Customer Reviews

True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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!

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.

Amazon needs to come up with a thesaurus for typical review expressions. I am desperate for something else to say other than "this book changed my life", but I got nothin'!

This was my very first book on Buddhism and it's effect on my life has been profound. The whole thing is like 10 pages long but Thich Nhat Hanh's teachings helped me to fully appreciate and enjoy a very loving relationship I was in at the time of purchase. But it was also there for me when that relationship ended and I needed to take good compassionate care of myself. And most importantly, it's been with me ever since to make me aware that love is all around. Open your heart. Open your heart. Open your heart. That is the message.

For reals. It's good. Buy it.

When settling in to read a book on love by a buddhist monk, I expected a fair amount of theory and not so much practical advice. I was wrong! In each chapter, the author first defines the components of true love. Then he gives readers solid, yet simple, steps to take to find/create that love. He even ties in references to Jesus to give the book even broader appeal to those not familiar with Buddhism. It's a great read, and much much much is packed into this relatively tiny book.

The is a wonderful book that really can help awaken your heart. I read this book twice imediately after I got it, and will read it many times again as time goes on. Thich Nhat Hanh is an amazing writer and human, and phrases his prose in a way that can touch any heart. It is a quick read with much impact.

This is the heart and soul of Thich Nhat Hahn. Every family ought to have one of these in the bookshelf next to the Bible, I Ching..., whatever is there. Great gift for anyone you love or want to help.

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

This is a fabulous book for couples, parents, friends, etc. Thich Nhat Hanh has a way of describing love in a way most people can understand. He also uses stories to illustrate the meanings.