Ven. Ayya Khema was born into a Jewish family in Berlin in 1923. After leading an active life in the world-including marriage and children in America and adventure in South America, Asia and Australia-she turned seriously to spiritual practice in her forties. In 1979, she was ordained a Theravadin Buddhist nun, receiving the name khema, meaning "safety and security" (ayya means "sister"). Ayya Khema established a forest monastery near Sidney, Australia; a training center for nuns in Colombo, Sri Lanka; and Buddha-Haus, a meditation center in the Allg u, Germany. Among her books are When the Iron Eagle Flies; Being Nobody, Going Nowhere; and Who is My Self?; and an autobiography, I Give You My Life. She passed away in 1997.
"A Buddhist autobiography seems an anomaly, but this story of the
first Western woman to become an ordained Theravadin Buddhist nun
sweeps the reader away from all preconceptions and proves an
engaging read. Ilse Kussel was born to an affluent Jewish family in
Berlin that lost everything in the Holocaust. After rootless
wandering, she ended up in Los Angeles, a suburban housewife with
two children, but the suburban life seemed hollow. She divorced her
husband, remarried, and began a rugged world journey that lasted
the rest of her life.
"Halfway through the autobiography, Kussel's tale turns from the
outer to the inner journey. Through her travels she sees that
people everywhere suffer loss and fail to find enduring happiness.
And having along the way attempted to understand the various
religions she encounters, Kussel came to realize that she had been
journeying along a Buddhist path and began a committed practice of
Theravadin Buddhism, becoming the ordained nun Ayya Khema. The
remainder of her tale as a teacher and founder of abbeys for nuns
is every bit as engaging. Finally, at the end, her life comes full
circle as she returns to Germany to found the Buddha-Haus in
Munich.
"The first chapter is a fine piece of Buddhist writing, merging the
beginning and the end, the outer and the inner world, and divesting
an extremely interesting story of all ego. Ayya Khema acknowledges
the unusual act of writing an autobiography. After a life of
change, farewell, and letting go, it might seem an attempt to hold
on, to perpetuate. But the reader understands that Ayya Khema has
just as lightly let go of all those details that had been her life.
This very literally titled work, itself a final act of
detachment—finished just before her death in 1997—is a model for
the reader of the essential Buddhist act of letting go."—Richard
Yutso, MultiCultural Review
"Ayya Khema lived a life that was both extraordinary and yet
completely emblematic of a seeker in our times. This is the story
of a true spiritual warrior."—Sharon Salzberg, author of
Lovingkindness
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