True Love: The Third Mindfulness Training

Talk about my experience of True Love: Mindfulness training No. 3

Barefoot Barn, Chagford, 27 September 2026

Isabel Carlisle (Totnes Sangha)

Here we are, at the turning of the year. The autumn equinox, one of the quarter days in the Christian calendar, close to Michaelmas, the feast of St Michael on 29 September. It used to be said that harvest had to be completed by Michaelmas, marking of the end of the productive season and the beginning of the new cycle of farming. It was the time at which new servants were hired or land was exchanged and debts were paid. So, it’s a time of reckoning and reconciling which is kind of appropriate for taking a look at the third mindfulness training on True Love. The one that often brings people up short.

The words of this training are uncompromising and reading them can be painful when they cause old memories of harm and hurt to rise to the surface. It is not surprising that in the Totnes sangha people cross their fingers that they won’t have to read this Mindfulness training out loud when we are in a study circle. Sexual energy is so powerful, especially when we are young. And it is so hard to distinguish true love from the longing for relationship and the desire for sexual union. Childhood unhappiness when parents aren’t able to give us the loving that we need, or when sexual or other abuse happens, causes internal knots of pain or mental formations that we are often unaware of, to lodge deep in our consciousness and then when we are older they act as secret drivers of our behaviour and lead to even more unhappiness.

In my own life, I had parents who found it hard to love. My father had been a prisoner of war aged 19 in Germany and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder for the rest of his life. My mother’s parents had been remote and unloving and my mum would have been much happier I think having the career as a nuclear physicist that she had trained for rather than being stuck at home with small children. In my search for love I found a man who was already married and who abandoned his wife for me. Then he abandoned me and I was left with two young daughters to bring up on my own. Single and free to love again, I was approached by married men who wanted to have affairs, and I fell for one of them. The sex was great but I have never felt so lonely. It was not a relationship of true love, but of craving and desire.

At almost the same time as that affair came to an end, I was given a book by a friend, ‘Not always so’ by Shunryu Suzuki. Suzuki was a Japanese Zen teacher who came to San Francisco after the war, in 1959 and started the San Francisco Zen Center. I was pretty much in a mess: confused, miserable, angry and ashamed, truly suffering. My life was just not working, I had played a role in messing up the lives of others, and on top of everything else I lost my job. Deep down I knew there must be another way to live and when I read the opening words of this book something lit up inside me: ‘When we do not expect anything we can be ourselves. That is our way, to live fully in each moment of time. This practice continues forever’.

That was back in 2002 and it put me on a path of Buddhist exploration that has brought me to the present day. I am now in a relationship of true love with a man who I introduced to Thich Nhat Hanh’s writings soon after we got together 13 years ago. We understand each other’s mental formations and make allowances for them and if we get into difficulties, we turn that into a shared enquiry. One of our first enquiries was into the nature of true love.

Love is so powerful, think of all the poems, plays, books, philosophical treatises and soap operas in every language under the sun that have love as their story line. Love is an essential part of being human, it takes us to heights of happiness or depths of despair. But in taking this Mindfulness Training we affirm that we have a choice in how love enters our lives and how we love others. By healing ourselves and taking care of the hurts we received as children through lack of loving, or deliberate harm, we free ourselves from the mental formations that cause us and others to suffer. And, with the insights gained by experience we gain loving kindness, compassion, joy and inclusiveness for the greater happiness of ourselves and others.

I started this reflection on True Love by saying that we are close to a Christian feast day. I was brought up a Christian and have been reminded by all this remembering of my past that my early experiments with love would be called ‘sinning’ by the church. Which makes it doubly painful to speak about. But in touching the seeds of suffering inside me I realise how my Buddhist practice has given me a way to loosen my mental formations around love and sexuality. I can choose to look at my past, and the people who were part of this cycle of suffering, through the eyes of understanding and love. And that choice makes all the difference because that healing power changes the past and sets me free.

IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME IN HEAVEN

It happens all the time in heaven,

And some day

It will begin to happen

Again on earth—

That men and women who are married,

And men and men who are

Lovers,

And women and women

Who give each other

Light,

Often will get down on their knees

And while so tenderly

Holding their lover’s hand,

With tears in their eyes,

Will sincerely speak, saying,

“My dear,

How can I be more loving to you;

How can I be more

Kind?”

Daniel Ladinsky, inspired by Hafez (14th-century Persian Sufi poet)

About Isabel Carlisle (Totnes Sangha):

Isabel’s career began in the London art world in 1980 and included being an art critic for The Times and an exhibitions curator at the Royal Academy. In 2002 Isabel set up and directed the Festival of Muslim Cultures that took place across Britain throughout 2006. In 2013 she co-founded the Community Chartering Network that played a small role in bringing about the Scottish government ban on fracking. She was a part of the Transition Towns movement from 2008 until 2016 and worked in the Transition Network team as Education Coordinator. In 2017 she co-founded the Bioregional Learning Centre that is putting in place the civic infrastructure and foundational economy needed for a resilient South Devon. She lives in Totnes, Devon, and is part of the Totnes Plum Village sangha, having practised with a number of different Buddhist groups over the past twenty years.