Book Review: “A Little Book of Love” by Moh Hardin

I recently finished reading “A Little Book of Love: Heart Advice on Bringing Happiness to Ourselves and Our World” by Senior Shambhala teacher Moh Hardin  - a book which was infused with compassion, loving-kindness and a profound desire to help others to invoke love in their hearts, homes, communities and our world.

I have a fuzzy recollection of Moh from my time at the Halifax Shambhala Center but I do remember him to be a very warm and compassionate teacher as well as a great practice center director. Fast forward many years and I caught a video of him on Vision TV (Canada’s Multi-faith/Multi-Cultural TV station) in an interview that they did with him relating to love and loss, as his first wife Judith had passed away from cancer in 1990. Something as devastating as watching your beloved embody such bravery in their journey towards death can be the trigger to either cause complete rage, sadness and a full range of negative emotions or can be the catalyst for generating boundless loving-kindness and acceptance.We all know the route Moh has taken based on the release of this book and given his 40 years of practice and study, he is certainly qualified to help readers along in their journey to discover, uncover and extend love both to self and other.

The book begins with an examination of what exactly is love and practical advice for how to cultivate love, to understand it fully, to embrace it and how to share it skillfully with others and then encourage its development in our world. The concept of the Bodhisattva is relayed throughout the various chapters as awakened beings are the perfect conduits for love and compassion.

Hardin speaks to the need for having confidence in the practice of cultivating love as this will help to propel us on the journey and enable us to expand our compassion outwards rather than hoarding it only to ourselves and those who either we are attracted to or are directly associated with. Starting with the person who is sometimes hardest to love, the author relates how many people are terribly hard on themselves and constantly engage in self hatred or self judging, therefore blocking them from both receiving and giving love and compassion. Becoming friends with ourselves is the basis of where big things can happen as no genuine transformation can occur in our hearts and minds without acknowledging that we possess basic goodness. We are without sin and our nature is that we are a decent, awesome person.

After we’ve recognized that we’re not as horrid and damaged as we initially thought and we see a ray of sunlight peek through, we’re then able to extend this love towards another person. There are many famous quotes relating to the principle of “First you must love yourself before you are able to love another” and Hardin speaks to this concept eloquently in this book. The chapters on “Loving Your Partner” and “Loving Your Child” provide wise counsel to help see us through the various day-to-day gripes we have in being householders with families and lovers and hands down, the utility of these 2 chapters is well worth the cover price of this book.

“A Little Book of Love” wraps up with chapters relating to extending one’s love, compassion and bodhichitta into the world and wishing for happiness for all sentient beings. The path of the Bodhisattva is explored in detail and this is where the heavy lifting of the book’s material comes into play with a detailed explanation of each of the Four Limitless Ones (aka The Four Immeasurables), The Six Far Gone Actions (aka The Six Paramitas) and a short piece on the notion of loyalty as it relates to the concept of love and within the framework of relationships.

There are pithy sections within each chapter of the book titled “Bringing it into our Experience” which suggests real world examples of how we can use these philosophies in our lives and exercises that we can try. It’s quite possible that some may set this up as a practice path if one is so inclined.

Moh Hardin’s “A Little Book of Love” possesses the word ‘Little’ in its title but is anything but little when it comes to its ability to cover the rock terrain of affairs of the heart and the emotions that can tangle us up. It is a solid entry in the Buddhist self-help series of books without being too rudimentary or fluffy in its approach.

***While this book isn’t inherently for Buddhists only, it is helpful that you are curious about Buddhism as the various terms used within the text may prove to be a bit high-level for the average person on the street that doesn’t have a background in basic, introductory concepts.