What unites us all as human beings is an urge for happiness, which at heart is a yearning for union… We want to feel our identity with something larger than our small selves.
Sharon Salzberg
Yearning For Happiness
Topic: Joy & Happiness
What unites us all as human beings is an urge for happiness, which at heart is a yearning for union, for overcoming our feelings of separateness. We want to feel our identity with something larger than our small selves. We long to be one with our own lives and with each other.
Sharon Salzberg, born on August 5, 1952 in New York City, is one of the world's renowned meditation teachers and authors. Her early life was marked by loss and turmoil, with her parents' divorce and the death of her father. Her mother's subsequent mental health issues forced Sharon into a series of foster homes and schools. This period of difficulty and displacement sparked her interest in the workings of the mind and the possibility of finding inner peace amidst chaos.
In 1969, Sharon attended a lecture on Buddhism at the State University New York, Buffalo, which ignited her passion for understanding and exploring human consciousness. A year later, she left for India as part of an independent study program, searching for a more comprehensive approach to alleviate human suffering. This journey led her to meet various spiritual teachers, most notably S. N. Goenka, under whose guidance she began to practice Vipassana or Insight Meditation. This would prove to be a turning point not only in her personal life but also in her impact on Western spirituality.
Following her profound experiences in India, Salzberg returned to America in 1974 and co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, with Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein. She has since authored several influential books, including "Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness" and "Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation," teaching people how to cultivate mindfulness, compassion, and, most importantly, how to integrate these practices into everyday life. Despite her massive influence, Salzberg maintains a humble approach to her work, underscoring that it's not about achievement but being able to touch one's own heart and, subsequently, the hearts of others.
Real Happiness
Salzberg, Sharon. Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness. Shambhala, 1995.
Sharon Salzberg
Theme: Happiness and Wellbeing
About This Sharon Salzberg Quotation [Commentary]
Sharon Salzberg begins, “What unites us all as human beings is an urge for happiness,” and she immediately clarifies that this urge is “at heart…a yearning for union.” Happiness, for her, is not a private project or a solitary prize. It is bound up with “overcoming our feelings of separateness.” When she says we long for this overcoming, she is naming a wound many of us recognize: the pain of feeling cut off—from others, from life, even from our own hearts. In this light, happiness is not something we chase outside ourselves, but a natural outcome of a life that feels connected and included.
Sharon Salzberg then says, “We want to feel our identity with something larger than our small selves.” Here she points to the limits of living only from a separate, ego-centered identity. However capable or self-reliant we appear, we still sense that we belong to something “larger”—family, community, the living Earth, or a mystery we may name Spirit, Mother God, Father God, or simply love. When we forget this, we contract into our “small selves,” anxious and defended. When we remember it, we soften into a wider belonging that honors all genders, all beings, and the shared web of life.
The passage concludes, “We long to be one with our own lives and with each other.” Sharon Salzberg holds inner and outer together: our longing is not only to connect with one another, but also to be “one with our own lives,” at home in our experience rather than at war with it. The same yearning that draws us toward each other also calls us to inhabit our bodies, stories, and emotions with kindness. This is a grounded vision of happiness and wellbeing: a union in which our inner and outer worlds are not split apart, but gently joined—with ourselves, with each other, and with the larger reality that holds us all.
A passage excerpt and some additional Sharon Salzberg quotations
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