For Sharon Salzberg,
world-renowned meditation
teacher, bestselling author
of Real Happiness and nine
other books, it all comes
down to advice her teacher
gave her in Calcutta, India, in- “You really understand
suffering, that’s why you
should teach,” Dipa Ma told
Salzberg, then a young adult
with every intention of living in
India forever, and remaining a
lifelong student. “I had a very
tumultuous, difficult child-
hood,” Salzberg says, “and
that was the first time I ever
thought about it as a potential
credential for anything.”
Salzberg began as a
reluctant teacher of medi-
For Rhonda Magee, practicing law and prac-
ticing mindfulness go hand in hand. “Lawyers
have to struggle with ethical questions of right
and wrong,” she notes. “Lawyers are called in
when there are high stakes—somebody is threat-
ened with loss of freedom or the right to be in
this country, custody over children. Lawyers are
called in when those who call are suffering.
“If we can engage mindfulness, we can man-
age stress and support ourselves in the practical
aspects of what we’re trying to do while also
deepening our capacity to serve in ways that
minimize the harm we do along the way.”
For Magee, that understanding of harm
includes her own experience “as a woman of
color in a society and a world that wasn’t neces-
sarily created for a person like me to thrive.”
“Through my life, I’ve had the opportunity to
become more aware of the subtle ways identity
may be showing up—what is the rightful place
of a woman, or a Black person in a group?—by
seeing how we’re all caught up in making mean-
ing and perceiving each other through lenses
shaped by a culture that has made all these
identities relevant to us.” Mindfulness is the
balm for what Magee calls “that extra layer of
suffering, wounding, and harm that we may be
experiencing or causing others.”
Magee speaks from the experience of a
51-year-old, cisgendered, racialized Black
woman in America—and that informs what she
is able to offer. “I really just believe that if we’re
willing to look at our own experiences carefully,
we have unlimited capacity to help transform
the world. So we should be encouraged to be our
beautiful unique selves and know that our voices
are incredibly needed in the world at this time.”RHONDA MAGEE
Engage with
Your Experience
tation, and soon founded,
along with Jack Kornfield and
Joseph Goldstein, the Insight
Meditation Society. During
a sojourn to Burma (now
Myanmar) in the mid-eighties
she was introduced to loving-
kindness practices. The
practices resonated hard with
Salzberg, and she brought
what she had learned back to
the US, eventually writing a
book called Lovingkindness.
It was not met with open arms
in the meditation world.
“People said to me that
loving-kindness wasn’t an
insight technique. They said,
‘It’s just a feel-good practice.’
But I had had a very powerful
transformative experience
with loving-kindness practice,
so I just kept on teaching it.”
The practice that many of
her peers wrote off actually
resonated with others. “It’s
very gratifying now that the
pendulum has swung the
other way,” she says, “that
people are realizing com-
passion is the thing that was
missing from mindfulness.”
She credits the kind words
of her teacher, all those years
ago in India, for helping her
maintain her loving-kindness
practice when others viewed
it as frivolous. “Dipa Ma said
to me: ‘You can do anything
you want to do, it’s just you
thinking you can’t do it that
will stop you.’”Believe Yourself
SHARON
SALZBERG“If we’re willing to
look at our own experiences
carefully, we have unlimited
capacity to help transform
the world.”RHONDA MAGEE P
HOTOGRAPHSBYTAWNI^ BANNI
STERFOR^ DUMBOFEATHER^ ANDBYTODDRAFALOVICH44 mindful August 2019leadership
“People said loving-kindness
was ‘just a feel-good practice.’
But I’d had a very powerful
transformative experience,
so I just kept on teaching it.”SHARON SALZBERG