Nourishing Our Ability to Love
Dear Still Water Friends,
Ever since the first time I read the Third Mindfulness Training, True Love, I’ve been puzzled by it. It sounds to me like a concerned parent’s lecture to a teenager. “Be careful. Sex is not love. It’s powerful. You can get hurt and you can hurt others.” Most of the Third Mindfulness Training is about sex (as was all of the Buddha’s original version) and it is a warning. In fact, maybe the name Thich Nhat Hahn (Thay) gave to the training is something of a misnomer, because it’s only at the end that the teaching talks about the elements of true love. But Thay talks a lot about true love elsewhere. Many of his writings on the subject have been compiled in the little handbook How to Love. Here he talks in detail about loving kindness, compassion, joy, and inclusiveness—the basic... Continued
