How To Love

by Thich Nhat Hanh

What is important is to reconcile within your own heart and mind. If reconciliation is done within, that is enough. Because the effect of that reconciliation will be felt everywhere later on.

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.

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.

Parents can learn how to sow seeds of happiness, peace, and joy in the new child.

To love is, first of all, to accept ourselves as we actually are.

The Pali word metta means “loving kindness.” When we practice Metta Meditation, we see the conditions that have caused us to be the way we are; this makes it easy for us to accept ourselves, including our suffering and our happiness.

We have to look deeply at our body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. We can observe how much peace, happiness, and lightness we already have.

We will see how our fears and lack of peace contribute to our unhappiness, and we will see the value of loving ourselves and cultivating a heart of compassion. Love will enter our thoughts, words, and actions.

Practicing loving kindness meditation is like digging deep into the ground until we reach the purest water. We look deeply into ourselves until insight arises and our love flows to the surface.

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

If you can learn from your mistakes, then you have already transformed garbage into flowers. Very often, our mistakes come from our unskillfulness, and not because we want to harm one another.

Your good intentions are not enough; you have to be artful.

Mindful living is an art, and each of us has to train to be an artist.

Our true home is inside, but it’s also in our loved ones around us. When you’re in a loving relationship, you and the other person can be a true home for each other.

Once you know how to come home to yourself, then you can open your home to other people, because you have something to offer.

Otherwise, they will have nothing to share but their loneliness, sickness, and suffering.

Sexual intimacy can be a beautiful thing if there is mindfulness, concentration, insight, mutual understanding, and love.

When the emotional, spiritual, and physical are in harmony, then intimacy can be very holy.

Physical intimacy should take place only when there is mutual understanding and love.

The Buddha said that nothing survives without food, including love.

One way we nourish our love is by being conscious of what we consume.

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).