True Love according to Buddhism

True Love according to Buddhism

by Thich Nhat Hanh

Edited by Du Wayne Engelhart

According to Buddhism, true love is made up of four things.

The first is mettā, which can be translated as loving-kindness or wanting good for others.  Loving-kindness is not only the desire to make someone happy, to bring joy to a loved person; it is also being able to bring joy and happiness to the person you love, because even if what you want is to love this person, your love might make him or her suffer.

Practice is needed in order to love properly; and to be able to give happiness and joy, you must practice deep looking into the person you love.  Because if you do not understand this person, you cannot love properly.  Understanding is the most important thing in order to love.  If you cannot understand, you cannot love.  This is the lesson the Buddha teaches.  If a husband, for example, does not understand his wife’s deepest troubles, her deepest wants, if he does not understand her suffering, he will not be able to love her in the right way.  Without understanding, love is an impossible thing.

What must we do in order to understand a person?  We must have time; we must practice looking deeply into this person.  We must be there, paying attention; we must watch what is happening, we must look deeply.  And the effect of this looking deeply is called understanding.  Love is a true thing if it is made up of something called understanding.

The second part of true love is compassion, karunā.  This is not only the desire to make less the pain of another person, but it is also being able to do so.  You must practice deep looking in order to get a good understanding of the suffering of this person, in order to be able to help him or her to change.  Knowledge and understanding are always the place from which the practice grows.  The practice of understanding is the practice of meditation.  To meditate is to look deeply into the heart of things.

The third part of true love is joy, muditā.  If there is no joy in love, it is not true love.  If you are suffering all the time, if you cry all the time, and if you make the person you love cry, this is not really love—it is even the opposite of love.  If there is no joy in your love, you can be sure that it is not true love.

The fourth part is upekkhā, equanimity or freedom.  In true love, you reach freedom.  When you love, you bring freedom to the person you love.  If the opposite is true, it is not true love.  You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free, not only outside but inside also.  “Dear one, do you have enough room in your heart and all around you?”  This is a question that makes sense for finding out whether your love is something real.

To love, in Buddhism, is above all to be there for the person loved.  But being there is not an easy thing.  Some practice is necessary.  If you are not there, how can you love?  Being there is very much a skill, the skill of meditation, because meditation is bringing your true being to the here and now.  The question, then, is: Do you have time to love? . . .

The most precious gift you can give to the one you love is your true being there for this person.  What must we do to really be there?  Those who have practiced Buddhist meditation know that meditating is above all being there: for yourself, for those you love, and for life itself.

So I would suggest a very simple practice to you, the practice of mindful breathing: “Breathing—I know that I am breathing in; breathing—I know that I am breathing out.”  If you do that with a little concentration, then you will be able to really be there, because in our daily life, our mind and our body are almost never together.  Our body might be there, but our mind is somewhere else.  Maybe you are lost in sadness about the past, maybe in worries about the future, or else you are thinking only about your plans, your anger, or your jealousy.  And so your mind is not really there with your body . . .

In Buddhism we talk about mantras.  A mantra is something magical we can say that, once said, can completely change a situation, our mind, our body, or a person.  But this mantra must be spoken in a state of concentration, that is to say, a state in which body and mind are completely one.  What you say then, in this state of being, becomes a mantra.

So I am going to give you a mantra that has a great effect, a mantra in simple English: “Dear one, I am always here for you.”  Perhaps this evening you will try for a few minutes to practice mindful breathing in order to bring body and mind together.  You will go to the person you love and with this mindfulness, with this concentration, you will look into his or her eyes, and you will begin to say these words: “Dear one, I am really always here for you.”  You must say that with your body and with your mind at the same time, and then you will see the change in the person you love.

Do you have enough time to love?  Can you make sure that in your everyday life you have a little time to love? . . .

We must bring about a great change in our way of living our everyday lives because our happiness, our lives, are within ourselves.*

 

*From Thich Nhat Hanh, True Love; A Practice for Awakening the Heart, translated by Sherab Chödzin Kohn (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2004), pp. 1-11.  Compare Thich Nhat Hanh, You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment, translated by Sherab Chödzin Kohn, edited by Melvin McLeod (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2012), pp. 89-98.  The selection from True Love has been edited for readers for whom English is a second language.