Dipa Ma

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Dipa Ma (March 25, 1911 - September 1989) was born Nani Bala Barua in East Bengal (currently, Bangladesh). As a child, she showed an exceptional interest in Buddhist rituals and preferred to study rather than play. Unlike other local girls, she insisted on attending school, but at the age of twelve she married off and was later sent to live with her husband in Rangoon.

After her husband died in 1957, she took up vipassana meditation and made swift progress. In 1963, she began to study the siddhis or spiritual powers. In 1967, she moved to Calcutta where she taught meditation to a wide range of students. Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, and Sharon Salzberg, who later became prominent teachers in America, were introduced to Dipa Ma in the 1970s. In the early 1980s she taught at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts.