When This Messy Gorgeous Love: A Buddhist Guide to Lasting Partnership came out earlier this year, I was intrigued. We’re lucky to live at a time when books about Buddhism are as diverse as the practitioners who read them. We can learn secrets from long-held Tibetan traditions. We can explore how modern psychology intersects with ancient wisdom. But what’s less common is learning about romantic relationships from a Buddhist perspective. Here, remarkably, is a book that places partnership at the center of the Dharma path.
Devon and Nico Hase are unconventional American Buddhist teachers who have been in a beautifully messy relationship for twenty years. Devon has studied in the Insight and Vajrayana traditions, spent over six cumulative years in retreat, and teaches with Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leaders program. Nico has practiced in Zen, Insight, and Vajrayana lineages, spent six years at Crestone Mountain Zen Center, and holds a PhD in counseling psychology. Together, they recently completed a three-year meditation retreat.
Their meeting was equally unconventional. Nico was living in a Zen monastery on US$300 a month; Devon had just moved into a yurt at a Tibetan retreat center. A friend introduced them one afternoon, and the conversation stretched into eight hours of passionate deliberation over Dzogchen, Zen koans and enlightenment. Since then, their relationship has included traveling the country in a van, living separately for months at a time while on retreat, and building a dedicated community following. Between them, they’ve spent something like 30,000 hours meditating across three Buddhist traditions.
Throughout the book, they wear their hearts on their sleeves, letting us into their relationship with candid honesty. Buddhist or not, romantic relationships are hard. They don’t pretend that spiritual practice eliminates conflict—that only leads to spiritual bypassing and suppressed rage. They remind us often that life is duhkha. Love is duhkha. Relationships are duhkha. The first step is accepting this, because so much of our suffering comes from believing in “happily ever afters” that don’t reflect reality. “To have a human heart is to have dukkha too,” they write. “To love is to lose. To be in relationship is to confront disappointment, irritation, and sometimes blind rage. . . . Nobody is exempt.”
If you’re expecting a juicy tell-all about a Buddhist couple’s transgressions, you might be disappointed. Yes, Devon and Nico are honest about their personal shortcomings and relationship struggles. But these struggles remain very, well . . . Buddhist in nature. Devon shares a personal story about Nico during a teaching session without his permission. Nico becomes frustrated with Devon’s belongings scattered across their rented rooms. They raise voices at each other, and then their training kicks in with repair. They discuss sexuality with refreshing sincerity—messy, human, and far from polished—though don’t be surprised if a tantric fantasy sneaks its way in.
Central to their teaching is the art of deep listening. “Call it mindfulness if you want,” Nico writes. “Call it sustained attention. But what we are doing in meditation is listening.” Devon agrees: “Mindfulness is nothing more—and nothing less—than deep listening. It’s a deep listening to what is happening inside of you, what is happening outside of you, and what is happening in those liminal spaces that are both inside and outside.”
They encourage readers to apply the type of “deep, kind, wise” listening cultivated in meditation to oneself and to one’s partner. Even when lending a compassionate ear to our loved one, they suggest keeping fifty percent of that focused attention on ourselves. This allows us to be fully present to our own needs while also attending to the unique needs of the other. To be present without losing oneself. To avoid becoming overly enmeshed. Here, they bring the Middle Way to romantic relationships, offering tools that help us balance two of our most basic human needs: autonomy and connection.
As Buddhist teachers, they naturally draw from the Dharma. But they remind us that the Dharma draws from something far older than any teacher: time-honored methods that have transformed lives for centuries. “In a world of ever-shifting self-help trends,” they write, “leaning into something rooted and ancestral offers reliable guidance.” Alongside their reflections, the authors impart three types of experiential practices: meditation, journaling, and partner exercises. They guide us through connecting with our bodies and turning toward dukkha: all in service of building connection, presence, and playfulness.
The wisdom here is grounded, practical, and genuinely doable. And yet the heart of the book is wonderfully grand: love as a path to liberation. “This messy, gorgeous love isn’t just sustainable; it’s liberating. Partnership, when approached with presence and care, becomes a path toward freedom. The container of relationship, with all its boundaries and demands, can become the very vessel through which we discover the best of ourselves.”
Our partners are the ones we love most fiercely, trust most deeply, and count on most completely. We give them our whole hearts. Which is why the small ruptures feel so intense, and the big ones feel so devastating. This book won’t stop those ruptures from happening. But it might just teach us how to meet them—together, messily, and with a whole lot of love.
Nina Müller is a Mindfulness Teacher who offers online mindfulness coaching sessions. If you would like to find out more, please visit The Mindful Practice to book a complimentary consultation.
References
Hase, Devon and Nico. 2026. This Messy, Gorgeous Love: A Buddhist Guide to Lasting Partnership. New York: Macmillan Publishers.
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