Real Happiness is a real treasure. Salzberg gives us simple, practical, effective methods to have a real shot at it! She helps us to stop our running madly in the wrong direction, to see the real thing right there, waiting for our tender, mindful awareness to enjoy its free reality. I love it and highly recommend it!

--- Robert Thurman, author of Inner Revolution and Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within

"REAL HAPPINESS is a jewel: beautifully simple, simply beautiful book that can guide and support a newcomer to meditation or enrich and refresh an experienced practitioner. While teaching readers how to become more fully present for themselves, this book makes Sharon Salzberg's calm presence accessible wherever and whenever she's needed. No one could ask for a better teacher."

--- Martha Beck, columnist for O magazine and author of Finding Your Own North Star

"This book is an inviting gateway into the interior territory of profound well-being and wisdom. With Sharon's gentle voice, intimacy with the landscape, and thus exquisite guidance, mindfulness and lovingkindness come to life and bring the lucky reader who enters wholeheartedly into the practices offered here back to what has always been deepest and best and most satisfying in him or herself, for the benefit of all."

--- Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Coming to Our Senses and Wherever You go, There You Are

"Drawing on more than 30 years of experience teaching meditation, and as a participant in many dialogues with scientists on meditation research, Sharon Salzberg covers all the basics of meditation in a simple, compelling, and highly readable way. People frequently ask me where they should begin if they are interested in learning more about meditation. Now I know where to send them: Real Happiness is the perfect beginning."

--- Dr. Richard J. Davidson, William James and Vilas Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry
Director, Center for Investigating Healthy Minds
University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Reading Real Happiness, I feel as if I have made a new friend, or been reunited with an old one. Sharon Salzberg brings meditation to life and, through her grace, shows us how we can come alive, as well. This is a masterful work: deep, warm and engaging. I want to give it to everyone I know."

--- Mark Epstein, MD author of Thoughts without a Thinker and Going to Pieces without Falling Apart

"In a voice that is wise and witty, personal, contemporary and engagingly friendly, Sharon Salzberg has written this wonderful book that will be accessible and encouraging to novice meditators as well as inspiring to committed practitioners."

--- Sylvia Boorstein, author of Happiness Is an Inside Job

"We've seen a few attempts at such a complete teaching of the Buddhist meditation practice and way of life, but none has accomplished the high skillfulness of Sharon Salzberg's remarkably clear transmission of the adventure of awakening. A 28-day plan for catching up with yourself by one of our most heartfull teachers, a presence partially responsible for bringing Buddhism to the West. A thoroughly modern gift from 2,500 years ago by one of our favorite teachers."

--- Stephen Levine, author of Who Dies and A Gradual Awakening

"Wonderfully clear, remarkably accessible, warmhearted and wise. All you need to transform your life!"

--- Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart and After the Ecstasy, the Laundry

"This book is a veritable treasure box of meditations. Lucid and wise, Real Happiness is rich with Sharon Salzberg's lifetime of teaching meditation to thousands of people. Her voice is filled with humor, kindness and wisdom, and her meditation instructions are practical and accessible. This is one of the great books on why and how to meditate."

--- Roshi Joan Halifax, Founding Abbot Upaya Zen Center

"Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation is a highly accessible primer for anyone interested in exploring and undertaking the practice of meditation. Sharon Salzberg writes with love and clarity to give readers a week by week approach to living with mindfulness and compassion, both important to navigating busy lives in a world in need of healing from the inside out."

--- Jacqueline Novogratz, Founder and CEO of Acumen Fund, author of The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World, Speaker at TED conferences

"Simply put, this is an awesome book from a truly excellent teacher. Students constantly ask for recommendations on good books to start and maintain a regular practice, and it's startling how few really complete "nuts and bolts" practice manuals there are. This book - complete with the why's, how's, and FAQs of practice - is perfect for really accessing the power of meditation. I'll be telling many students about it."

--- Ethan Nichtern, author of One City: A Declaration of Interdependence

"In Real Happiness, Sharon Salzberg brings her astounding grace, humor, and glitteringly prose to the very basics of insight meditation. Friendly, comprehensive, and deadly serious, Salzberg grounds this 28-day beginner course in the gifts that meditation has given her in tough life situations. Since every mind is a beginner's mind, Salzberg outlines a path wide enough for everyone from today's wounded veterans; to ADD school kids; to distractable (and irritable) stay-at-home parents and CEOs. Meditation, she writes, unveils the "bright vein of goodness" available to all of us, all the time."

--- Eliza Griswold, author of The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line between Christianity and Islam

"I have been waiting for this book! People ask me all the time to recommend a book that will introduce them to the practice of meditation. And while there are many books written on the subject, none have brought together the purpose, technique, inspiration, and science in such an integrated, intelligent, and personal way. I will be suggesting and giving this jewel of a book to everyone I know who wants to bring steadiness, grace, peace, and happiness into their life through the practice of meditation."

--- Elizabeth Lesser, Cofounder of Omega Institute and author of Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

"In Real Happiness Sharon Salzberg introduces us with a gentle but firm hand to the meditation experience. To those who have taken her courses (like me) this book contains all of the jewels of Sharon's teachings plus more."

--- Ram Dass, author of Be Here Now

"I often suggest to my stressed-out patients that they meditate, but most don't know where to begin. Real Happiness is the perfect meditation prescription, with everything a first-timer could need."

--- Frank Lipman, M.D., author of Revive

"In these pages, Sharon Salzberg lays out a step-by-step program for developing mindfulness, insight, and lovingkindness in just 28 days and for taking these practices into the rest of your life. A simple, straightforward way to learn the most essential practices of Buddhist meditation, from one of the most renowned meditation teachers in the West today."

--- Dzogchen Ponlop, author of Rebel Buddha: On the Road to Freedom

"Very few books will actually make you a better person. This is one of them."

--- Chelsea Cain, author of New York Times bestseller, Heartsick, and Sweetheart

"Based upon ancient timeless contemplative tradition as well as modern neuroscientific research and experiential neuroDharma experiments, Salzberg's four week program for developing insight meditation, mindfulness, and her specialty of loving-kindness clearly instructs and awakens us, leading step by step to the discovery of who we are, why we are here, and how to realize a more fulfilling life and more harmonious world. I heartily recommend this to anyone seeking self-realization and inner peace, well being and enlightenment."

--- Lama Surya Das

"Real Happiness is a gem of our times. It is a wonderful read, bringing mindfulness, meditation and loving kindness into everyday life. Sharon brings these ancient practices and meditations to change your state of mind in a few simple minutes. She looks at body, mind, and emotions, with techniques and awareness to bring ease to any situation. This is a book that is relevant and necessary as we experience the stress and change moving into the Aquarian Age. I highly recommend this book."

--- Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa

Reading Sharon Salzberg is like getting a call from our best friend in the world, whispering the very words we need to hear, just when we need to hear them, helping us through yet another tough time in our lives. She is a heart treasure to be cherished and a wisdom treasure to be breathed in and breathed out.

--- Krishna Das