True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart

by Thich Nhat Hanh

Book Overview

In this little treasure, Thich Nhat Hanh, the renowned Zen monk, offers timeless insight into the nature of real love. With simplicity, warmth, and directness, he explores the four key aspects of love... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590304047
• Release Date: September 2006
• Publisher: Shambhala
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.8" x 0.3" x 4.2"

Customer Reviews

An Onion Layer Pealer

I just finished reading Thich Nhat Hanh's "True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart." This little 100 page meditation simply changed my perspective on many things. Talking about a powerful read on how to show and demonstrate love in your life. It all comes back to mindful presence, being there, not just in body, but in full absolute awareness. A true demonstration of love is not monetary or even a gesture but the action of being truly present. The book really helped me see things differently. If my soul was a gorgeous red onion, and the sweet, yet spicy heart was my true essence, then True Love peeled away a couple of layers to help me see things better. And it put the way I care for others into a perspective, some of which I really didn't want to see. I think the book made me a better person. There many fantastic meditations, which get your mind to calm itself and focus on true love. It focuses on making oneself loving in your actions towards wife/husband, etc., rather than other-centric love. Though Buddhist at its heart, one of the things that makes Hanh so accessible is his ability to tie his meditation and theory back to Christian theology. In essence, he knows his reader is Western and caters to us. The book begins with the four aspects of love, which Hanh describes as: 1) Maitri: Loving kindness 2) Karuna: Sympathy, or the ability to ease others pain 3) Mudita: Joyful loving 4) Upeksha: Freedom through love Really, quite a good book if spirituality and/or matters of the heart are important to you.

A mini version of "A New Earth"

The copyright of this book is 1997. Eckart Tolle's book "A New Earth" came out in 2005... 8 years later. This book is like the pocket book for "A New Earth". Eckart Tolle goes into greater dept in his book on the same topics that are mentioned in Thick Nhat Hanh's book. "True Love" gets right to the heart of awakening the heart. I especially enjoyed the chapters on The Energy of Mindfulness, Caring our Pain (the pain-body Tolle talks about), Telephone Meditation and Getting Rid of Our Concepts (egos). A small but powerful little book. Highly recommended.

Be Still

We all 'look for love in all the wrong places'. This book brings us home to the real thing.

Practice True Love!

I agree with another reviewer of this book that it is a little piece of poetry. However, this book is not meant to be just for information or for its teachings to be turned into belief or to be idealized, but instead the teachings in this book were meant to be practiced. Become love for your spouse, your children and everyone around you, and see life blossom...for you and all of those touched by true love!

Be Love

This is a little book you can read within a couple of sittings, and if you are open to it, it will open your heart. It's not a book about relationships or about fixing problems -- it's about changing your perspective, becoming still and present to your experience. You don't need to search for love elsewhere -- if you can consistently practice what Thich Nhat Hanh calls "mindfulness", you will *be* love and you will see it everywhere. When I was done reading this book, I felt a sense of peace and presence and a wonderful knowing that all the love I ever need is right here in my own heart.