Quotes from Ayya Khema

Eventually we will find (mostly in retrospect, of course) that we can be very grateful to those people who have made life most difficult for us.

The heart is always the place to go. Go home into your heart, where there is warmth, appreciation, gratitude and contentment

If we want to be loved, we are looking for a support system. If we want to love, we are looking for spiritual growth.

Half the spiritual life consists of remembering what we are up against and where we are going.

If we divide into two camps--even into violent and the nonviolent--and stand in one camp while attacking the other, the world will never have peace. We will always blame and condemn those we feel are responsible for wars and social injustice, without recognizing the degree of violence within ourselves. We must work on ourselves and also with those we condemn if we want to have a real impact.

When the eye sees, it simply registers color and shape. All the rest takes place in the mind.

Joy with others is a sure antidote for depression. Anybody who suffers from depression is suffering from the lack of joy with others, the lack of sympathetic joy. One cannot always have joyful occasions, joyful thoughts in one's own life, but if one has joy with other people, one can surely find something to be happy about.

Life keeps on happening and doesn't need us to think about it. It's constantly arising and ceasing every single moment.

In meditation, we have to give ourselves totally, with no holding back. Whatever meditation subject we have chosen, we must become immersed in it;

If we want real happiness, the only way it can arise is by letting go of the one who is unhappy. It is not a question of trying to hold on to the one who is happy. Rather, when the unhappy one is relinquished, nothing else remains except the happiness of tranquility and pure awareness.

Contentment with our life as it is brings a feeling of great lightness, for we lose the burden of continually craving for situations and people to be different. Things are as they are. Refusing to accept this creates dukkha and brings pain. It is like pushing against a sealed door. We push and we push until our hands hurt, but we cannot open it. If we are wise, we accept that this is simply how it is. The door is sealed, and it is perfectly all right that it is so.

The enjoyment of the senses becomes more refined when there's more purification in a person. The smallest thing can be enjoyed, but the danger lies in wanting it. This wanting — the craving — brings the unsatisfactoriness because the wanting can never be fully satisfied.

The missing link can only come through the practice of loving-kindness toward ourselves, in spite of everything we know about ourselves. Only then, in fact, will we be able to love others, without criticism or judgment.

Restlessness and worry are always connected to desire, and when we recognize this and let go of the desire, the heart is purified and the mind is calmed.

The mind that doesn't need any outer conditions for happiness is the mind that can say, "This is the release from all suffering. This is true happiness." Such a mind sees with clarity the absolute reality of what's happening in this universe and doesn't have to hang on to anything, attach to anything, doesn't have to become anything, doesn't have to be anything. It just does what is necessary at each particular moment and then lets go.

At the beginning of each meditation, we ask ourselves: "Am I having thoughts of ill-will? Doubt? Restlessness and worry? Am I feeling lazy and sleepy? Is my mind filled with desires?" If so, we try to drop these obstacles, using the antidotes of loving-kindness and of calming the mind, remembering that there is nothing to gain and everything to get rid of.

We will discover that everything we are carrying around in our minds is nothing but extraneous matter. It has been put there by our desires, rejections, reactions, thoughts, plans, hopes, ideas, and viewpoints.

Wisdom comes only from the understood experience and from nothing else.

There is no one creator, but there is the realm of creation.

Not to learn from our experiences is a tremendous waste of time. Life is an adult-education school.

It's only when the heart that we get the response that the heart of others can give.

The Buddha has no intention of answering the question about higher states of consciousness yet. He first advocates practicing moral conduct as a foundation for spiritual development.

Nothing that is to be had in the world, anywhere, under any circumstances, is capable of bringing fulfillment

When we bring the past to mind, it is then the present. When we bring the future to mind, that also becomes the present. So what we are doing is not only putting boundaries around three separate selves, but we are also putting boundaries around time and splitting it into three parts as well.