85 of 86 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Be Love, Nov 10 2006
By Vanessa "musicaleyes9" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart (Hardcover)
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.
48 of 48 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Onion Layer Pealer, Jun 1 2008
By Geoff Livingston "GL" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart (Hardcover)
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.
39 of 42 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Practice True Love!, Jan 5 2007
By Ivan Alfredo - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart (Hardcover)
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!