Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...
 Learning deeply about love August 10, 2008
Charlotta Lindahl (Sweden)
True love has learned me more about love in each chapter than any other book I have read.
Share it with the one you love and both of you can practice True love:)and your life will be happier and you'll understand mindfulness in a deeper way.
Amazingly practical and useful July 30, 2008
M. Bertini (Las Vegas, NV)
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.
An Onion Layer Pealer June 2, 2008
Geoff Livingston (Alexandria, VA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
great super-short "thich nhat hahn at a glance" book, good gift May 3, 2008
anonymous686
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.
A mini version of "A New Earth" April 6, 2008
Dottie Randazzo (Woodland Hills, CA USA)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
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.
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