If we want real happiness, the only way it can arise is by letting go of the one who is unhappy. It is not a question of trying to hold on to the one who is happy. Rather, when the unhappy one is relinquished, nothing else remains except the happiness of tranquility and pure awareness.

— Ayya Khema

Ayya Khema Quotes

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

— Ayya Khema

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

— Ayya Khema

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

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

If we do not try, we will not know.

— Ayya Khema

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

— Ayya Khema

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.

— Ayya Khema

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

— Ayya Khema

There is no one creator, but there is the realm of creation.

— Ayya Khema

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

— Ayya Khema

In meditation, we have to give ourselves totally, with no holding back. Whatever meditation subject we have chosen, we must become immersed in it;.

— Ayya Khema

If we want real happiness, the only way it can arise is by letting go of the one who is unhappy. It is not a question of trying to hold on to the one who is happy. Rather, when the unhappy one is relinquished, nothing else remains except the happiness of tranquility and pure awareness.

— Ayya Khema

Contentment with our life as it is brings a feeling of great lightness, for we lose the burden of continually craving for situations and people to be different. Things are as they are. Refusing to accept this creates dukkha and brings pain. It is like pushing against a sealed door. We push and we push until our hands hurt, but we cannot open it. If we are wise, we accept that this is simply how it is. The door is sealed, and it is perfectly all right that it is so.

— Ayya Khema

The enjoyment of the senses becomes more refined when there’s more purification in a person. The smallest thing can be enjoyed, but the danger lies in wanting it. This wanting – the craving – brings the unsatisfactoriness because the wanting can never be fully satisfied.

— Ayya Khema

The missing link can only come through the practice of loving-kindness toward ourselves, in spite of everything we know about ourselves. Only then, in fact, will we be able to love others, without criticism or judgment.

— Ayya Khema

Restlessness and worry are always connected to desire, and when we recognize this and let go of the desire, the heart is purified and the mind is calmed.

— Ayya Khema

The mind that doesn’t need any outer conditions for happiness is the mind that can say, “This is the release from all suffering. This is true happiness.” Such a mind sees with clarity the absolute reality of what’s happening in this universe and doesn’t have to hang on to anything, attach to anything, doesn’t have to become anything, doesn’t have to be anything. It just does what is necessary at each particular moment and then lets go.

— Ayya Khema

At the beginning of each meditation, we ask ourselves: “Am I having thoughts of ill-will? Doubt? Restlessness and worry? Am I feeling lazy and sleepy? Is my mind filled with desires?” If so, we try to drop these obstacles, using the antidotes of loving-kindness and of calming the mind, remembering that there is nothing to gain and everything to get rid of.

— Ayya Khema

We will discover that everything we are carrying around in our minds is nothing but extraneous matter. It has been put there by our desires, rejections, reactions, thoughts, plans, hopes, ideas, and viewpoints.

— Ayya Khema

Life keeps on happening and doesn’t need us to think about it. It’s constantly arising and ceasing every single moment.

— Ayya Khema
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