Khema was born as Ilse Kussel in
Berlin, Germany in 1923 to
Jewish parents. 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. After two years in Scotland, Khema joined her parents in
Shanghai. With the outbreak of the war, Japan conquered Shanghai and the family was moved into the
Shanghai Ghetto in
Hongkew where her father died five days before the war ended. At age twenty-two, Khema married a man seventeen years her senior named Johannes and they moved to an apartment in the
Hongkou District. In 1947, her first child, a daughter named Irene, was born. As the
People's Liberation Army were on the cusp of taking Shanghai, Khema and her family fled for
San Francisco,
California, United States. From San Francisco, Khema moved to
Los Angeles and then
San Diego where she gave birth to her second child, a son named Jeffrey. Soon, Khema began feeling incomplete and investigated various spiritual paths, an interest her husband didn't share. This led to their divorce. Khema moved with her infant son to Rancho La Puerta in
Tecate, Mexico, to study the philosophy of the
Essenes with Professor Edmund Skekely. There she married her second husband, Gerd. The whole family soon became
vegetarian, a practice Khema continued until her death. The three traveled for years, visiting
South America,
New Zealand, Australia,
Pakistan, then settling in
Sydney, Australia, where Khema began to study with Phra Khantipalo. To further her studies, Khema traveled to San Francisco to study
Zen at the
San Francisco Zen Center and worked at
Tassajara Zen Mountain Center for three months. She then spent three weeks in
Burma where she studied meditation with students of
U Ba Khin. In 1978, Khema founded the Wat Buddha Dhamma forest monastery in
New South Wales and installed Phra Khantipalo as abbot. Khema's desire to become a
Buddhist nun led her to
Thailand where she studied with Tan Ajahn Singtong for three months. Sri Lanka was her next destination where she met
Nyanaponika Thera who introduced her to
Narada Maha Thera. Narada Thera gave her the name "Ayya Khema". A 1983 return trip to Sri Lanka, led her to meet her teacher,
Ven. Matara Sri Ñānarāma of
Nissarana Vanaya, who inspired her to teach
jhana meditation. As it was not possible at the time to organize an ordination ceremony for bhikkhunis in the Theravada tradition, Ayya Khema then received complete monastic ordination at the newly built
Hsi Lai Temple, a Chinese Mahayana temple under the
Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Order, in 1988. 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. In 1989, Khema returned to Germany and began teaching at Buddha Haus in
Munich. According to Ayya Khema's own account, she had been suffering from
breast cancer since 1983. In 1993, she underwent a
mastectomy operation in Germany. During a five-week recovery period in the hospital she almost died, but her condition was expeditiously stabilized by the medics. In an interview she expressed a positive opinion of that experience. Ayya Khema died on November 2, 1997, at Buddha Haus, Uttenbühl (part of the village
Oy-Mittelberg) in Germany after fourteen years with breast cancer. Her ashes are kept in a
stupa at Buddha Haus. ==Publications==