Dipa Ma

Dipa Ma was born Nani Bala Barua in 1911 in a village on the Chittagong plain, in what is now Bangladesh. She married Rajani Ranjan Barua, an engineer about twice her age, at twelve, and later joined him in Rangoon. She took the name Dipa Ma, “mother of Dipa”, after the birth of her daughter.

Her husband died suddenly when she was in her mid-forties. She was in deep grief and in poor health. A doctor advised meditation, and she went to the Kamayut meditation centre in Rangoon, intending to stay for the rest of her life. A dog bite cut short that first retreat and she went home. Anagarika Munindra, a family friend who studied under Mahasi Sayadaw, encouraged her at fifty-three to come to the centre where he practised. This is why her teaching is placed in the Mahasi lineage.

When the Burmese government ordered foreign nationals to leave in 1967, she moved to Calcutta, where her daughter would have better opportunities. She taught householders from a small apartment there.

Lion’s Roar names Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield among her students. It also quotes other students, including Michele McDonald-Smith, Jacqueline Mandell and Sharon Kreider. Stories of her attainments and powers circulate widely. They are reports from her students and biographers and have not been independently verified.

She died in 1989. Amy Schmidt, a resident teacher at the Insight Meditation Society, wrote an account of her life and teaching, Knee Deep in Grace.