right Effort and Right Speech

• Healing Toxic Masculinity

• What does it mean to be a diverse person

• The Pandemic of Loneliness

The episode closes with Koshin leading a guided meditation practice “Opening the Cage” from his book. To learn more about Koshin’s work, you can visit zencare.org

About Koshin Paley Ellison:

Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison, MFA, LMSW, DMIN, is an author, Zen teacher, Jungian psychotherapist, and ACPE Certified Chaplaincy Educator. After more than a decade as a chaplain and psychotherapist, Koshin co-founded the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care. Koshin’s work has been featured in the New York Times, PBS, CBS Sunday Morning and other media outlets. He is the author of Untangled: Walking the Eightfold Path to Clarity, Courage, and Compassion (Balance/Hachette, 2022); Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up (Wisdom Publications, 2019); and the co-editor of Awake at the Bedside: Contemplative Teachings on Palliative and End of Life Care (Wisdom Publications, 2016).

Keep up with Koshin Paley Ellison on Instagram

“Everything is a moment of practice, everything has that potential.” – Koshin Paley Ellison







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For episode 200 of The Metta Hour Podcast, Sharon speaks with Diana Winston and Sue Smalley, Ph.D. about the re-release of their book, Fully Present: The Science, Art and Practice of Mindfulness. 

In this episode, Sharon, Diana and Sue speak at length about the advances in research over the past decade in the scientific research of meditation, mindfulness and compassion practice.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/metta

Diana Winston is the Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center and the author of The Little Book of Being, and Wide Awake: A Buddhist Guide for Teens. She has been teaching mindfulness since 1999 in a variety of settings, and developed the evidence-based Mindful Awareness Practices (MAPS) curriculum and the Training in Mindfulness Facilitation, which trains mindfulness teachers worldwide.

Sue Smalley, Ph.D. is a Professor emerita in the Department of Psychiatry at UCLA, who has conducted seminal studies on the genetics of ADHD and Autism Spectrum disorders, publishing over 100 peer reviewed papers in the field of behavioral genetics.In 2004, she founded the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA, and more recently helped co-create the Bedari Kindness Institute at UCLA.

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For Episode 199 of the Metta Hour Podcast, Sharon and Joseph Goldstein are interviewed by Lily Cushman, recalling their early lives.

They each share what drew them to the path of meditation in the late sixties and early seventies and their initial years of practice in the East. This podcast is being released in tandem with the Insight Hour Podcast. Joseph Goldstein has been teaching meditation since 1974. He and Sharon are co-founders of the Insight Meditation Society and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, located in Barre, Massachusetts. Joseph is the author of numerous books, including Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening and Insight Meditation: The Practice of Freedom. Dan Harris calls him “a key architect of the rise of mindfulness in our modern society.”

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/metta

In this conversation, Joseph shares about:

growing up in the Catskills • early encounters with death and loss • Studying philosophy at Columbia University • living in New York City during his college years • joining the Peace Corps and living in Thailand • his first encounters with Buddhist monks • the resonance of finding the spiritual path • the ups and downs of his initial years of practice • finding his teacher, Munindra • meeting Sharon at her first retreat with S.N. Goenka • his experiences as more westerners arrived in India • the community that emerged out of the Goenka retreats • grappling with his “body of steel” for many years • the parallels of the evolution of his and Sharon’s path

Sharon shares about:

the difficulty of her childhood • her first encounter with Buddhist Philosophy in college • creating a study abroad program to take her to India • receiving Chögyam Trungpa’s advice on where to learn meditation • searching for meditation instruction across India as a young woman • the scene at her first retreat led S.N. Goenka • the difficulty of her first instruction being a ten-day retreat • some themes of her initial meditation experiences • learning how to navigate her inner life • meeting Joseph for the first time • her and Joseph’s different practice needs in their early years • crafting a spiritual path before there was a model for that life in the West

To learn more about Joseph’s work, you can visit dharma.org/joseph. His teachings can also be found on the Ten Percent Happier App, the Waking Up with Sam Harris App and on the Dharma Seed app.

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