The flavor and spin symmetry of the heavy quarks and the spontaneously broken approximate SU(3)L X SU(3)R chiral symmetry of the light quarks are exploited to formulate a theory describing the low energy interactions of the heavy mesons (Qq bound states) with the Goldstone bosons π, K, and η. The theory contains only one parameter independent of the number of heavy quark species involved. It can be determined by the decay D*→D +π. Theoretically, the coupling constant is related, through PCAC, to the axial charge of the heavy mesons. It is calculable in the non-relativistic quark model by using the spin wave functions of these particles alone. The theory is applied to strong decays and semileptonic weak decays of the heavy mesons. The implications are also discussed.