I Give You My Life
I Give You My Life: The Autobiography of a Western Buddhist Nun
by Ayya Khema
Shambala Publications, Boston, Massachusetts ©1998 200 pp.
Born Isle Kussel, in 1923, in Berlin, into a prosperous Jewish family, she fled the Nazis to Scotland in 1938, then later rejoined her family in China, where she survived the Japanese invasion. She was married twice, had two children, lived as a suburban housewife in L.A., traveled up the Amazon, built a power plant in Pakistan, did organic farming in Australia, and traveled the world over - among other things!
In her forties, meetings with spiritual masters in India led her to a spiritual life. After becoming a nun, she founded a monastery, the “Nuns Island” in Sri Lanka. Finally, coming full circle, she returned to Germany and founded the Buddha-haus im Allgau near Munich, where she died in 1997 at the age of 74.
Ayya Khema published 25 books from her talks, the two best-known in English being Where the Iron Eagle Flies and Being Nobody, Going Nowhere (both also in the CSS library). Her teachings focus on the “meditative absorptions” (see Iron Eagle) and how we can live our lives fraught with Buddhist compassion and wisdom.
About becoming a nun, she says “. . . I had more or less had and tried everything. What did the world still have to offer me? The world does not bring one inner peace and inner happiness, because everything that happens in the world is impermanent." This recognition was undoubtedly gleaned at an early age from her experiences of the suffering implicit in loss when she and her family fled Germany.
Few spiritual teachers have led such a full and varied life before embarking on their paths. Khema’s story is fascinating - a great spiritual autobiography!
— reviewed by Karen Fierman
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