How to Love (Mindfulness Essentials, #3)

by Thich Nhat Hanh

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.

True love includes a feeling of deep joy that we are alive. If we don’t feel this way when we feel love, then it’s not true love.

There’s 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.

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.

In a deep relationship, there’s no longer a boundary between you and the other person. You are her and she is you. Your suffering is her suffering.

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.

When you look at your loved one, you see that he is also made of stars and carries eternity inside. Looking in this way, we naturally feel reverence.

If you can accept your body, then you have a chance to see your body as your home. You can rest in your body, settle in, relax, and feel joy and ease.

As you practice building a home in yourself, you become more and more beautiful.

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.”

Loving someone doesn’t mean saying “yes” to whatever the other person wants. The basis of loving someone else is to know yourself and to know what you need.

Practice conscious breathing when things are going well with your partner, then it will be there for you when things get hard.

Allow the other person to speak freely. Don’t cut your loved one off or criticize their words.

A true partner or friend is one who encourages you to look deep inside yourself for the beauty and love you’ve been seeking.

Learn to nourish yourself and the other person with joy. Are you able to make the other person smile?

Sometimes a kind word is enough to help someone blossom like a flower.

True love includes a sense of responsibility and accepting the other person as she is, with all her strengths and weaknesses. If you only like the best things in a person, that is not love.

In true love, there’s no more separation or discrimination. His happiness is your happiness. Your suffering is his suffering. You can no longer say, “That’s your problem.”

Reconciliation means to work it out within yourself so that peace can be restored. Reconcile with yourself for the sake of the world, for the sake of all living beings. Your peace and serenity are crucial for all of us.

If we take good care of ourselves, we help everyone.

The more you understand, the more you love; the more you love, the more you understand.

If you have the impression that you know the other person inside and out, you are wrong. Are you sure that you even know yourself? Every person is a world to explore.

When you look at the person you love, if he is absorbed in anxiety, you can help him get out. “Darling, do you see the sun? Do you see the signs that spring is coming?”