Love's garden : a guide to mindful relationships

by Peggy Rowe-Ward

Paperback, 2008

Publication

Imprint: Parallax Press, c2008. Responsibility: Peggy Rowe Ward and Larry Ward. OCLC Number: 192134480. Physical: Text : 1 volume : xxvi, 177 pages 21 cm. Features: Includes bibliography.

Call number

Lay Life / RoweW

Barcode

BK-07793

ISBN

9781888375732

Collections

Your library, Adult Materials, Engaged Practices

CSS Library Notes

Description: Using Buddhist teachings to re-evaluate traditional approaches to love, couplehood, and marriage, Love's Garden offers readers specific advice on improving their love lives. By collecting real-life Buddhist love stories, along with commentary and guided exercises, this book illustrates the fulfilment that comes from looking within and taking action to improve a relationship. Equally useful for practicing Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike, the advice presented here can be used by anyone to promote mindfulness, diligence, and perseverance in the romantic realm. In the words of one of the authors, Larry Ward, we simply need to get in touch with and nourish the practices that are helping us to experience peace. And then we need to stop doing the things that keep us from experiencing peace.

Table of Contents: Foreword
Introduction: A Garden Map
Part 1 Loving Yourself
Chapter 1 The Roots of Love | Practice: Journaling About Love | Practice: Drawing Love | Practice: A Walking Meditation on Love
Chapter 2 Mindfulness Practices | Practice: Walking Meditation | Practice: Body Scanning | Chapter 3 Coming Home to Self
Practice: Remembering the Good Within | Practice: Being a Pencil in the Hand of God | Practice: Loving Kindness Meditation | Practice: You Are Accepted
Chapter 4 Self-Cultivation | Practice: Reconciliation with Oneself | Practice: A Time for Reflection
Part 2 Loving Your Partner
Chapter 5 Watering Positive Seeds | Practice: Write Your Love Story | Practice: Remembering Magical Moments | Practice: Memories of Unspoken Verses of Love
Chapter 6 Offerings | Practice: A Teacher of No Fear | Practice: No Fear
Chapter 7 Taking Refuge | Practice: Guided Meditation Seeing Our Partner Five Years Old
Chapter 8 Afflictions | Practice: Identifying the Bones from the Past | Practice: Create Your Enka for Former Loves
Chapter 9 Cold Hells, Hot Hells | Practice: Personal Reflection on the Cold Hells | Practice: Personal Reflection on the Hot Hells | Practice: Meditation for When I'm Angry at My Partner
Chapter 10 Healing and Transformation | Practice: Understanding Myself | Practice: Deep Listening | Practice: Writing a Love Letter | Practice: The New Year Collage | Practice: Forgiveness Meditation
Part 3 Loving All Beings
Chapter 11 Befriending the World | Practice: The Neutral Person | Practice: Write a Love Letter to the World | Practice: Radiant Loving Kindness in the Ten Directions | Practice: Metta Meditation
Chapter 12 Being Love's Gardener | Practice: The Buddha's Discourse on Love | Poem: In the Changing Room
Acknowledgments
Bibliography

FY2018 /

Physical description

xxvi, 177 p.; 21 cm

Description

A collection of real-life Buddhist love stories, with commentary and guided exercises for couples developed by Peggy Rowe-Ward and Larry Ward, senior students and ordained Dharma teachers in the tradition of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. These personal stories, from couples of a range of different ages and experiences, illustrate how Buddhist principles can help couples navigate any stage of their relationship. It took the authors some good living and good loving before they realized that the love that they were seeking was already present and available in the depths of their hearts and mind. Love does not depend on anything that is happening "Out There" and is not dependent on anything "he" or "she" might do. It depends on our own willingness to look within and to act. This insight is a result of practicing the teachings of the Buddha on right diligence and right effort. The authors have been studying and practicing with Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh and they are happy to report that the practices work. In… (more)