We recognize you, Brother. You have returned. |
Ayya Khema, with a foreword by the Dalai Lama, has 4.9 out of 5 stars after 16 ratings. When the Iron Eagle Flies: Buddhism for the West is a complete meditation course from one of the West's most beloved Buddhist teachers.
In her usual direct style, German Jew Sri Lanka-trained and attained Buddhist nun Ayya Khema points us toward the Middle Path — a way of simplicity.
The great Ayya Khema, Buddhist nun |
Her teachings unfold simply, free of jargon, and are ideal for a contemporary world where our fevered pursuit of pleasure and comfort leaves us "like children playing in a house on fire, refusing to let go of our toys."
This is a practical guide to building meaning through awareness: When the Iron Eagle Flies contains a wealth of exercises and advice to help readers along the path.
A Westerner trained in the East, Ayya Khema grounds her teaching in our ordinary, everyday experiences and gradually shows us how to gain access to liberation and freedom in this life under these conditions.
"When the Iron Eagle Flies"?
Nazis had medal eagle, the Iron Cross medal. |
This ancient Tibetan Buddhist prophecy -- like those of the strangely related (Edward Vining, 1885, Rick Fields, 1992, 2022) ancient Hopi and other Native Americans in the Southwest United States -- states that the Dharma will reach the West when the "iron eagle flies." Of course, what metal bird flies? Airplanes of all kinds, traversing the skies as could be known but not quite understood when the vision was received.
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What did Ayya Khema realize in the tumult? |
Ayya Khema, a German Jewish immigrant trained in Sri Lanka under an eminent Theravada Buddhist monk, learned meditation (jhana), and revived the defunct nun's order in the country and the tradition in other allied countries. We owe a great debt to Ayya Khema not only for the revival but for teaching in the West to those hungry for liberation from suffering.
Interestingly, the prophecy is slightly more specific or may be interpreted as such. Karma (deeds with the power to bear subsequent results) is a strange, strange thing. How it will work out is unfathomable. That working out (vipaka, phala) is one of the Four Imponderables, so complex and intricate that it would drive one to madness to repeatedly ponder.
When worlds collide...
Empire Beneath the Ice: How Nazis Won WWII (S. Quayle) |
The dragons (serpents, vipers, dinosaurs, Silurians) may not be ALL bad, but they have certainly been cast as such. The eagle is majestic, but originally the symbol of the USA was a snake on a flag warning, "Don't tread on me."
Of course, now the flag of the country is the pretty and all-inclusive Rainbow, but between these two banners (and after the CSA), it used to be the bloody Stars and Stripes.
An Iron Eagle is now military slang for an American military officer attained to the rank of colonel who will not be promoted to the rank of general, the term referring to the rank insignia a colonel wears, which resembles an eagle.
Ayya Khema, as a German Jew, had to flee the comfort and familiarity of Germany because of WW II, which saw the Nazis come into power. The Nazis, and Ayya Khema could almost certainly not have known this, were very interested in Tibet and esoteric Vajrayana Buddhism, with its deep history of Bon black magic and Vedic Hindu influences. The myths of Aryan supremacy and of a world monarch (chakravartin), converted into racial terms and a role for Fuhrer Hitler by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joe Goebbels.
Smithsonian covers up ancient Egyptians in US |
Buddhism for the West (Ven. Khema) |
And this confluence brings us right back around to the arrival of immigrant out of Nazi Germany and into the welcoming arms of Buddhist Asia. Ayya Khema arrived in Sri Lanka, learned meditation, excelled, restarted the Nun's Monastic Community (Bhikkhuni Sangha), and came to the United States and Europe to teach from time to time. She was not the only Jew to ride the war out outside of Germany.
War and peace
Buddhist Dictionary |
- The Life of Nyanatiloka Thera (Buddhist Publication Society)
- Operation Highjump? Operation Mockingbird?
- Ayya Khema; Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Pfc. Sandoval, Shauna Scwhartz (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
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