Evolution of love

Have fun along the way

Have fun along the way

"I am quite happy. If you come to meditate, you will also be happy”

Jack Engler asked Dipa Ma about the place of fun in
Buddhist practice. "This all sounds very gray " he said. “Getting rid of the passion, getting rid of anger, getting rid of desire. It seems like a kind of gray existence. Where's the juice?"

"Oh, you don't understand!" Dipa Ma burst out laughing. "There is so much sameness in ordinary life. We are always experiencing everything through the same set of lenses. Once greed, hatred, and delusion are gone, you see everything fresh and new all the time. Every moment is new. Life was dull before.
Now, every day, every moment is full of taste and zest."

Eric Kolvig remembers a group interview in which Dipa Ma's
playfulness was expressed in an unforgettable image.

"Dipa Mas grandson became upset about something in the kitchen. He let the world know about it in the willful way that is common in two-year-olds and dictators. She called him to the couch, where she laid him face down across her lap and comforted him by stroking his back and patting his tush—an age-appropriate blessing. A blue and yellow plastic toy dump truck lay beside them.

With the profound serenity that never left her, Dipa Ma picked up the toy, placed it upside down on her head, and continued with the dharma point she was making. She kept it on for the rest of the interview. That is how I will always remember patting the butt of the pacified child on her lap and discoursing on the dharma with a blue and yellow dump truck on her head. Dipa Ma was a great spiritual warrior, the greatest I have known. On her head that toy truck became the warrior noble helmet. I say that only half in jest.”