It’s difficult to know where to start to be honest so I’ll start from the beginning – but where is the beginning? I’ll go back to my twenties when I was going through a low patch in my young life. Things weren’t going too well for me I was recovering from a broken relationship, I’d left my job under a dark cloud and I had a few family concerns just to add to my worries. During this time I remember taking a really good look at myself and realised that I had to make some kind of change because life throws so much dirt at you that you can’t avoid it but what you can do is change yourself and I guess that is what I began to discover.
I suppose I was basically a spiritual person having been educated in a Catholic school despite not being a Catholic and I had to take part in all the prayers and rituals. Sometimes it was a bit overwhelming and I didn’t really understand what all the fuss was about especially at Easter. I remember having to watch a film of the Crucifixion every year and each time it never ceased to horrify me how human beings could be so cruel to one another. How could there be a God if he let his only son suffer this way. It just didn’t make any sense. Nothing much has changed of course, especially in the name of religion. I grew up feeling quite relieved that I wasn’t a Catholic and so it wasn’t compulsory for me to attend church or communion if I didn’t want to, so I was classed as a non-Catholic and stayed at school instead.
I left school and went to work and religion was a thing of the past but my religion I suppose was taking solace in nature and the earth. I felt that nature was what it was and could be trusted whereas people were less trustworthy. At least the earth knew what it was doing which was more than you could say of human beings. Like most I’d discovered that people could be unkind and so I decided that my solace was to observe the world around me instead but later on when I hit rock bottom I needed more so I returned to Christianity and my local church where I got some comfort.
Eventually I met my husband, got married and we had three children and we got more involved with our church and became communicants. For a while it seemed a wonderful thing to do but things began to change and following a series of bereavements, marital problems and a miscarriage my faith began to dwindle rapidly. I hit a brick wall and stopped attending the services I had so regularly been to for a good ten years. Suddenly there seemed to be nothing but darkness. I realised that I needed something more realistic and down to earth. Not a promise of things to come once I was dead but something here and now to help me through my present misery.
I used to enjoy listening to music and in particular an artist called Howard Jones and his lyrics really made an impact on me. He sang about ‘Conditioning’ and ‘Hunt The Self’ which whilst I didn’t understand the meaning at the time made sense much later on. He had a very philosophical theme in his songs which I found really comforting. Later on I found out why. He was a Buddhist. I had the good fortune to meet him after a concert and it made perfect sense to me. His message had got through to me and I bought a DVD and book on Buddhism as a result of a link on his own website.
I forgot all about these until we moved from our home in Enfield of 29 years out into the sticks of deepest Buckinghamshire into a beautiful rural area just outside Chesham. After some years of waiting to get away from the claustrophobic atmosphere of Greater London we made our escape and luckily to an unbelievable location overlooking nothing but fields and woods. I couldn’t believe how lucky we had been. I never imagined we would find ourselves in such a place but there it was waiting for us, Red Kites as well as we moved into our new home on a beautiful hot sunny day in July 2011.
A few months later and I had settled into a job in Amersham. My colleagues were really friendly in particular one lady who came from Sri Lanka. A lovely friendly happy soul always with a smile on her face no matter what. Then just before Christmas I went for a routine breast screening and it was discovered I had pre-malignant cells in my right breast. I was terrified. Looking back I can see that it wasn’t so bad but at the time it was life changing and I panicked as anyone would at the prospect of cancer being found. I was in a mess and as I suffer from anxiety and depression already it didn’t bode too well for me and I wasn’t coping well at all.
When I returned to work with this news I just broke down in the office. I couldn’t function properly from the worry of it and then my friend came to my rescue. ‘Have you tried meditation?’ She asked me and I said that I had not. So she took me into a room and showed me what to do and I calmed down within minutes. I found out she was a Buddhist and that was how they dealt with situations like I had just been through. It was an amazing lesson to learn and I will be forever thankful for her support. It changed my life for the better. It was then she introduced me to Amaravati and so my connection with the monastery began. My life as a Buddhist began as well. At last my soul searching had stopped and I knew I had found my spiritual home.
The good that came out of something so dreadful is remarkable and the positives it gave me even more remarkable. Once I had my operation and treatment I viewed things very differently. I met people far worse off than I was and it brought a sense of community into my life and a link with others that I could never have imagined but what this diagnosis really led me to was my spiritual path and one which has transformed my view on life in general. I have a strong connection with the monastery and spend a lot of my time helping them with different tasks as a thank you for their beautiful teachings. My way of ‘making merit’. It helped me to discover my true self but that is an ongoing thing and the practice itself I couldn’t be without.
The name ‘Khemiya’ which is attributed to this website was the spiritual name given to me by the Abbot from Amaravati Buddhist Monastery which is pictured above. Khemiya incidentally means ‘one who is at peace’. There is a link on this website to the Maya samaya Sutta: The Great Assembly in which Khemiya, one of the Devas is mentioned. I have some wonderful gifts from the monastics but the best gifts of all are their beautiful teachings.
Khemiya 