Khema Quotes

#1. "Wholeheartedly" means that we give our time, love, and energy unstintingly.

Ayya Khema

#2. The Buddha compared anger with picking up hot coals with one's bare hands and trying to throw them at the person with whom one is angry. Who gets burned first? The one who is angry of course.

Ayya Khema

#3. A truly happy person is someone who is joyfully independent of outer conditions.

Ayya Khema

#4. Whatever we attempt is a reflection of our inner thirst, which we hope to quench in all these external ways. What we are looking for lies within us, and if we gave out time and energy to an interior search, we would come across it much faster, since that is the only place where it is to be found.

Ayya Khema

#5. Football players are misunderstood. They aren't the dumb jocks people think they are.

Simone Elkeles

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

Ayya Khema

#7. 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.

Ayya Khema

#8. An ordinary mistake is one that leads to a dead end, while a profound mistake is one that leads to progress. Anyone can make an ordinary mistake, but it takes a genius to make a profound mistake.

Frank Wilczek

#9. As long as we have practiced neither concentration nor mindfulness, the ego takes itself for granted and remains its usual normal size, as big as the people around one will allow.

Ayya Khema

#10. I will fix this. I swear I will make it right. I love you enough to get us through this. I just need you to love me enough. Please, Blaire. Love me enough.

Abbi Glines

#11. Mindfulness is a mental activity that in due course eliminates all suffering.

Ayya Khema

#12. To look for total satisfaction in oneself is a futile endeavor. Since everything changes from moment to moment, where can self and where can satisfaction be found? Everybody is unhappy simply because of unfilled desire. Everybody is looking for something that isn't available.

Ayya Khema

#13. Nothing is perfect and this is the perfect reason for men to keep on learning, understanding and discovering.

Dee Dee Artner

#14. Trying to achieve something in the spiritual world is just as foolish as trying to achieve something in the material world. There's nothing to achieve. There's only letting go. As we let go, more and more, of ego identifications, desires, and support systems, bliss will arise.

Ayya Khema

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

Ayya Khema

#16. I think going from doing TV and straight plays to Shakespeare is weird enough because you have this heightened language, and you are telling a story through metric poetry. But I think music is that place beyond poetry.

Tamsin Greig

#17. If the whole universe can be found in our own body and mind, this is where we need to make our inquires. We all have the answers within ourselves, we just have not got in touch with them yet. The potential of finding the truth within requires faith in ourselves.

Ayya Khema

#18. The more we abandon ill-will and hatred, the easier it will be to meditate.

Ayya Khema

#19. There are many people that frankly cannot get themselves to oppose Barack Obama. They make a lot of excuse for him.

Jonathan Turley

#20. Unless we practice
loving feelings toward
everyone we meet, day in,
day out, we're missing out
on the most joyous part of
life. If we can actually open
our hearts, there's no
difficulty in being happy.

Ayya Khema

#21. And I will capture your minds with sweet novelty.
[Lat., Dulcique animos novitate tenebo.]

Ovid

#22. From contact comes feeling. From feeling comes reaction. This is what keeps us in the cycle of birth and death. Our reactions to our feelings are our passport to rebirth.

Ayya Khema

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

Ayya Khema

#24. People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.

Brian Eno

#25. If we do not try, we will not know.

Ayya Khema

#26. We should treat our anxiety, our pain, our hatred and passion gently, respectfully, not resisting it, but living with it, making peace with it, penetrating into its nature by

Thich Nhat Hanh

#27. It is often thought that the Buddha's doctrine teaches us that suffering will disappear if one has meditated long enough, or if one sees everything differently. It is not that at all. Suffering isn't going to go away; the one who suffers is going to go away.

Ayya Khema