Due to her exposure to new ideas at university, Sharon Salzberg decided to travel to India in the early 1970s. Her direct experience of intensive meditation at that time informed many of her subsequent interpretations of Buddhism. She attended Bodh Gaya, a religious site and a place of pilgrimage in Bihar which is said to be the location where the Buddha achieved Enlightenment. Partly due to this experience, her work has centred on concepts like vipassana, or insight, and metta, which is usually translated as loving-kindness. Broadly speaking her approach with both of these methods relies on meditation. As such, she has been staging meditation retreats and advocating for their usefulness across the globe with her writing and face-to-face teaching.