Shambhala SunSpace » Right Here With You: Andrea Miller on ...

Though she’s quick to say she isn’t a “relationship expert,” Shambhala Sun Deputy Editor Andrea Miller has recently enjoyed an immersion into Buddhist wisdom as it relates to love for ourselves, for others, and for all beings. That’s the subject of the new anthology Andrea edited, Right Here With You: Bringing Mindful Awareness into Our Relationships. This is the first of a series of Shambhala SunSpace posts in which Andrea takes a look at noteworthy books on mindful loving. In this first post, she focuses on True Love by Thich Nhat Hanh, a book that was excerpted in Right Here With You.

True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart
By Thich Nhat Hanh
Shambhala Publications 2011; 128 pp., $11 (paper)

Last summer, I was scheduled to attend my first retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh. Then, just weeks before the retreat got underway, I received very upsetting news about a family member; he’d been diagnosed with Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, a disease, which in his case, was brought on by the excessive, long-term consumption of alcohol. With this news fresh in my mind, I went to the retreat feeling tied up over the nature of love.

Sometimes our loved ones have profound difficulties: intense physical pain and disease, mental illness, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction. And sometimes it feels — to me at least — like their problems are so big it’s impossible to help. Maybe we want to retreat from our loved ones and their problems or maybe we try to help and then get overwhelmed by their struggles.

While at the retreat, I did an interview with Thich Nhat Hanh for the Shambhala Sun, and I asked his advice about what to do when faced with this kind of pain. The answer he gave has stuck with me: “When you feel overwhelmed, you’re trying too hard. That kind of energy does not help the other person and it does not help you. You should not be too eager to help right away. There are two things: to be and to do. Don’t think too much about to do—to be is first. To be peace. To be joy. To be happiness. And then to do joy, to do happiness—on the basis of being.”

Thich Nhat Hanh then went on to say that if you’re focused on the practice of being—being peaceful. being attentive, being generous and compassionate—it ’s as if the person who is in pain is sitting at the foot of a tree. “The tree does not do anything,” he told me, “but the tree is fresh and alive.” When you are like that tree, sending out waves of freshness, you help to calm any suffering.

In True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart, Thich Nhat Hanh offers a wealth of additional wisdom on mindful love. He begins by mapping out the four aspects of love according to the Buddhist tradition—lovingkindness, compassion, joy, and freedom—and he explains, in a down-to-earth way, how we can experience them in our daily lives.

“To love, in the context of Buddhism, is above all to be there,” Nhat Hanh writes. “But being there is not an easy thing. Some training is necessary, some practice.” In order to be truly present for another, we first need to be present for ourselves. That is, we need to find oneness of body and mind. Instead of our mind ruminating about tax returns or fantasizing about a trip to Venice or dwelling on an upcoming meeting, we need to bring our mind back to the experience of the body, and mindful breathing—that quintessential Buddhist practice—can be our body-mind bridge.

Now, grounded in the breath, we’re ready for mantras, which Thich Nhat Hanh playfully defines as magic formulas that can utterly change a situation. That is, they’re magic if we say them with mindfulness. For relationships, Nhat Hanh recommends four key mantras, including, “Dear one, I know that you are here, and it makes me very happy,” and “Dear one, I know that you are suffering, and that is why I am here for you”

When I first read these mantras, I thought they were saccharine. It was the  “dear one” that made me uncomfortable. But then I looked deeper and saw that they’re not saccharine. They’re real. Realer than anything else. I have dear ones. We all do. I want to be there for the people I love and I want them to be free of suffering. To make these things happen, there is no magic formula in the fairytale sense, but I appreciate Thich Nhat Hanh because in his mantras, and indeed in the whole of True Love, he offers me realistic ways to be with my loved ones and to lessen their pain—moment by moment.

Tomorrow I’m going to visit with my family member who has Wernicke-Korsakoff. He’s living in a care-assisted facility now and is frustrated with his situation. I still find difficult to see him suffering but I breathe through it so that I can be there for him. Tomorrow, if it’s sunny, we’ll go to the park together and feed chickadees out of the palms of our hands. And if it’s rainy, we’ll stay inside and enjoy some tea.