The Path to Peace

"In May of 1994, Ayya Khema taught a twenty-four-day meditation retreat near Santa Cruz, CA, where she gave formal dhamma talks on the fifteen wholesome conditions for creating peacefulness that appear at the beginning of the Metta Sutta. Those teachings are complemented by 10 metta (loving-kindness) meditations that help readers establish and sustain a practice of peacefulness in their daily lives. 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. Rather 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. 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 practice and a concentration practice as well as ten meditation practices that use visualizations rather than more traditional mantra repetition. Edited by her student and retreat leader, Leigh Brasington, this book is a complete course in practical ways to calm and brighten our minds"--