Khemā
A figure from the books
#Khema
Khemā · c. 6th–5th century BCE
In the books · 1 chapter
Who this is
Buddhist teacher and philosopher — declared by the Buddha "foremost in wisdom" among the nuns, the exact counterpart of Sāriputta among the monks.
“When King Pasenadi put to the Buddha the same four questions he had put to the nun Khemā, he received her answers back phrase for phrase — the oldest scriptures of a world religion preserving a woman's formulation as the founder's own doctrine, and preserving the king's astonishment that they matched.”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“Some questions are not to be answered but taken apart. Asked by a king whether an enlightened being exists after death, she replied that he might as well hire an accountant to count the sand of the Ganges — and the canon later gives her answer to the Buddha himself, in the same words.”
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