Sharon Salzberg

Sharon Salzberg is an American meditation teacher and writer, one of the three founders of the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts. Much of her teaching and writing centres on lovingkindness, the practice called mettā in Pali, alongside insight meditation. She has written fourteen books and hosts a podcast, The Metta Hour.

A college course and a trip to India

Salzberg was born in New York City in 1952. She first came across Buddhism in 1969, in an Asian philosophy course at the State University of New York at Buffalo, from which she graduated in 1972. In 1970 she travelled to India for independent study, and in January 1971 she attended her first intensive meditation course, at Bodh Gaya.

She went on to study with teachers in India and Burma. The website devoted to Dipa Ma calls Dipa Ma one of her primary teachers. Spirit Rock Meditation Center names S. N. Goenka as an important teacher for many early Insight Meditation teachers, Salzberg among them, and she also practised with the Burmese teacher Sayadaw U Pandita.

Co-founding the Insight Meditation Society

She returned to the United States in 1974 to teach. In 1975 she, Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield decided to start a retreat centre, and the IMS Retreat Center opened in a former Catholic novitiate in Barre on 14 February 1976. Her own site gives 1976 as the founding year.

In 1979 Mahasi Sayadaw gave teaching authorisation at IMS to four American students: Salzberg, Goldstein, Kornfield and Jacqueline Mandell.

The Barre Center and the Forest Refuge

Salzberg also helped start two other institutions in Barre. Her site dates the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies to 1989; the centre's own site says it was founded in 1990 by Goldstein and Salzberg to bring Buddhist study and practice together. Her site dates the Forest Refuge, IMS's centre for long personal retreats, to 1998. IMS says the Forest Refuge has hosted retreatants since 2003.

Teaching lovingkindness

Mettā is goodwill or friendliness, and a classic text on it is the short Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta, which describes wishing well to all beings without exception. IMS names vipassanā and mettā as the two practices at the centre of its retreats.

Her book Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness (1995) is devoted to this practice. Later books include Real Happiness (2010), a New York Times bestseller, Real Love (2017) and Real Life (2023). How mettā is practised in different traditions is described on the mettā page.

The Metta Hour and teaching in 2026

Her podcast, The Metta Hour, has had more than eight million downloads, according to her website, and new episodes were still being released in September 2026. She lives in Barre and in New York City. The wider movement she helped found is described on the Insight Meditation in the West page.