Peggy Rowe-Ward - Loves Garden: A Guide to Mindful Relationships

With accessible style and a deep understanding of mindfulness practices, the authors weave a fascinating tapestry of love stories and guided exercises that can help us save, build, and enrich our frequently troubled and most intimate relationships. The result is a beautiful book which told me many things I should have known but didnt.

Lourdes Arguelles, Ph.D., Marriage and Family Therapist and Professor of Education and Cultural Studies, Claremont Graduate University

Larry and Peggy are true teachers. They are sincere in their practice and forthright in revealing their hearts to others, making themselves both endearing and highly accessible. Their teachings are profound and immediate, blending the dirt and sweat of every day life with deep truths that resonate outside of time. They remind us, through words and actions, how simple and joyful life is.

Matther Bortolin, author The Dharma of Star Wars

Loves Garden is a very readable and profound manual for cultivating, healing, and deepening a committed relationship with a beloved one. Peggy and Larry offer a new paradigm for relationships characterized by respect, acceptance, and intimacy with ones self and ones partner. The mindfulness practices are designed for couples to develop tools for bridging differences, transforming hardships, and forging understanding and love. They show us that when we preserve peace, joy and harmony in our most intimate relationships, we simultaneously contribute peace, joy and harmony to our families, our communities and the world.

Karen Hilsberg, Ph.D., Clinical Psychologist

What a beautiful and fragrant garden this is! Having just remarried after the death of my wife of 35 years, spending time in Loves Garden woke me up, brought tears to my eyes, healed my heart and gave me new ways to love again. Thank you, Peggy and Larry, for sharing your wise-love as a gift to nurture love in this troubled world. I am deeply grateful for your work.

Robertson Work, former United Nations Principal Policy Advisor

Do not simply read this book, practice it! There are so many treasures here for cultivating compassion and love in all of our relationships.

Mark Y. A. Davies, Dean, Wimberly School of Religion and Graduate Theological Center

Loves Garden offers the reader a beautiful reflection of Peggy and Larrys personal journey as well as an easily accessible translation and application of the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh.

Larry and Peggy clearly enunciate how relationships can be enhanced and deepened through simple practices. The book includes stories from others who describe how these practices enabled them to grow in love through both joy and suffering. This work is a must companion for those who are engaged in a spiritual partnership and supportive for those who want to extend their loving-kindness to all beings.

Jerry Braza, Ph.D., Professor at Western Oregon University, Dharma Teacher, and Author of Moment by Moment: The Art and Practice of Mindfulness

Loves Garden offers such relational rewards for digging into its rich soil that I look forward to offering it to clients. Its useful and clear practices will be helpful not only for romantic couples, but for parents and children as well. Larry and Peggy invite us into their own romance and their relational struggles, generously revealing how specific mindfulness practices can deepen and smooth the furrows of any relationship.

Harriet Kimble Wrye, Ph.D., American Board of Professional Psychology, Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst

There is nothing so humbling or so important as learning to be mindful together. We are deeply indebted to Peggy Rowe and Larry Ward for helping us cultivate insight and compassion within our relationships and our communities. Through their wise teachings, the example of their own lives, and the honest stories they share with us, they help us understand what it means to say that happiness (and suffering) are not individual matters.

Peter Kollock, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, UCLA

Parallax Press
P.O. Box 7355
Berkeley, California 94707
www.parallax.org

Parallax Press is the publishing division of Unified Buddhist Church, Inc.

Copyright 2008 by Peggy Rowe-Ward and Larry Ward
All Rights Reserved.

All foreign terms are in Sanskrit unless stated otherwise.
Cover design by Jess Morphew.
Author photograph by Robert Sorrell.

Thich Nhat Hanhs is from a talk given in July 2007 and from other unpublished material.

Rowe-Ward, Peggy.
Loves garden : a guide to mindful relationships / Peggy Rowe-Ward and Larry Ward.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-888375-73-2
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-935209-35-5
1. Interpersonal relationsReligious aspectsBuddhism. 2. LoveReligious aspectsBuddhism. 3. Religious lifeBuddhism. I. Ward, Larry. II. Title.
BQ5400.R68 2008
294.35677dc22

2008006937

v3.1

WE WISH TO DEDICATE
LOVE S GARDEN TO OUR ROOT TEACHER:

The Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh

AND TO OUR PARENTS:

To Roy Lindsey and Viola Paris Ward, married in 1946 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. To Bob and Peg Dunn Grimm, married on July 3, 1948 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We are grateful for the legacy of love and devotion we have learned from you. We aspire to grow in love as gracefully and beautifully as you.

CONTENTS

T o commit to another person is to embark on a very adventurous journey. You must be very wise and very patient to keep your love alive so it will last for a long time. The first year of a committed relationship can already reveal how difficult it is. When you first commit to someone, you have a beautiful image of them, and you marry that image rather than the person. When you live with each other twenty-four hours a day, you begin to discover the reality of the other person, which doesnt quite correspond with the image you have of him or of her. Sometimes were disappointed.

In the beginning youre very passionate. But that passion for the other person may last only a short timemaybe six months, a year, or two years. Then, if youre not skillful, if you dont practice, if youre not wise, suffering will be born in you and in the other person. When you see someone else, you might think youd be happier with them. In Vietnamese we have a saying: Standing on top of one mountain and gazing at the top of another, you think youd rather be standing on the other mountain.

When we commit to a partner, either in a marriage ceremony or in a private way, usually it is because we believe we can be and want to be faithful to our partner for the whole of our life. In the Buddhist tradition we have the practice of the Five Mindfulness Trainings, and the third training is to be faithful to the partner you commit to. That is a challenging practice that requires consistent strong practice. Many of us dont have a lot of models of loyalty and faithfulness around us. The U.S. divorce rate is around fifty percent, and for nonmarried but committed partners the rates are similar or higher.