Sharon Salzberg  Sharon Salzberg (born August 5, 1952) is a "New York Times" Best selling author and teacher of Buddhist meditation practices in the West. In 1974, she co-founded the Insight Meditation Society at Barre, Massachusetts with Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein. Her emphasis is on vipassanā (insight) and mettā (loving-kindness) methods, and has been leading meditation retreats around the world for over three decades. All of these methods have their origins in the Theravada Buddhist tradition. Her books include "Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness" (1995), "A Heart as Wide as the World" (1999), "Real Happiness - The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program" (2010), which was on The New York Times Best Seller list in 2011, and the follow-up "Real Happiness at Work" (2013). Born in New York City to a Jewish family, Salzberg had a troubled early life after her parents divorced when she was four, and her father abandoned the family. At nine, her mother died and she went to live with her father's parents. Though her father returned when she was eleven, he soon overdosed and was subsequently hospitalized. He was placed in the mental health system, where he remained until his death. By 16, Sharon had lived with five different families. Sharon had a health emergency in February 2019 of which details were not disclosed. In her sophomore year at the State University of New York, Buffalo in 1969, Salzberg encountered Buddhism during a course in Asian philosophy. The following year, she took an independent study trip to India, and in January 1971 attended her first intensive meditation course at Bodh Gaya. In the next several years, she engaged in intensive study with various Buddhist teachers including S.N. Goenka. After returning to US in 1974, she began teaching vipassana (insight) meditation. Salzberg is a student of Dipa Ma, Anagarika Munindra, Sayadaw U Pandita and other Asian masters. She, Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein founded the Insight Meditation Society at Barre, Massachusetts in 1974. She and Goldstein co-founded the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in 1989 and The Forest Refuge, a long-term meditation retreat center 9 years later. Today, she is a notable teacher of the Vipassana movement. An in-depth interview with Salzberg appears in the book "Meetings with Remarkable Women: Buddhist Teachers in America", by Lenore Friedman.