1. In 1938, her parents escaped from Germany and traveled to China while plans were made for Khema to join two hundred other children emigrating to Glasgow, Scotland.
12 Facts About Ayya Khema
1. 2.
At age twenty-two, Ayya Khema married a man seventeen years her senior named Johannes and they moved to an apartment in the Hongkou District.
3.
From San Francisco, Ayya Khema moved to Los Angeles and then San Diego where she gave birth to her second child, a son named Jeffrey.
4.
Soon, Ayya Khema began feeling incomplete and investigated various spiritual paths, an interest her husband didn't share.
5.
Ayya Khema moved with her infant son to Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, Mexico, to study the philosophy of the Essenes with Professor Edmund Skekely.
6.
The whole family soon became vegetarian, a practice Ayya Khema continued until her death.
7.
Ayya Khema then spent three weeks in Burma where she studied meditation with students of U Ba Khin.
8.
In 1978, Ayya Khema founded the Wat Buddha Dhamma forest monastery in New South Wales and installed Phra Khantipalo as abbot.
9.
Ayya Khema was one of the organizers of the first International Conference on Buddhist Women in 1987 which led to the foundation of the Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women.
10.
In 1989, Ayya Khema returned to Germany and began teaching at Buddha Haus in Munich.
11.
Ayya Khema died on November 2,1997, at Buddha Haus, Uttenbuhl in Germany after fourteen years with breast cancer.
12.
Ayya Khema's ashes are kept in a stupa at Buddha Haus.