PUTTING LOVE FIRST

By Sally Blodgett

A Review of True Love, A Practice for Awakening the Heart by Thich Nhat Hanh

Shambhala Publications, Boston & London, 2004

My first reading of True Love occurred on a Wednesday, the usual day my partner stays overnight at my place. That evening we were not enjoying our usual ease and warmth with each other. After dinner, I glimpsed a small book poking out of his overnight bag. I took it out and read the first two chapters while standing in the kitchen.

When we got into bed that night, I asked him to read it to me. He opened to Chapter 3, “Recognizing the Presence of the Other.” After a couple paragraphs, he stopped reading, said he was too tired and turned his back toward me. “What’s going on with us tonight?” I said.

We tried talking it out – but ended up arguing about meaningless things I don’t even remember. What I do remember is that the upset kept growing and we finally both admitted we were scared and confused and didn’t know what to do.

At that critical turning point, I recalled what he had been reading a few minutes earlier about the importance of really recognizing the presence of the person you love, not necessarily with words, but with your whole being. I was about as far from that as it gets. My defenses suddenly dropped.

True Love, translated from the original French and rendered in simple and direct language, is a little book of about a hundred double-spaced pages. In this beautiful treatise on love, Thich Nhat Hanh disarms the ego and speaks directly to the heart with great tenderness. The book is centered around four statements or mantras:

“Dear one, I am really here for you.”

“Dear one, I know that you are here, and it makes me very happy.”

“Dear one, I know that you are suffering.”

“Dear one, I am suffering, please help me.”

In my favorite chapter, “Caring for Our Pain,” Thich Nhat Hanh supplies a simple and immediate remedy for dealing with anger.

“When you have pain with you, the first thing to do is bring the energy of mindfulness to embrace the pain: “I know that you are there, little anger, my friend. Breathe—I am taking care of you now.” [page 57]

Little anger? You’ve got to be kidding. My first impulse is to bang myself over the head with a big judgment and he’s calling that ‘little anger’? Touché! What a strategy. Using a term of endearment toward my anger immediately puts me in a new relationship to it, making it hard to keep beating myself up. More importantly, it allows me to embrace myself with compassion instead, something I find difficult