Thich Nhat Hanh - How to Love

Thich Nhat Hanh is a world-renowned writer, poet, scholar and Zen Buddhist monk, who lives mostly in the monastic community he founded in France. The author of the New York Times bestseller Anger and the classic work The Miracle of Mindfulness, as well as numerous other books, he conducts public workshops and peace-making retreats throughout the world. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967.

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True love gives us beauty, freshness, solidity, freedom and peace.

Thich Nhat Hanh brings his signature clarity, compassion and humour to the thorny question of how to love. Here are thoughts on physical intimacy, on romance and on our close relationships. He shows us how to open our hearts to ourselves and embrace the world.

Silence

Anger

Being Peace

Breathe! You Are Alive

Creating True Peace

Fear

Fragrant Palm Leaves

Going Home

The Heart of the Buddhas Teaching

Living Buddha, Living Christ

The Miracle of Mindfulness

No Death, No Fear

The Novice

Old Path, White Clouds

Peace is Every Breath

Peace is Every Step

Present Moment, Wonderful Moment

The Art of Communicating

The Sun My Heart

Transformation and Healing

True Love

If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable. But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook, wash, and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace, and transform. When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We cant accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things dont make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform. So the big question is: how do we help our hearts to grow?

Each of us can learn the art of nourishing happiness and love. Everything needs food to live, even love. If we dont know how to nourish our love, it withers. When we feed and support our own happiness, we are nourishing our ability to love. Thats why to love means to learn the art of nourishing our happiness.

Understanding someones suffering is the best gift you can give another person. Understanding is loves other name. If you dont understand, you cant love.

True love gives us beauty, freshness, solidity, freedom, and peace. True love includes a feeling of deep joy that we are alive. If we dont feel this way when we feel love, then its not true love.

Theres a tradition in Asia of treating your partner with the respect you would accord a guest. This is true even if you have been with your loved one for a long time. The other person always deserves your full respect. Reverence is the nature of our love.

In the beginning of a relationship, your love may include only you and the other person. But if you practice true love, very soon that love will grow and include all of us. The moment love stops growing, it begins to die. Its like a tree; if a tree stops growing, it begins to die. We can learn how to feed our love and help it continue to grow.

Love is a living, breathing thing. There is no need to force it to grow in a particular direction. If we start by being easy and gentle with ourselves, we will find it is just there inside of us, solid and healing.

Often, we get crushes on others not because we truly love and understand them, but to distract ourselves from our suffering. When we learn to love and understand ourselves and have true compassion for ourselves, then we can truly love and understand another person.

True love is made of four elements: loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. In Sanskrit, these are, maitri, karuna, mudita, and upeksha. If your love contains these elements, it will be healing and transforming, and it will have the element of holiness in it. True love has the power to heal and transform any situation and bring deep meaning to our lives.

The first element of true love is loving kindness. The essence of loving kindness is being able to offer happiness. You can be the sunshine for another person. You cant offer happiness until you have it for yourself. So build a home inside by accepting yourself and learning to love and heal yourself. Learn how to practice mindfulness in such a way that you can create moments of happiness and joy for your own nourishment. Then you have something to offer the other person.

The second element of true love is compassion. Compassion is the capacity to understand the suffering in oneself and in the other person. If you understand your own suffering, you can help him to understand his suffering. Understanding suffering brings compassion and relief. You can transform your own suffering and help transform the suffering of the other person with the practice of mindfulness and looking deeply.

The third element of true love is the capacity to offer joy. When you know how to generate joy, it nourishes you and nourishes the other person. Your presence is an offering, like fresh air, or spring flowers, or the bright blue sky.

The fourth element of true love is equanimity. We can also call it inclusivesness or nondiscrimination. In a deep relationship, theres no longer a boundary between you and the other person. You are her and she is you. Your suffering is her suffering. Your understanding of your own suffering helps your loved one to suffer less. Suffering and happiness are no longer individual matters. What happens to your loved one happens to you. What happens to you happens to your loved one.