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Tibetan_Ice

Dipa Ma

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http://media.rickhanson.net/home/files/MindfulnessContinuity.pdf

 

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http://www.amazon.com/Knee-Deep-Grace-Extraordinary-Teaching/dp/0963078461

 

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Although Dipa Ma Bura died in 1987, those who know something of her might very well acknowledge her still as one of the greatest Theravada meditation teachers who taught in America to date. As the book review and other reviewers have pointed out, people like Joseph Goldstein (author of �One Dharma�), Sharon Salzburg (A Heart as Wide as the World), and Jack Kornfield (Teachings of the Buddha) all trained under her guidance. In this presentation of her body of work we are now able to see the startling spirituality present in this woman�s very being. Students who trained in India and America under her still tribute her with remarkable praise.

She had been born and raised in India (Calcutta, to be exact), and at the age of 12 as so many young Indian women do, she was sent of to marry a man 33 years her elder. That initial marriage did not wind up working, and so she left for Burma and lived with another man. Her husband died and left her with a 7 year old young daughter to raise alone, which drove her into depression. Yet one night she had a dream where Buddha Shakyamuni came before her, at which point her entire life changed. With amazing intensity she was able to meditate with utter concentration, teaching the vipassana method to others in Calcutta. She was said to possess �special powers� of the mind, to which I am admittedly skeptical. Stories of cooking food with no fire, or reading people�s minds - even time travel. To me, these stories are not necessary to take something from her teaching, because �miracles� can make students become attached to miracle teachings and thus discount anything they find �not so special.� If that makes sense?

All in all, Knee Deep in Grace has a lot of PRACTICAL advice, advice on how to approach any situation as feasible. Her impression left with us is that of an almost saintly woman, who held vipassana meditation in her tiny apartment nearly every day up to her death. Enjoy the book

 

 

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From that last book:

 

You just do it

 

Speaking to me as a teacher she would ask, “What are your sittings like? Do you practice? Do you have any thoughts?” “What do you mean any thoughts? Millions of thoughts,” I would think. “Stop them.” “What do you mean, stop them? I can, with great yogic effort, but it takes me a long time to build up the samadhi.” “No,” she would simply say, “you sit down and you just do it.”

 

Jack Kornfield

 

 

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Miracles too...

 

DIPA MA DEVELOPED her supernatural powers under Munindra’s tutelage and never demonstrated them except at his request. Such powers are achieved not through insight meditation, but through concentration practices, in which the mind enters a deep state of absorption known as a jhana. While she was doing jhana practice, Dipa Ma could enter any of the eight classical jhanic states at will and stay in it as long as she wanted. In the deeper jhanas, bodily processes can sometimes slow almost to a standstill, so it is not necessary to drink, eat, sleep, move, or urinate. Dipa Ma could resolve to enter a specific jhana and “wake up” or emerge from it at a predetermined time. On one occasion, she resolved to enter the eighth jhana and stay in it for three days, twenty- one hours, eight minutes, and three seconds. She emerged from the jhana exactly to the second that she had predetermined.

 

When she left Burma, Dipa Ma stopped practicing these powers, insisting that they involve ego and are therefore a hindrance to liberation. Munindra concurred. “These powers are not important,” he said. “Enlightenment is important. You need wisdom to use these powers. You don’t want to use these powers with ego, because they are not yours. You can’t use them and think you’re the one who is powerful. This is not wisdom.”

 

Jack Engler once asked Dipa Ma if she still possessed the extraordinary powers she had acquired years before while studying with Munindra. “No,” she said. “Could you get them back?” “Yes,” she said, “but it would take a long time.” “How long?” asked Jack, thinking she would reply in terms of months or years. “Oh, about three days,” she replied, “if I really practiced.”

 

There are said to be six higher powers: five mundane powers, accessed through the extraordinary degree of concentration in the fourth jhana, and one supramundane power, attainable only through insight practice and considered a mark of full enlightenment. The five mundane powers are found in all the shamanic and yogic traditions, and occur spontaneously to a lesser extent in some individuals.

 

They are said to be:

 

Supernatural powers: the ability to transform one of the four basic elements of the physical world (earth, air, fire, and water) into another.

 

Divine ear: the ability to hear sounds near and far, on earth and in other realms.

 

Divine eye: The ability to see into the future, to see things near and far, on earth and in other realms.

 

Knowledge of one’s former births and the previous births of others.

 

Knowledge of the states of mind of other beings; that is, the ability to “read” or know the minds of others.

 

According to Munindra, Dipa Ma demonstrated each of these powers to him. The following accounts are based on Munindra’s recollections. “You may not believe it,” he said, “but it’s true.”

 

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Once Munindra was in his room when he noticed something unusual in the sky outside his window. He looked out and saw Dipa Ma in the air near the tops of the trees, grinning at him and playing in a room she had built in the sky. By changing the air element into the earth element, she had been able to create a structure in mid- air. Changing denser elements to air produced only slightly less astonishing occurrences.

 

Sometimes Dipa Ma and her sister Hema arrived for interviews with Munindra by spontaneously appearing in his room, and Dipa Ma occasionally left by walking through the closed door. If she was feeling especially playful, she might rise from her chair, go to the nearest wall, and walk right through it.

 

Dipa Ma learned to cook food by making the fire element come out of her hands. She could also change the earth element into the water element, which she demonstrated to Munindra by diving into a patch of ground and emerging with her clothes and hair wet. If she had to walk alone at night, Dipa Ma could duplicate her body, creating a companion for herself so that no one would bother her.

 

Dipa Ma’s abilities in this regard were once tested by a third party. Munindra knew a professor of Ancient Indian History at Magadh University who was skeptical about psychic powers. Munindra offered to prove the existence of such powers, and the two of them set up an experiment. The professor posted a trusted graduate student in a room where Dipa Ma was meditating to watch and make sure she didn’t leave the room. On the appointed day, the student verified that Dipa Ma never left her meditation posture, and yet, at the very same time, she appeared at the professor’s office ten miles away and had a conversation with him.

 

Edited by Tibetan_Ice
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