Writing Worth Reading
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Writing Worth Reading
Ayya Khema was a meditator par excellence. One of the things that impressed me when I met her was the way she led meditations on loving kindness and I have used some of her meditations myself when I have taught. It is a practice whereby one radiates loving kindness to those one likes – to our family and friends – but also to those we don’t like, to the oppressors and the people who have hurt us. Such practices are at the heart of Buddhism and she speaks movingly about them.
Your last choice is, Come and See Yourself: The Buddhist Path to Happiness by Ayya Khema.
I met Ayya Khema in the 1980s when I was living in Sri Lanka. She was then a Buddhist nun. She had set up a community on an island in a lake in the South of Sri Lanka. She was born a Jew in Germany. She married and had children but eventually converted to Buddhism and became a nun. She spent the last 18 years of her life teaching in Sri Lanka, Australia and Germany. She published quite a number of books and this is the fullest one. In it we hear a Buddhist teacher explaining the path of meditation in a very accessible way. Ayya Khema was a meditator par excellence.
For instance, she speaks in one chapter about four fundamental principles of Buddhism: freedom from greed, freedom from hatred, right mindfulness and right concentration. Greed and hatred are the poisons which create suffering according to Buddhism. And right mindfulness and right concentration lie at the heart of Buddhist meditation.
She also speaks about such things as loving kindness. One of the things that impressed me when I met her was the way she led meditations on loving kindness and I have used some of her meditations myself when I have taught. It is a practice whereby one radiates loving kindness to those one likes to our family and friends – but also to those we don’t like, to the oppressors and the people who have hurt us. Such practices are at the heart of Buddhism and she speaks movingly about them.
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After teaching English at secondary level in Jamaica and London, and working for a Christian organisation that encouraged inter-cultural and inter-faith encounter, Elizabeth Harris changed career in 1986 through travelling to Sri Lanka to study Buddhism. She stayed eight years and completed a doctorate in Buddhist Studies. She then worked as a research fellow at Westminster College, Oxford, specialising in Buddhist Studies, and then as executive secretary for inter-faith relations for the Methodist Church of Britain. She is now a senior lecturer in Religious Studies at Liverpool Hope University, specialising in Buddhism. She is a member of the management board of the UK Association for Buddhist Studies and President of the European Network of Buddhist Christian Studies. She uses a form of Buddhist meditation in her own spiritual life and is interested in what Buddhism can offer not only to Buddhists but to the world.
