How To Love: Thich Nhat Hanh

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Only when we recognize our connectedness to the earth, says Thich Nhat Hanh, can real change begin. Our individual consciousness is influenced by the collective consciousness of our environment. We absorb and reflect what is around us.

The roots of a lasting relationship are mindfulness, deep listening and loving speech, and a strong community to support you you have a deep aspiration, a goal for your life, then your loving of others is part of this aspiration and not a distraction from it We need to master our own anger before we can help others to do the same. Arguing with others only waters the seeds of anger in us. When anger arises, return to yourself and use the energy of mindfulness to embrace, soothe, and illuminate it. Don’t think you’ll feel better if you lash out and make the other person suffer. The other person might respond even more harshly, and anger will escalate. The Buddha taught that when anger arises, close your eyes and ears, return to yourself, and tend to the source of anger within. Transforming your anger is not just for your personal liberation. Everyone around you and even those more distant will benefit.Other people’s actions are the result of their own pain and not the result of any intention to hurt you. A wrong perception can be the cause of a lot of suffering. This is why, whenever we have a perception, we have to ask ourselves if our perception is right. Metta meditation is a practice of cultivating understanding, love, and compassion by looking deeply, first for ourselves and then for others. Once we love and take care of ourselves, we can be much more helpful to others. Metta meditation can be practiced in part or in full. Just saying one line of the metta meditation will already bring more compassion and healing into the world. To love without knowing how to love wounds the person we love. To know how to love someone, we have to understand them. To understand, we need to listen. Thich Nhat Hanh’s incredibly simple instructions for meditation. Thich Nhat Hanh on Walking Meditation

Thich Nhat Hanh, monk and spiritual leader, has written a short series of books he calls "Mindfulness Essentials." This entry is all about love. You might ask yourself, what could a monk possibly know about love? Turns out, plenty. These aspirations help us to water the seeds of joy and happiness that lie deep in our store consciousness. The notions we entertain about what will bring us happiness are just a trap. We forget that they are only ideas. Our idea of happiness can prevent us from being happy. When we believe that happiness should take a particular form, we fail to see the opportunities for joy that are right in front of us. Learning to meet this mystery with the full realness of our being — to show up for it with absolute clarity of intention — is the dance of life. The biggest of the little books in this 5-part series (gee, I wonder why?), and yet, for me at least, less novel than the first two I read. Not that I've figured it ALL out on my own or that I would put it quite this way ("Tell it slant, like a Buddhist would."), but if you've been married long enough and your marriage is humming along, you get to the point where you've covered as much territory as Lewis and Clark. The question then becomes how to grow our own hearts, which begins with a commitment to understand and bear witness to our own suffering:

Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings on peace and happiness

Emptiness is not something to be afraid of, says Thich Nhat Hanh. The Heart Sutra teaches us that form may be empty of self but it’s full of everything else. The Four Layers of Consciousness

Before having a child, it would be wonderful if people would take a year to look deeply into themselves, to practice loving speech and deep listening, and to learn the other practices that will help them enjoy themselves and their children more Hanh applies the mindfulness techniques he's learned over his lifetime of spiritual practice to the potentially thorny pathways of love, and the result is a gem of a read.

If "self" is seen as an interdependence of beings and entities, it's easier to bridge the concept of strong relationships. Bad news for misanthropes (who are kidding themselves for as long as they can) and hermits, I guess, but good news for the rest of us. Even the so-called "selfish" among us. The "me-first" crowd (and it is a crowd). I know you are there, and I am happy." You can say this to the moon, the morning star, the sun, but most importantly someone you love. May I be able to recognize and touch the seeds of joy and happiness in myself.” The soil of our mind contains many seeds, positive and negative. We are the gardeners who identify, water, and cultivate the best seeds. Touching the seeds of joy, peace, freedom, solidity, and love in ourselves and in each other is an important practice that helps us grow in the direction of health and happiness.

Understanding someone’s suffering is the best gift you can give another person. Understanding is love’s other name. If you don’t understand, you can’t love. Practicing to realize nondiscrimination, to see the interconnectedness and impermanence of all things, and to share this wisdom with others, we are giving the gift of nonfear. Everything is impermanent. This moment passes. That person walks away. Happiness is still possible. When we learn to love and understand ourselves and have true compassion for ourselves, then we can truly love and understand another person. Hugging meditation is a practice of mindfulness. “Breathing in, I know my dear one is in my arms, alive. Breathing out, she is so precious to me.” If you breathe deeply like that, holding the person you love, the energy of your care and appreciation will penetrate into that person It is not yet clear how the government of one-party Vietnam, which is wary of organised religion, will react to his funeral, which began yesterday and will last five days.One way we nourish our love is by being conscious of what we consume. Many of us think of our daily nourishment only in terms of what we eat. But in fact, there are four kinds of food that we consume every day. They are: edible food (what we put in our mouths to nourish our bodies), sensory food (what we smell, hear, taste, feel, and touch), volition (the motivation and intention that fuels us), and consciousness (this includes our individual consciousness, the collective consciousness, and our environment). This mantra is for when you are suffering and you believe that your beloved has caused you suffering. If someone else had done the same wrong to you, you would have suffered less. But this is the person you love the most, so you suffer deeply, and the last thing you feel like doing is to ask that person for help… So now it is your pride that is the obstacle to reconciliation and healing. According to the teaching of the Buddha, in true love there is no place for pride. May I learn to look at myself with the eyes of understanding and love.” One time when we practiced love meditation in Plum Village a young laywoman said to me, “When I meditated on my boyfriend, I found that I began to love him less. And when I meditated on the person I dislike the most, I suddenly hated myself.” Before the meditation, her love for her boyfriend was so passionate that she was not able to see his shortcomings. During her practice, she began to see him more clearly and she realized that he was less perfect than she imagined. She began to love him in a way that had more understanding in it, and therefore it was deeper and healthier.