Dipa Ma | |
|---|---|
 Dipa Ma inBarre, Massachusetts, 1980 | |
| Born | Nani Bala Barua (1911-03-25)March 25, 1911 nearChittagong,East Bengal and Assam, British India |
| Died | September 1, 1989(1989-09-01) (aged 78) Calcutta,West Bengal, India |
| Academic work | |
| Influenced | Sylvia Boorstein,Joseph Goldstein,[1]Jack Kornfield,[2]Sharon Salzberg[3] |
Nani Bala Barua (25 March 1911 – 1 September 1989), better known asDipa Ma, was an Indian meditation teacher ofTheravadaBuddhism and was ofBarua descent.[4] She was a prominent Buddhist master in Asia and also taught in the United States where she influenced the American branch of theVipassana movement.[5]
Nani Bala Barua was born on 25 March 1911 in a small village inChittagong,East Bengal,British India (now part ofBangladesh).[6]
In her childhood she showed an exceptional interest inBuddhist rituals and preferred to study rather than play.[4] She very much wanted to attend school but in 1923 at the age of twelve she was married and later went to live with her husband, an engineer, inRangoon (Yangon), Burma.[4] He soon left to work inBurma, leaving her with her in-laws. Eventually, she moved to Burma to join her husband. In 1929 when Nani was 18 her mother died unexpectedly, leaving behind a baby boy named Bijoy which Nani and her husband took to raise in Burma, as they had not yet had a child.
At the age of 35 Nani conceived and gave birth to her first child, a baby girl, who fell ill and died at three months of age. Four years later, in 1950, Nani gave birth to a daughter, Dipa, whereupon Nani began to be called Dipa Ma "Mother of Dipa"[4] as her daughter's survival was a momentous event. This was followed by yet another loss of a child (her first son) at birth, the sudden death of her husband in 1957, and subsequent extreme grief and physical pains.
After her husband died, Dipa Ma was extremely unhappy. One day a doctor suggested that she learn how to meditate. She attended her firstmeditation retreat at the Kamayut Meditation Center in Rangoon.[4] She soon after attended her second retreat, at the Thathana Yeiktha center, where the VenerableMahasi Sayadaw was teacher-in-residence.[4] There she experienced the first stage ofenlightenment.[4]
In 1963 she was chosen to study thesiddhis (spiritual powers) with the Indian masterAnagarika Munindra,[7] a senior student ofMahasi Sayadaw. According to scholars, theVisuddhimagga is one of the extremely rare texts within the enormous literatures of various forms ofJainism, Buddhism, andHinduism to give explicit details about how spiritual masters were thought to actually manifest supernormal abilities.[8] Abilities such as flying through the air, walking through solid obstructions, diving into the ground, walking on water and so forth are performed by changing oneelement, such as earth, into another element, such as air.[9] The individual must masterkasina meditation before this is possible.[9] Dipa Ma, who trained via theVisuddhimagga, claimed to have these abilities, but her claim was never independently verified.[10][better source needed]
In 1967, she returned to India, moving toCalcutta where she taught meditation.[4] Her first formal student was her neighbor, Malati Barua, a widow trying to raise six young children alone. Believing that enlightenment was possible in any environment, Dipa Ma devised practices that her new student could carry out at home.[citation needed]
In the 1970s, she was a teacher ofSylvia Boorstein,Joseph Goldstein,[1]Jack Kornfield,[2] Michelle Levey, andSharon Salzberg,[3] who later became prominent teachers in the United States. In the early 1980s Dipa Ma taught at theInsight Meditation Society inBarre, Massachusetts.[11]
She died aged 78, in 1989 inKolkata, India,[4] while bowing before a statue of the Buddha.[citation needed]
