LESSON NINE
Cultivate the spirit of blessing

"If you bless those around you, this will inspire you to be attentive in every moment."

Dipa Ma made of her life one continuous blessing. She offered blessings to all. She blessed people from head to toe, blowing on them, chanting over them, stroking their hair.

Dipa Ma invited a student who was an airline pilot to send lovingkindness and blessings to his passengers and his colleagues while he was flying the plane. She said it would make him more alert and make everyone happy as well.

Her blessings were not reserved exclusively for people. Before boarding an airplane she would bestow a blessing upon it. Riding in a car was an opportunity to offer a blessing not only to the vehicle but also to the driver and to the men who pumped the gas.

In one of her very first teachings in America, Dipa Ma said, "Meditation is love." Her spirit of blessing throughout the day was a living example of this teaching. She reminds us that true meditation is about how we care for ourselves and the world; and that ultimately, meditation is the continual movement of love which, similar to one of Dipa Ma's blessings, encompasses nothing less than everyone and everything.

LESSON TEN
It's a circular journey

"Meditation integrates the whole person."

Buddhists speak metaphorically of "leaving the world" and "coming back to the world," but in truth there is neither leaving the world nor returning to it. We can't leave or return to our essence, to the rock-bottom truth of our being, because it is and has always been right here, hidden only by a thin film of ignorance. You don't discover it; rather you allow it to come forth, to emerge from the cloud of unknowing that surrounds you. Seeing into your true nature means realizing that you are inextricably bound to everyone and everything that lives, that you are, indeed, responsible for all that takes place in the world.

The beauty of the spiritual journey is that the path invariably takes us back around to our point of departure. When Dipa Ma suffered her childlessness, her husband wisely suggested that she adopt everyone as her own child. But in those difficult days before she encountered the teachings that would transform her life, she was lost in sadness for what she lacked, trying to "fill a hole." By the end of her life, though, Dipa Ma had indeed become a mother to all. In place of that hole that needed to be filled, there simply was a heart open to all.