How to Love
Good Fit
- Readers who want short, practical exercises for listening and understanding better in a relationship
- Anyone who wants to think about self-acceptance, love and loneliness in a gentle voice
- Readers of other Nhat Hanh books who like the same style
Not a Fit
- Readers who want scientific evidence, research and detailed psychological explanation: the book is written in a personal, teaching tone
- Anyone who prefers to stay away from the Buddhist worldview (the four elements of love, «no self», ancestor bonds) and wants a neutral relationship guide
- Readers expecting a long, sequential and deep discussion: the book is very short and the ideas are fragments of a few sentences
The book consists of short fragments with headings. The first fragments set up this idea: love is alive, forcing it to grow is pointless; interest in others is sometimes to forget our own pain; one cannot love another without loving and understanding oneself. The «four elements of true love» are loving kindness (maitri), compassion (karuna), joy (mudita) and equanimity (upeksha), to which respect and trust are added. You cannot offer happiness to anyone before finding it yourself, so first build a home inside yourself.
The author brings the idea alive with personal examples: «Watering the flower in a friend» — a woman from Bordeaux cries throughout the talk, he tells her husband «her flower needs watering», the husband on the way home speaks for an hour and a half of the things he values in her, and the children are astonished to see their parents so joyful. In 1966 at Atlanta Airport a friend's question «is it appropriate to hug a Buddhist monk?» leads him to the hugging meditation: breathing in, «I am aware that the person I love is alive in my arms», breathing out, «I am aware how precious she is to me».
Body and mind are not separate; love requires respect for the body too. The «three kinds of bond» are physical, emotional, spiritual; spiritual practice is «not blind belief in a teaching but a practice that brings healing, communication and change». The fragments «Empty sex», being able to say «no», «three strong roots» and «sharing the same aims» give the basic frame of a relationship. «Loving communication» (understanding in order to listen), «breathing to avoid an argument», «listening patiently» and «freeing oneself from complexes» (both inferiority and high self-esteem are illnesses) are practical suggestions. The style is warm and undemanding; the weakness is brevity and repetition.
- The text consists of short fragments with headings, each of which can be read and closed separately
- The author uses imaginative comparisons such as flower, root, tree, doctor
- Concrete exercises are given: listening, breath, the hugging meditation
- The tone is inviting, not demanding; Buddhist concepts (maitri, karuna, mudita, upeksha) are given with brief explanation
From the same series, a short book that turns walking into mindful practice
Practical mindfulness exercises, with a longer explanation
The author's best-known book on mindfulness in daily life
At the end of this part the author writes in «Joy is healing» that a relationship that brings no joy is not true love, and in «Nourishing with joy» that making another smile and raising his self-confidence is the test of love. In the fragment «Attention» he says that recognising our thought habits with mindfulness creates new, helpful pathways in the brain. The last fragment is «The healing beloved»: the Sanskrit karuna is not just «suffering together» but wiping away and transforming the pain; like a doctor, you cannot help the one you love without knowing the root of their pain.
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