“The first thing is to love yourself. You cannot progress by self doubt and self hatred. You can only progress by self love.” – Dipa Ma
We have within us an extraordinary capacity for love, joy, and unshakable freedom. One of my Buddhist teachers, Dipa Ma Barua, demonstrated this to me. When I studied with her, Dipa Ma was a grandmother and householder, and also one of the most accomplished meditators of the Theravada lineage. Until her mid-thirties, Dipa Ma had been an ordinary, devout Buddhist. Then in the space of a few years she lost two of her three young children to illness. Her engineer husband, devastated, died of a heart attack soon thereafter. After a year of lying in bed with paralyzing grief, Dipa Ma dragged herself to a temple to practice meditation. Desperate, she threw herself into her practice, and through her ardent nature and innate ability, she emerged with a deep realization. Dipa Ma was then trained and became a master of dozens of kinds of meditation and even of many special powers. Through her intense dedication and shining spirit, she became a revered teacher for many in India and in the US. When questioned about the myth that to advance to the very highest spiritual levels, you had to do it in a man’s body, Dipa Ma pronounced with a steady gaze, “Anything a man can do, I can do.” And you could feel it was true.
In the late 1970s, I visited Calcutta to see Dipa Ma again. I had been meditating for a month in Bodh Gaya, India. Because of difficulty with my airplane ticket, I had only one day to spend with her. It was a hot day, over 100 degrees. The air in Calcutta was smoggy and dirty. After I paid my respects to her, we spent some hours in deep conversation. Although I had been teaching successfully for some years, this year I was having a hard time. I had been suffering severe back pain, I was upset about a failed relationship, and before coming to India I had been working nonstop for months. Given my buildup of stress, I told her that I had begun to doubt my own capacities and ability to embody the teachings. Though she could see how shaky I was, she looked into my eyes and encouraged me to be steady in spite of it all. I could feel her strength so steady, it was as if it came into me too. When it was time for me to go, Dipa Ma gave me her usual Bengali bear hug. Then she said because I was teaching the Dharma she had a special blessing for me. Because she was so tiny, when I got down on my knees for the blessing, I was equal to her in height.
Dipa Ma stroked her hands slowly across my head and my whole body. She blew her breath on me and recited loving-kindness chants at the same time. At first it seemed like a very long prayer, but as she continued blessing me, I started to feel better and better. After ten long minutes my whole body was tingling and open. I was smiling from ear to ear. “Go and teach beautiful retreats for all those people,” she said at last. “Go with mother’s blessings.” I felt as though a loving grandmother had sent me off with her good wishes, amplified with special yogic powers. I was in bliss.
“Bless those around you. If you bless those around you, this will inspire you to be attentive in every moment.” – Dipa Ma
I walked out into the sweltering Calcutta street and caught a taxi to Dum Dum Airport (its real name). It took two hours to get there, with the driver leaning on his horn the whole way, dodging between rickshaws and traffic, cows and fumes and trash. At the airport I went through the tedious Indian customs, hours of standing around while officials looked through my stuff, grilled me, and stamped my documents. Eventually I got on the airplane for the three-hour flight to Bangkok. Bangkok was also hot and busy. The airport had long lines and more customs. Then I spent an hour and a half riding to my hotel through the slow, crowded Bangkok traffic.
All the while I could not stop grinning. I was filled with unshakable joy and love. Through the customs lines, plane rides, taxi rides, and traffic jams, I sat there with this huge smile on my face. It would not wear off. I went to sleep smiling and woke up smiling. I smiled continuously for days and felt uplifted for months following Dipa Ma’s blessing.
Dipa Ma and other Buddhist teachers demonstrate the remarkable possibilities of the awakened heart. In Transformations of Consciousness, Harvard psychologist Jack Engler reports a study of Dipa Ma and other advanced meditators. He found a degree of mental health and well-being that was the most remarkable ever seen by any scientists. He took their histories and gave them an extensive battery of tests, including the Rorschach and Thematic Apperception Tests, which measure both personality and perception. Dipa Ma’s test protocols confirmed that she had cultivated a luminous, loving mind, peaceful and completely untroubled with anger, fear, greed, or conflict of any kind. She was totally open about her inner life. Engler reports, “The tests show a cognitive-emotional transformation and integration that reflected the deepest levels of inner liberation. Then Dipa Ma spontaneously wove her test responses into an ongoing spiritual story, a narrative that revealed the whole teaching of the dharma and at the same time showed clear comprehension of the tests—a remarkable achievement none of the researchers had ever witnessed.”
“Your heart knows everything.” – Dipa Ma
Dipa Ma shows what is possible when we return to our Buddha nature. But let us remember what she always taught…. that the shining of the heart is not unique to a meditation master – it is here for us and in us. We can always invite love and blessings and freedom into our heart, wherever we are.
On March 25, 2024, we celebrate what would be Dipa Ma’s 113th birthday. I am grateful to be able to share her unshakable teachings with you all, teachings which point to the remarkable possibilities of the awakened heart.
With Metta,
Jack
P.S. If you would like to learn more about Dipa Ma, listen to my new podcast all about her life and teachings: Heart Wisdom Ep. 230 – The Inspiration of Dipa Ma
