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Book Review: The Path to Peace: A Buddhist Guide to Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Ayya Khema
Learn about the Buddhist 15 Wholesome qualities and a collection of visualization-based loving-kindness meditations lovingly transcribed from talks given by Ayya Khema.
Summary:
Having escaped Nazi Germany in 1938, Ayya Khema has singularly profound perspective on creating peace, unconditional love, and compassion. She gently teaches that inner peace is not necessarily natural or innate. Instead, peace should be considered a skill that needs intentional practice—every day. Peace is the sum of many parts, namely the fifteen wholesome qualities the Buddha himself noted in the Metta Sutta, including usefulness, mildness, humility, contentment, receptivity, and others. In the first part of the book, Ayya Khema expertly guides us through each individual condition, using her trademark humor and personal narrative, to help each reader shape their own path to self-transformation. The second part of the book includes an eye-opening discussion of metta (loving-kindness) as both a morality and concentration practice, as well as ten meditation practices using visualizations.
Review:
Ayya Khema was an impactful Buddhist nun, who established a forest monastery in Australia, a training center for Sri Lankan nuns in Colombo, and a monastery and Buddhist center in Germany. Ayya Khema’s early life, escaping Nazi Germany with her Jewish family, could easily have led to bitterness. Instead she worked out of love to help others. While she wrote many books during her lifetime, this book was put together posthumously as transcripts from some of her talks.
The first part of the book is a transcript from a talk she gave on the Buddhist 15 Wholesome Qualities. I found this section to be ideal to read right before bed. Each Wholesome Quality was like reading a short devotion, and each section gave me something to think about as I fell asleep. Here is an example of the sort of discourse found in each section, from the section on the sixth Wholesome Quality – Mild:
Not looking after oneself, both mind and body is a lack of compassion, a lack of compassion for this person who is having all sorts of difficulties. And if we don’t look after ourselves, and aren’t mild towards ourselves, then it will be difficult to do this with others.
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This section also introduced to me to a new sutta I’d not heard of before – the Maha-Mangala sutta, which Ven. Khema states is popular in Asian Buddhist communities. Something I liked about how this speech is structured is while some content is there in its fullness, others are mentioned in passing, and if you’re interested you need to go look it up for yourself and study it. These aren’t talks for beginners – for instance, dukkha is never explained (it is the Buddhist term for suffering), but they helped me dive deeper into my studies in new ways.
The visualization-based loving-kindness meditations in the second part were interesting. I have seen some visualization-based loving-kindness meditations before, but I particularly liked “The Golden Light” and “Forgiveness” versions given here. This section is useful to both new and established meditators, as visualization is one of the more engaging forms of meditation for beginners, but also the different structure can introduce some variety to established meditators.
There were a few statements Ven. Khema made that I disagreed with, but that’s to be expected from any discourse. We don’t all agree on everything, that’s why it’s discourse. Nothing she said was something I found majorly disagreeable, just minor things like why people are shy, for example.
Overall, this was an interesting book of discourses from a well-respected Buddhist nun. The first part is perfect for bedtime reading, and the second part may be used either as an introduction to loving-kindness meditation or a way to introduce some variety to an already established practice.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 173 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: NetGalley
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
Book Review: The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times by Pema Chödrön
Summary:
In this book, Pema provides the tools to deal with the problems and difficulties that life throws our way, so that we may let our circumstances soften us and make us kinder, rather than making us increasingly resentful and afraid. This wisdom is always available to us, she teaches, but we usually block it with habitual patterns rooted in fear. Beyond that fear lies a state of openheartedness and tenderness. This book teaches us how to awaken our basic goodness and connect with others, to accept ourselves and others complete with faults and imperfections, and to stay in the present moment by seeing through the strategies of ego that cause us to resist life as it is.
Review:
The majority of this book suggests that fearlessness can be accomplished via mindfulness and various types of meditation. This may be true. I’m certainly not an expert meditator. Although it is something I have been working at for many years. But it was disappointing to me how much of this book was essentially – meditate and be mindful, and you will become fearless. It’s not that it might not work; it’s that I wanted more.
Some of the more that I was wanting did come up a couple of places in the book. The first was in a story of a couple who live in a gated community. They eventually become so afraid of what is outside the gates, that they basically stop living. They get so caught up in the what if’s that they don’t live. I liked how this showed that walls can be of our own making, and being fearless is a daily practice. You don’t just suddenly wake up one day walled in, rather you build that wall gradually day by day. The older I get, the more I appreciate the value of one small step a day.
I also appreciated the introduction to the idea of training in the three difficulties. This was a new a concept to me. I’ll just post the quote, since I doubt I could explain it any clearer than it is in the book.
[It] gives us instruction on how to practice, how to interrupt our habitual reactions. The three difficulties are (1) acknowledging our neurosis as neurosis, (2) doing something different, and (3) aspiring to continue practicing this way.
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This reminded me of the wisdom of early sobriety. Becoming sober is largely about changing negative habits into good ones. We acknowledge what isn’t working, commit to do it differently, and practice doing that every day. I liked the idea of applying that to anything I wanted to be braver at. I also like that it has a name. The three difficulties.
If you are new to meditation, the instruction in the book is good. It’s largely focused on metta (loving-kindness) meditation and tonglen (taking and sending). Metta is one of the first types of meditation I learned, and it definitely helps me when I’m in a bad mood. I’m not personally sure that it makes me braver, though. Although, who knows, maybe I would have been much more fearful these last years without it.
Overall, this is an interesting book and a quick read. It was not what I was expecting, but also had its moments of value. Recommended more so to those who are new to meditation and mindfulness.
3 out of 5 stars
Length: 187 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: Library
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
If you found this review helpful, please consider tipping me on ko-fi, checking out my digital items available in my ko-fi shop, buying one of my publications, or using one of my referral/coupon codes. Thank you for your support!
This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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