Dipa Ma

Early life Nani Bala Barua was born on 25 March 1911 in a small village in Chittagong, East Bengal, British India (now part of Bangladesh).

In her childhood she showed an exceptional interest in Buddhist rituals and preferred to study rather than play. a senior student of Mahasi Sayadaw. According to scholars, the Visuddhimagga is one of the extremely rare texts within the enormous literatures of various forms of Jainism, Buddhism, and Hinduism to give explicit details about how spiritual masters were thought to actually manifest supernormal abilities. 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 one element, such as earth, into another element, such as air. The individual must master kasina meditation before this is possible.

Teaching career In 1967, she returned to India, moving to Calcutta where she taught meditation. Jack Kornfield, Michelle Levey, and Sharon Salzberg, who later became prominent teachers in the United States. In the early 1980s Dipa Ma taught at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts.

Death She died aged 78, in 1989 in Kolkata, India, while bowing before a statue of the Buddha.