20 Quotes by Ayya Khema

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.