How To Love

How To Love teaches the secrets of caring for and connecting with yourself, your partner, and everyone in the world by looking at love through the lens of mindfulness.

Think about adding a spoonful of salt to your water. It’s pretty much undrinkable, right? But now imagine putting that spoonful into a river. It won’t change much at all. In the same way, if our hearts are small, the mistakes and faults of others will upset us easily. But if we open our hearts, we will find empathy and compassion for our fellow human beings.

How can we do this? Hanh explains that like a loving thing, love needs nourishment. And that nourishment comes in the form of happiness. Only when you are happy can you truly expand your heart and. be capable of loving others.

Zen Buddhism can teach us a little bit about happiness and how we can become truly happy. Sometimes we believe it will come through superficial desires, but true happiness is the fruit of mindfulness. A quick exercise you can do to experience happiness through mindfulness is to go walking. Rather than thinking about the destination and rushing, instead, think about the movement of your body and the beauty of the surroundings.

When you practice mindfulness you will notice beauty in the simple things, like a blossoming flower. When you find this happiness in the present you can share it with others and help them become happier too.

Love is much more than just securing an attractive and successful mate. To understand more about love, you need to understand it has four traits: joy, equanimity, compassion, and loving-kindness. Joy is all about deep and lasting happiness. When we have joy, we want to bring this gift to others.

Equanimity is also known as inclusiveness. This trait entails the ability to dissolve boundaries between yourself and someone else to the point where their suffering is your suffering.

Compassion allows us to see suffering and understand it. This helps us listen and become empathetic.

Loving-kindness means using mindfulness to help others be happy. This trait allows us to spread sunshine to even the saddest heart.

Hanh teaches us that true love isn’t about gaining something, but rather being able to recognize and understand the suffering of someone else.

True love can be achieved through mindfulness. Hanh teaches that we should be more mindful of the word “love” and how we use it. Love is a beautiful, special thing, and the word loses its value when we say that we “love” ice cream. When we restrict when it is said to only be when it’s actual love, we become more mindful of its meaning. Love that is mindful…