Video by Utpal Marshall
On March 3rd 1979, Sri Chinmoy completed his first marathon in Chico California in a time of 4:31:34. Each year since then, his students in New York and around the world have honoured him by running the 26-mile distance.

Video by Utpal Marshall
On March 3rd 1979, Sri Chinmoy completed his first marathon in Chico California in a time of 4:31:34. Each year since then, his students in New York and around the world have honoured him by running the 26-mile distance.
Sri Chinmoy gives a talk about meditation and answers 36 questions on the topic at the Sri Chinmoy Centre in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Sri Chinmoy is interviewed on ‘The Steve Powers Show’ on WMCA-AM Radio in New York, NY, USA. Listen to the interview...
An exhibition of Sri Chinmoy’s Jharna-Kala artworks opens at the Centre De Réadaptation in Quebec City, QC, Canada.
Sri Chinmoy completes 100 Indian stories in 19 days, later published a Great Indian Meals: Divinely Delicious and Supremely Nourishing.
Sri Chinmoy offers a Peace Concert and delivers a lecture, entitled ‘Peace: Tomorrow’s Blossoming Smile’, at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, USA.
The Dharma Vidya Bhavan Garden is declared a Sri Chinmoy Peace-Blossom in Bali, Indonesia.
Sri Chinmoy meets With Emilio C. Macias II, Governor of Negros Oriental Province, in Dumaguete, the Phillipines.
Sri Chinmoy composes his song, ‘Bhulite Diyona Tomar Charan’.
Sri Chinmoy holds a 4-hour meditation for the completion of his poetry series Twenty-Seven Thousand Aspiration-Plants and begins a new poetry challenge, Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, in Cancún, Mexico. Read more…
Sri Chinmoy offers a Peace Concert at the Sheraton Bandung Hotel in Bandung, Indonesia.
Indonesia is declared a Sri Chinmoy Peace-Blossom-Nation, with the inauguration ceremony held at the Putri Bali Hotel in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia.
Sri Chinmoy receives the Heart of Indonesia Award.
Burkina Faso is declared a Sri Chinmoy Peace-Blossom-Nation.
Sri Chinmoy receives the Heart of Australia Award, dedicated by Federal Member of Parliament Trish Worth.
Sri Chinmoy composes his 11,000th Bengali song Tumi Amar Sneher Putul Amar Ranjana.
Sri Chinmoy lifts 12 people at the Grand Bali Beach Hotel in Sanur, Bali, Indonesia.
A library wing holding 2,400 of Sri Chinmoy’s books is dedicated in a ceremony at Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, India.
Sri Chinmoy speaks about ‘The Future of the Marathon’, just two days after finishing the Orange Bowl Marathon in Miami, Florida, USA.
Aphorisms on Art by Sri Chinmoy
1.
A new art will give you new pleasure. New pleasure is another name for self-transcendence.
2.
Because you are a sincere seeker-artist, God will give you the capacity to avoid frustrating and contradictory paths. He will lead you along a single path, the path of aspiration-trees with inspiration-flowers.
3.
For a God-manifesting artist, there will always be a world of inner sunshine.
4.
Do not be curious; do not be anxious. Lo, a new art world is dawning to glorify and satisfy you.
5.
If you are an earth-bound artist, then you have to turn toward the Truth-Beauty. If you are a Heaven-free artist, then the Truth. Beauty will turn towards you.
6.
A spiritual artist sees stark frustration as a signal to try harder than ever.
7.
A human artist wants to radiate his artwork through his imagination. A divine artist wishes to radiate his artwork with what he inwardly and really is.
8.
Do not listen to your mind. Do not tolerate your mind. Lo, you will overnight become the master-artist of your life.
9.
O artist, I tell you a supreme secret: Your outer success may temporarily be enjoyable, but your inner progress will everlastingly be profitable.
10.
O artist, because you live in the divided thought-world, your mind-power is useless and your heart-power is hopeless.
11.
The divine artist who, at every moment, offers the beauty and purity of his artwork to his Inner Pilot knows that his inner joy can never have any equal.
12.
Because you have not corrected and simplified your difficult life, you are finding that it is an extremely difficult task to become a good artist.
13.
The artist who sees through himself before and after completing each of his pieces of art is going to be the artist unparalleled.
14.
Do you want to cancel your past mistakes? Then ask your mind to learn the art of unlearning, and ask your heart to learn the art of crying.
15.
If you want to see yourself extremely beautiful, then sit down on your inner mountain peak and start painting your life.
16.
Truth-consciousness is a form of divine art. This art frightens the desiring mind and inspires the aspiring heart.
17.
Each unnecessary thought is a colossal failure in the mental art. Therefore, ask your mind to house only necessary thoughts.
18.
An iota of impurity is a damaging reality in the psychic art. Therefore, ask your heart not to give shelter to impure feelings.
19.
The human art is to see the world and possess the world. The divine art is to love God the creation and sing the song of inseparable oneness with God the Creator.
20.
Each act is a piece of art. The supreme Artist, my Beloved Supreme, has already completed the supreme Art. Right before me, He has placed His Eternity's Lamp. But alas, I have not yet started my own art work, and I do not know when I shall start. My art work is to illumine my inner life, placing the Lamp inside the depth of my heart. My art work is to guide my outer life, carrying that Lamp with me.
Published in Jharna-Kala Art Quarterly, pages 7-8, Vol. 3, No. 3.

Sri Chinmoy is interviewed on ‘The Steve Powers Show’ on WMCA-AM Radio in New York.
Listen to the interview...
broadcast on the Steve Powers Show, WMCA-AM Radio in New York City
Steve Powers: I’d like to introduce you to a special guest. His name is Sri Chinmoy. I welcome you, Sri Chinmoy. My first question is: When did you feel that you wanted to devote your life to spirituality?
Sri Chinmoy: When I was quite young, I felt deep within me an inner urge to realise God and to be of service to God.
Steve Powers: Do you think that is in every person?
Sri Chinmoy: Yes, it is within every person, but one has to cultivate this reality. It is like a muscle. If you take exercise, then you develop the muscle.
Steve Powers: Why is that not more natural to us? Shouldn’t that just come naturally?
Sri Chinmoy: It comes naturally, but the difficulty is that we have been wallowing in the pleasures of ignorance for millennia. Then there comes a time when we start walking along the right path. Once we are well established in our path, it becomes normal and spontaneous.
Steve Powers: Why do we have so many problems finding that path? Especially in our society today, people are awfully confused. People do not know which way to go, what to believe in, what not to believe in, what is the truth, what is not the truth, what is good and what is evil. And there is such tremendous input into our minds of new ideas that it’s difficult for us to know what is good and what is not.
Sri Chinmoy: Unfortunately, most people are living in the mind. In the mind, the question of good and bad thoughts, divine and undivine thoughts, plays a considerable role. But if we live in the heart where we find oneness and identification, then we go beyond duality. We suffer from confusion and live in confusion because we live most of the time in the mind — the doubting mind, suspicious mind, intellectual mind, sophisticated mind. If we can live in the heart — the loving heart, the aspiring heart, the oneness-heart — then this confusion will not arise.
Steve Powers: You are not an anti-intellectual as such, are you? You do believe in the intellect?
Sri Chinmoy: I do believe in the intellect. I have tremendous faith in the intellect. But at the present time, many intellectuals criticise feelings, inner feelings. Most intellectuals adopt a snobbish attitude. It is not that I am saying that intellectuals are bad or the intellect is very bad, no. But right now the intellect does not care for the light that illumines the world. Those who live in the intellect are satisfied with what they feel they have, and what they feel they have is a superior sense of reality. At times they look down upon those who live in the heart and who feel the necessity of the heart. But if the intellectuals feel the necessity of the light that we see in abundant measure in the heart and if they want to embrace that light, then we feel that they are doing the right thing. For the divine light has to play its role inside the intellect.
Steve Powers: Many people get up in the morning, swallow a quick breakfast, run out of the house and go to their subway, get to work and get completely involved with everyday survival. And before the end of the day it’s pretty tough to sit back and take a spiritual view of what’s going on because you have to go out there and hustle. You have to earn a living. Is there a way of integrating the spiritual life into what we call the economic life?
Sri Chinmoy: Our philosophy is the philosophy of wisdom: first things first. Most human beings are wanting in peace, peace of mind. They enter into the hustle and bustle of life right in the morning, and during the whole day they do not have even an iota of peace. We feel that if we can do first things first we are being wise. Early in the morning, if we can pray to God for at least a few minutes, that means we are doing first things first.
We feel it is money-power, material wealth, that will give us satisfaction. But it is not material power; it is the inner power, spiritual power, that gives us real satisfaction. If God the Almighty Father is satisfied with us, if He is pleased with us, then He will grant us peace of mind. And once we have peace of mind, no matter where we go and what activities we enter into, still we feel a sense of satisfaction. Right now satisfaction is a far cry. But early in the morning if we pray to God and meditate on God for a few minutes, then we get peace of mind to some extent. And this peace of mind is undoubtedly true satisfaction in life.
Steve Powers: Do you believe that God provides?
Sri Chinmoy: God does provide. He is the Creator and He is the creation. How can you separate the Creator from the creation? When you write a poem or when you compose a song, you feel your identification and oneness with the creation itself. God has created us, so how can He separate us from His own reality?
Steve Power: Now, let us go to our phones. Good morning, you are live on WMCA.
Caller: When I choose a particular Guru, should I look at him as a person or should I try to see him as just a pure channel of God?
Sri Chinmoy: If you have a teacher, then it is best for you to look at the teacher as a channel, as an instrument of God. You are an instrument of God and your teacher is also an instrument of God. But the difference is that the teacher has become a conscious instrument of God whereas right now you are an unconscious instrument of God. So by listening to the teacher, you will eventually become a conscious instrument of God, as the teacher is right now.
Steve Powers: When you say, Sri Chinmoy, that someone should look at his Guru as an instrument of God, are you saying that he should accept whatever the Guru tells him without question?
Sri Chinmoy: It entirely depends on his faith. If he has implicit faith in the Master and if he feels that the Master is really sincere, then it is advisable to listen to the Master all the time. But I don’t want him to make a mistake, a blunder, by blindly following the teacher when he does not have implicit faith in him.
Caller: If you learn peace and serenity from a Guru, you may have peace and serenity in your own mind and heart, but what do you do about people in the street who are not the same way?
Sri Chinmoy: If I practise spirituality, then I get peace of mind; and if you practice spirituality, then you get peace of mind. If he practices spirituality, then he gets peace of mind. So in this way the number increases. Today you get peace of mind, tomorrow your friends, your relatives, your acquaintances get peace of mind. Again, we believe in vibrations. When we see a spiritual person, a seeker or a saint, immediately we feel a kind of inner purity inside him and we get inspiration from deep within to lead a better life ourselves. Then, we also believe in the theory that birds of a feather flock together. If we become sincere and spiritual, then we shall be mixing with other spiritual and sincere people. In this way we can increase the number of good people here on earth.
Caller: How do you know whether you are speaking to God or just speaking to yourself and saying it’s God?
Sri Chinmoy: Satisfaction is the only thing that you want, that he wants, that I want. Satisfaction is of paramount importance. Now, I have eaten a mango. If I am satisfied, then it is more than enough for me. If you ask, “How do you know that you have eaten a mango?” then my answer will be: “If you want to see, then next time I am going to eat, you can be my guest. I will invite you to be with me and see for yourself whether I am eating the mango or whether I am fooling myself or fooling you.”
Steve Powers: In other words, experience it in part yourself?
Sri Chinmoy: Yes. If you want a history professor to teach you history, then you have to come and sit in his class. Also, you have to have some basic knowledge about history. Only then will the professor be able to teach you. I am a spiritual teacher. If somebody comes and says, “How do you know that you have realised God?” then I will ask that person to come to me with the basic knowledge, the basic requisites of sincerity and purity. You come to me with sincerity and purity in a meditative mood for a few minutes, and I shall make you feel whether what I am saying is true or not.
Steve Powers: I think one of the callers was asking, in effect: If I become sensitive and mellow and spiritual, will I not get eaten up on the street by the sharks? Do you know what I mean by that?
Sri Chinmoy: I know. If I am one with you, then how can you destroy me? Just because I am not one with you, you can do some harm to me. Oneness is strength. When we identify ourselves with a higher reality, how can we be destroyed? How can we be devoured? A child identifies himself with his father. The father is strong; he is a man of knowledge. The child feels that nothing will harm him because his father is there. On the strength of his oneness with his father, the child feels he is quite safe; he can go anywhere he wants to because he has a father with wisdom, strength, capacity. So here also, if one practises spirituality, then one is consciously identifying oneself with the highest omnipotent Power. So how can we be devoured in the street? Identification solves all our problems. If we identify ourselves with a higher Source, a higher Reality, we have to know that this higher Reality definitely has enormous power, boundless power.
Steve Powers: One of the problems I think people have is that even if they pray and meditate or if they just try to be good, when they go out into the world they find there are people there just waiting to rip them off. They see no justice.
Sri Chinmoy: There is justice, but we do not know what God’s Justice is, or how it operates. Again, God’s Justice and His Compassion are inseparable. Good people and spiritual people can pray and meditate for divine protection, and also to illumine mankind. If we are assailed by undivine people when we go out, we can easily pray in the morning not only for our own protection, but also for the illumination of unlit people. If we can sincerely pray for the transformation of the undivine people in the world, then this world of darkness and chaos cannot remain as it is.
Steve Powers: You are telling me we can transform humanity as the direct result of prayer?
Sri Chinmoy: Prayer and meditation can solve all our problems. But we cannot expect immediate or overnight results. Everything takes time.
Steve Powers: But don’t you think people are living in very difficult circumstances who do pray, and then watch their children fall prey to drugs and crime and all sorts of abuses in our society?
Sri Chinmoy: Unfortunately, many people feel that this is their only life. Some people feel that this incarnation is the first and last. But we believe in reincarnation. There is a Sanskrit word, karma, the law of action and reaction. Who knows what we or our children did in our previous incarnations? Now we are totally oblivious of these former lives. Sometimes we do something wrong and only after a few years do we pay the penalty. But we do not realise that we may also have to pay the penalty for things we did wrong in previous lives. That is how God’s Justice works.
Caller: I was brought up in my daily life to ask God to help me with the things that I wanted out of life. But I find that I don’t have any of the things I wanted, and now God is asking me to do things for Him rather than to expect things from Him.
Sri Chinmoy: God will never demand from us more than we can offer Him. We are His beloved children. The mother will not place a heavy load on the shoulders of a small child. Even an ordinary earthly mother knows how much a child can carry. If the mother sees that the load is too much for the child, then she will not ask him to carry it. God is our eternal Father and Mother. He is everything to us. He will not demand of us something we cannot do. God is not imposing on you. God does not impose. Either you are making yourself feel that God expects something from you, or you are making yourself feel that you do not have the capacity to fulfil His expectations.
Caller: I have tried for several years to become a more spiritual person in my own way, with very little knowledge of it. I had one or two experiences which have frightened me. I don’t understand them and yet I believe in them. I would like to ask Sri Chinmoy how I could continue to further my knowledge and develop myself so that I could begin to experience more.
Sri Chinmoy: It is a matter of sincerity — how sincerely, how earnestly and how desperately you need to go beyond the experiences that you have already had. If you continue practising spirituality, which you have been doing for a number of years, then I assure you that you will make progress. It is a matter of regular practice. You have to practise regularly, soulfully and devotedly what you have been doing it is your regular practice that eventually will give you higher and deeper satisfaction.
Steve Powers: Sri Chinmoy, I know people who are most kind and gentle and yet have no belief in God. They seem to be fine human beings even though they have no interest in spirituality. From your point of view, do they need realisation of what you are talking about?
Sri Chinmoy: From my point of view, they do need realisation. They are kind, they are good, they are sympathetic, they are sincere, they are pure, they have magnanimous hearts. These are the divine qualities they have got from the highest Source. But this is not enough. These things do not and cannot complete our human illumination. For our total illumination, we need conscious and constant oneness with the highest Source.
Caller: I was trying to give some healing to my father who was not too well, and I felt some energy moving in my hands. Am I right to feel that this and other kinds of experiences that I’ve had may be coming from God?
Steve Powers: You are asking about healing? I guess first we have to establish whether you believe that there is a force of healing.
Sri Chinmoy: I do believe in the force of healing.
Steve Powers: And the source of the force?
Sri Chinmoy: The source of the force is God, the all-Good. God is omnipotent; again, He is all Love. So it is from His Love that the healing power comes into existence.
Steve Powers: If there is a healing power, why do we need specific methods in order to heal? In other words, let’s assume that God is the Source and He is capable of healing whomever He wishes. Why do certain people feel that they have to go through a number of incantations, wave the hand over the disturbed area four times to the right, three times to the left and so on? Why these systems?
Sri Chinmoy: It is a matter of faith. Some people feel that if they do particular things, then someone will be cured, while others feel it is not necessary. You are dealing with individual faith. Some people use incantations in order to reach a higher state of consciousness, while others feel it is all within them, so it is necessary only to pray and meditate. You pray to God to give you the capacity to please Him in His own Way, and God will do the rest.
If I pray to God for His own fulfilment in and through my life, naturally He will do what is best for me. Some people pray to God, “God, grant me this. If I have this, then only will I be able to become a good instrument of Yours. I am now suffering from a headache and stomach upset. If You cure me, I will be able to have a good meditation.” But others say, “No, I wish to please You in Your own Way. If it is Your Will that today I do not meditate, if You have something else for me to do, if You want to give me an experience of suffering, then this is best for me. I do not know what is best for me. What is best for me only You know.”
Caller: I have intellectual pursuits, but I do believe in a very, very deep spiritual life and I have become much more of what I would call a human being. But the more you become that, the more you are eaten, as you said before, by the sharks, by the life around you. What is to be done?
Steve Powers: That’s a very important question in our society. This woman feels that the more she allows herself to become sensitive, the more pain she feels and the more vulnerable she is to the sharks who seem to be constantly circling her.
Sri Chinmoy: I sympathise with her, I sympathise with you. But I wish to say that sometimes we see a dark tunnel before we see sunlight. Before dawn, the hour is the darkest. Right now we are experiencing the world as a harsh reality. The world is torturing us. We are trying to be good, kind, sympathetic, spiritual in every possible way, but in return we are being tortured by humanity. But we have to continue in our faith that God is all Power and that He is going to have a perfect creation. If we have faith in our own gradual perfection, then we will have the same kind of feeling about others. Right now if I look at myself and see what I am, as compared to what I was ten years ago, I would definitely notice an improvement. Ten years ago I was not, let us say, as divine as I am now. Ten years ago I was also, let us say, undivine. But I cried and I tried and my Lord was pleased with me, so He has granted me some light, some peace, some divine qualities. That’s why today I have become a better human being. So if I can make progress, I feel that others can also make the same progress. Today they are undivine, but tomorrow, like me, they can become divine. Not what one is right now, but what one will eventually become is what is most important. So these people who are now a threat to us need not and cannot remain a threat all the time because it is God’s Will that we make progress.
Caller: If God is all-loving, why does He permit suffering?
Sri Chinmoy: ‘Suffering’ is a term we see in the dictionary. When we suffer, we feel tremendous pain inside us; there is no joy inside us. But I wish to say that suffering is a state of consciousness. When we practise spirituality and yoga, we feel that this suffering is nothing but an experience. And when we dive deep within, we feel it is not we who are having this experience of suffering; it is God Himself. He is the Creator; He is the creation. He is the Doer; He is the action itself. So the more we identify ourselves with the Source, the more we feel that what we call suffering is not suffering at all. It is an experience that God Himself is having in and through us for the fulfilment of His infinite Vision. I call it suffering, you call it suffering, but God does not call it suffering. He calls it an experience. It is a state of His own infinite Consciousness.
Steve Powers: Nonetheless, the person who is suffering, in the common sense of the word, is in pain.
Sri Chinmoy: He is in pain because he has identified with the earth-reality. But if he identifies with God, then the suffering itself will be turned into delight.
Steve Powers: If I drop a hammer on your foot, will you feel suffering or will you feel delight?
Sri Chinmoy: If I remain in an ordinary consciousness, then I will feel it as suffering. But if I am in a divine consciousness, then either I will take it as delight or I will take it as an experience of God in and through me. At the age of eight or nine I had a serious operation. I told the doctor I would like to watch the operation. The doctor said it was a serious operation, but I said, “No!” Right before the operation I put a very concentrated force on it, and during the operation itself I was smiling at the doctor. The doctor was horrified. On the strength of our concentrative power, we can transform suffering into delight itself if it is God’s Will. And again, if we want to experience the suffering and take it as an experience, we can do this. But if we do not transform suffering into delight, and if we do not take it as an experience of God in and through us, then it will hurt us deeply.
Caller: I recently made a decision to change my lifestyle and let my family and friends know I was living a spiritual life. Instantly I was besieged with a barrage of complaints and criticisms.
Steve Powers: What you are talking about is the reaction of the people around you to your spirituality. I think that when people try to live a more spiritual life, there is a negative reaction from the people around them, who say such things as, “What, are you out of your mind?”
Sri Chinmoy: It is a matter of choice. If I really want God and if I really feel that my goal is situated to the north, then I shall walk to the north, no matter what others say. Others have not given me satisfaction, but now I feel that there is something or someone else that will be able to give me satisfaction. Those who are criticising you in no way have given you satisfaction. Now you are looking for satisfaction deep within by praying and meditating. If they criticise you, if they ridicule you, you must not pay any attention to them. In this world there will always be people to criticise us, and again, there will be people to sympathise with us and inspire us. So the best thing is to know what you want. If you want satisfaction, then you walk along the road of prayer and meditation.
Caller: I had a deeper study of religion for about seven years, which gave me a closer relationship to God. I tried to see the good in everyone around me, always to see them as God, as spiritual beings, as good children. At this time I lost a son in an accident. How am I supposed to accept this in my life? Is it God’s plan, or is this my reward for being good?
Sri Chinmoy: If we really sincerely pray to God, then we develop a specific quality within us of oneness with God. Eventually, we develop the capacity to say soulfully and sincerely, “Let Thy Will be done.” We ultimately feel that it is for a necessary experience that we have had a catastrophe in the family. After all, God loves the child whom we have lost infinitely more than we do. When we love God, we realise that His capacity for Love is infinitely greater than ours. You are God’s child, and the son whom you have lost is also God’s child. The Supreme Father always knows what is best for each individual.
Steve Powers: But don’t you still suffer the loss on a human level?
Sri Chinmoy: We do not suffer very much if our identification and oneness with God is complete. On the strength of our oneness we shall feel that for a few years God gave us another person to stay with us, and now he is needed somewhere else. We will suffer very little if our oneness is complete. But if we have established only a little oneness with God, then we shall suffer miserably on the human level.
Published in Truth’s Fountain-Melody
Bhulite diyona tomar charan
Bhulite diyona tomar nayan
Bhulite diyona tomar bachan
Bhulite diyona tomar swapan
Amar jibane amar marane
Ogo mor prananath
Laho laho pranipat
Bhulite diyona bhulite diyona bhulite diyona
My Lord Absolute Supreme,
Do not allow me to forget Your Feet.
Do not allow me to forget Your Eye.
Do not allow me to forget Your Message.
Do not allow me to forget Your Dream.
In my life and in my death,
O Lord of my heart,
Do accept my prayerful obeisance
My Lord, do not allow me to forget You.
Do not allow me to forget You, do not.
Published in One Thousand Lotus Petals, Part 1
Recorded at Sri Chinmoy’s home in October 1999...
“I have sung these songs according to my inspiration. However, I advise others who wish to sing them to follow the original notation found in my songbooks.” — Sri Chinmoy
A talk by Sri Chinmoy
(Just two days earlier he finished the Orange Bowl Marathon in Miami, Florida)
Often people say they will never run a marathon again. During or after the race they say that this is their last marathon. Then after four days they start thinking about their next marathon.
In ten or twenty years, people will regard the marathon the way we regard a ten-mile race today. People will consider forty miles or seventy miles or a hundred miles as long distance. Long distances will be as popular as the marathon is today. People will pay more attention to fifty-milers and hundred-milers.
Now people are doing so well in the marathon. In four or five years the best runners will run the marathon in under two hours. In twenty or thirty years people will run at a five-minute pace for fifty or a hundred miles. The children of people who are running the marathon now will run at the present marathon pace for thirty or forty miles, and then even farther. They will have such stamina. Sports are like that. Roger Bannister’s four-minute-mile record lasted for years. Then the hundred-metre record stayed for years. Jesse Owens’ long-jump record stayed for twenty years before it was broken by Bob Beamon. But ultimately all records are broken.
Published in Run and Become, Become and Run, part 13
Sri Chinmoy does repetitions with a 50-lb dumbbell in Bandung, Indonesia, as weightlifting assistant Unmilan Howard looks on with an eye to safety.
Earlier in the morning, Sri Chinmoy offers two payers before lifting:
At 4:51 a.m., he lifts 400 lbs. two hundred and eight times with one arm. (108 right, 100 left in five sets).
My Supreme, my Supreme, my Supreme,
May I worship You sleeplessly
And breathlessly
In my love-devotion-surrender-delight-
Temple-heart.
My Supreme, my Supreme, my Supreme!
At 5:05 a.m., using the double-arm machine, he lifts up to 160 lbs. with each arm simultaneously from a standing position.
My Supreme, my Supreme, my Supreme,
Today I am determined
To smash asunder
My mind’s long and strong
Desire-train-chain.
My Supreme, my Supreme, my Supreme!
Published in My Morning Soul-Body Prayers, part 2
I am pleased to have been asked to support “the Heart of Australia Peace Award” for Sri Chinmoy, for his service and dedication to peace in the world.
The people of Australia have always cherished and sought to preserve peace and harmony not only without our own continent but also to encourage and foster peaceful endeavours and projects worldwide.
Australia has a proud history. Our nation has shown concern for human rights at home and overseas and has played a leadership role in promoting peace.
In my role as Federal Member for Adelaide, I have joined with school children and community leaders in activities such as the Sri Chinmoy Peace Run to raise awareness in the community. It is fitting to acknowledge the role played by Sri Chinmoy in promoting peace with “the Heart of Australia Peace Award.”
— The Hon. Trish Worth, Federal Member for Adelaide
January 24, 2001
Sri Chinmoy receives the Heart of Australia Award, dedicated by Federal Member of Parliament Trish Worth.
A library wing holding 2,400 of Sri Chinmoy’s books is dedicated in a ceremony at Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, India.
by Sri Chinmoy
There was a very rich man who had a slave. One day the slave saved the rich man’s only son from drowning. His master was extremely pleased with him and set him free. Not only that, but he also gave him lots of gifts and money plus a large sailing boat.
Now that the ex-slave had money, he hired some people to work his boat and set out on a voyage across the ocean.
Alas, one day there was a terrible cyclone. The boat sank and everybody drowned, except this former slave. He began swimming towards a nearby island. When he reached it, he saw that many people were waiting for him, crying with delight, “The King has come! The King has come!”
The man said, “Why are you calling me King? I have lost everything except this loin cloth that I am wearing.”
Everyone said, “This year you will be King. Every year we have a new king. You are King for this year.”
“But I don’t understand,” said the man.
“We appoint a new king every year and now it is your turn,” they said.
“Why are you so kind to me?” he asked. Then he said to himself, “Perhaps God, out of His infinite Bounty, is doing this since I have lost my boat.”
So he turned to the crowd and asked, “Tell me only one thing. Is it only for a year?”
“Yes,” came the reply.
“Then what will happen?” he asked.
They said, “Well, we shall throw you off of the island.”
He asked, “Then where shall I go?”
They answered, “We only know that the King rules for one year. Then he must leave the kingdom.”
The ex-slave asked, “Please, send me the wisest man in the kingdom.” When the man came, the new King asked, “Is it true that each king rules only for a year and then must leave the island? Then God alone knows what happens to him. Is there any advice you can give me so that at the end of a year I don’t become a beggar again?”
“Yes,” said the wise man. “Now that you are King, try to make yourself another kingdom on a nearby island. Transform another island into a kingdom by sending your people to make roads, gardens, houses and so forth. Do everything in this one year. When you have established another kingdom, why do you have to worry? At the end of the year you can go there.”
“How is it that my predecessors did not do this?” the man asked.
The wise man explained, “I told them, but they did not listen to me. They kept saying, ‘In a few weeks we shall do it.’ Then, two months before their reign was up, I used to tell them again, but they didn’t think of their future.”
The King said, “I will definitely listen to you. People will go find a new place where they will build another kingdom like this.” The wise man said, “Will you do it, or will you have the same fate as your predecessors?”
“No,” said the King, “I won’t allow myself to have the same fate. I will start from today to send people to do the needful.
“Always we have to think of the future. Always we have to remember that the future grows in the present. If there is a gap between the present and the future, if we do not think of the future, then some calamity will always take place.”
So the King sent out his subjects to build a new kingdom, and at the end of a year, the King went there and started ruling it.
There was once a King who used to appreciate poets and learned men in his kingdom. He would always shower gifts upon them and hold various contests in which he would give them awards.
There happened to be a poor poet who was poor not only in his outer life but also in his poetry. Everybody used to go to the palace and recite poems they had written about the King, and appreciate and flatter the King. But this particular poet would not or could not go.
His wife was very upset over this, and she kept telling him, “One day you have to go. How long can we remain poor? We have children, and we cannot meet with our expenses. You must go!”
The poet did not want to anger his wife because she had a bad temper and he was afraid she might do something drastic. So he went to the King and said, “I have written an excellent poem on you.”
The King said, “All right, leave it here and come back tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” the poet asked. “You won’t read it today?”
“No, tomorrow,” the King said.
The following day, when the poet returned to the palace, the King was giving away alms to the poor. Many people were standing in line, and each one came up and received something from the King. Then the King started calling the poets to come to him. But the King did not call out the name of this particular poet. The poet was puzzled and surprised, but he did not know what to do.
At long last the King turned to this particular poet and said, “I have given my alms for today. It is all over. We have had a wonderful meeting and everything is all over. You go home and take a shower and have something to eat.”
The poet said, “When shall I come again?”
The King said, “Why will you have to come again? Don’t you have a copy of the poem which you have left me? When I have time, I just read the poems. I have already read your poem. It is not necessary for you to come back.”
The poet said, “Lord, Lord, I am very poor.”
The King said, “I know you are very poor. You told me some sweet words in your poem, and I am also telling you some sweet words: please go home, take a shower and eat.”
The poet said, “I have come here not to have appreciation for my poems, O great and rich man. I have come for something else.”
“O poet,” the King said, “your poem was beautiful, the metre was perfect, everything that a good poem needs your poem had in every way. Your poem about me was perfect. You have tremendous capacity, but you should not waste your capacity in writing such beautiful poems about a human being. You must write about God. He is the Creator, the Almighty. You have got divine capacity so you have to utilise it only for God. This kind of flattery I don’t deserve. If it is sincere then I don’t deserve it. If it is flattery, I don’t need it. Only God deserves this kind of praise, and infinitely more. Since you have the capacity, you write about God; write about the Supreme Poet Himself. By writing about Him, you will get more capacity and you will write infinitely better poems.” The King then threw away the poem which the poet had written about him.
The poor poet said to himself, “Alas, alas what am I going to tell my wife? To please her I came. To make her rich, I came. Now I have not got a rupee from the King. O God, bad luck is everywhere. He who is cursed with bad luck will have the same fate everywhere, for bad luck knows how to dog a human’s fate.”
The Buddha told this story as something that took place in one of his previous incarnations. At that time, he was a simple man with a wife and three daughters. He was always kind to people and was dearly loved by his family. Unfortunately, he died before he could marry his daughters so he felt very sad. When he entered into the soul’s world, he observed what was happening on earth, and saw that his family was almost poverty-stricken.
So he returned to his family as a beautiful golden swan and said to his wife, “I have come to you in this form. Once a month I shall come and leave one of my gold feathers for you to sell. In this way you will easily be able to meet with all your expenses.”
So every month he used to come and leave a golden feather.
The wife was very happy, and the daughters also were so delighted when they saw their father. The swan used to stay for a few minutes and then leave.
One day an idea entered into the wife’s mind: “My husband may not come regularly, or he may change his mind and stop coming, or he may grow old and die. The best thing is for me to catch him and strangle him the next time he comes, so that I can take away all his feathers.”
The daughters were simply shocked: “How can you do this kind of thing, Mother?”
The wife said, “All right, I won’t strangle him. But I will take away all his feathers. If he cannot fly anymore, no harm. You will take care of your father.”
The daughters pleaded with their mother, “Please, we love our father so deeply. He is so kind to us. He could have stayed in the soul’s world, but he comes in the form of a swan to help. Look at his love for us.”
But the mother would not listen. The next time the bird came, she caught hold of him by the neck and took away all his feathers, one by one.
It was most painful to the swan and he cried and screamed most pitifully: “What are you doing? I have been so kind to you.”
When she was finished, the bird was suffering like anything and it could not fly anymore. Then all of a sudden all the golden feathers turned into ordinary white feathers: they no longer were made of gold.
The greedy wife felt miserable and the daughters were smitten with grief. But what could the daughters do? Their mother was so cruel. Then the mother went inside her room and opened a box where she had been keeping the gold feathers that she had accumulated but had not yet sold. She knew that she still had many gold feathers, enough to meet her family’s expenses for at least six months. But as soon as she opened the box, she found that these feathers, too, had turned into ordinary white feathers; they were no longer gold.
The three daughters, with great love and affection, each day fed the poor swan and showed him tremendous concern. The mother was now helpless; she hated her fate. “This is what happened because of my greed,” she said to herself.
The daughters said to her, “This is what you have done! Even if our father had not come for six months or one year, we could have lived comfortably on the golden feathers that you had saved in your box. Now father does not have golden feathers anymore.”
The father said, “This is your fate, my fate.”
Slowly and steadily the feathers of the swan grew back again, but this time they were pure white, so the wife did not bother to take them from the bird. Finally the bird was able to fly away. The children were very happy that the bird was released. Now their father would be happy. They said, “He will be able to do everything in his own way.”
The mother felt miserable, not because the bird had gone away, but because of her stupidity. She was not going to get any more golden feathers and once again she was poor.
Published in Great Indian Meals: Divinely Delicious and Supremely Nourishing, part 5
A talk by Sri Chinmoy
about the New Year to his students, in New York
My dear children, this is my most and most blessingful request to each and every one present here. Each night before you go to sleep, while seated on your bed, only for three to five minutes please pray and meditate. Also, please sing or recite the new song, Bhulite diyona. This is the translation:
My Lord Absolute Supreme,
Do not allow me to forget Your Feet.
Do not allow me to forget Your Eye.
Do not allow me to forget Your Message.
Do not allow me to forget Your Dream.
In my life and in my death,
O Lord of my heart,
Do accept my prayerful obeisance.
My Lord, do not allow me to forget You.
Do not allow me to forget You, do not.
Those who have learnt the song and those who are good singers can sing the song, and others can just recite it.
Once more I am making my most blessingful request to each of you. At six o’clock in the morning, please meditate for ten minutes. Only wash your eyes, face, nose and especially your ears. When we meditate, at that time the cosmic sound reverberates in the depths of our aspiration-heart, so our earthly ears may get some benefit from the cosmic sound AUM, the soundless sound.
Then at night, whenever you go to bed — at ten-thirty, eleven-thirty or midnight — please meditate for three minutes at least while seated on your bed.
My dear children, my sweet children, what I am saying applies also to those who are not physically here. This year either we will be able to offer our supreme victory to our Lord Beloved Supreme, our Eternity’s only Goal, or we will offer Him the worst possible defeat. Remember, it is up to you to offer Him the worst possible spiritual defeat or your supremely glorious victory.
Please remember this poem:
I never want to count
My heart’s aspiration-moments.
I just want to multiply
My life’s dedication-hours.
Your life’s dedication-hours please multiply this year. Make yourself worthy of your inner life, your spiritual life. Dear ones, it is up to you. Take every moment seriously.
When I came to America, when I came to the West, the Supreme in me did expect to have supremely chosen instruments to manifest His Victory here, there and everywhere. My oneness with your heart, my oneness with your life, I shall never be able to make you feel — never, never. But if you yourself dare to feel my oneness with your heart and with your life, then you are bound to feel that your victory is my victory, and your defeat is my defeat, for I am one with you, inseparably and eternally. Because I have accepted each of you, your defeat is my defeat, and your victory is my victory.
You have the golden chance to be the pioneers of this divine vision that I embody, the divine vision that I have entrusted you to spread all over the world. I am extremely, extremely fortunate to have your souls — such beautiful, such loving, such self-giving souls — for my supreme cause. There is not a single soul that is not one hundred per cent sleeplessly for me. All your souls, according to their individual development, are here on earth only to love the Supreme in me, only to serve the Supreme in me, only to fulfil the Supreme in me. If you can dive deep within and if you can get just a glimpse of your soul for a brief moment, then you will see the inseparable connection and oneness that your soul has established with me to manifest the Light, the Peace and the Divinity of our Lord Beloved Supreme. I want that Light, that Peace and that Divinity to manifest in and through your lives.
I beg of you, I beg of you, I beg of you not to fail yourselves, not to fail your souls. Make me the happiest person both on earth and in Heaven by pleasing me and fulfilling me here on earth, for I am your own highest. Your absolute highest is your Master, Sri Chinmoy. If you have faith in me, you have faith in your soul. If you have faith in your soul, you have faith in me. We are inseparable.
Swami Vivekananda gave his Inspired Talks at Thousand Island Park in 1895. The West may not have accepted, or could not accept his light, but I know that millions and millions of Indians received boundless inspiration, boundless encouragement and boundless enthusiasm from his Inspired Talks. Over the years, I have also given many, many, many inspired talks. I know that those talks have helped you enormously in your inner life of aspiration and in your outer life of dedication. Again I am telling you now, please take your life of aspiration and your life of dedication as supremely important. I am begging you to dedicate more of your life. If you have the capacity, then give talks, here, there and everywhere. Give classes and, in as many ways as possible, inspire people. Work together, work together.
A great Indian figure happened to be a disciple of a spiritual Master of the highest order. Once, at a time when this particular disciple was suffering from one of the worst possible attacks of doubt — doubting his Master, doubting himself and doubting the spiritual life — he was asked by a seeker to talk about his Master. He spoke so soulfully, so powerfully and so profoundly that, while speaking, he brought his own tears of gratitude to the fore.
Then the disciple wrote to his Master, “I have been doubting you, Master, so much. I have been doubting my spiritual life. I have been doubting the whole world. Even a few hours ago, my existence had no value; everything was negative. But in speaking about you, Master, I have made everything positive, and I have made myself happy. How can it be? Surely I am the world’s worst possible insincere person. I am a hypocrite!”
The Master replied, “My child, how proud I am of you! While you were speaking about me, your soul got the opportunity to come to the fore and manifest your own divinity and your own light in the heart of that sincere aspirant. When you feel that you are doomed to disappointment, when all the negative forces are coming to you, at that time if you speak highly of your Master, highly of your spiritual life, highly of your path, do not think that you are a hypocrite, that you are fooling yourself or fooling the sincere seekers—far from it! During your mind’s darkest hour or your life’s darkest hour, your soul, on the strength of its inseparable oneness with the Supreme and with your Master, got the golden opportunity to convince your mind, which was either in the barren desert or in the thick forest. Your soul was able to grab your body, vital and mind and bring them into your own heart-garden to see how beautiful you are and how fragrant you are.”
These are my interpretations. The Master did not use these exact words, but I know what that particular Master actually meant. I am telling you all this because I see that some of you are at times sad and depressed; you may have all kinds of vital and mental problems. The golden way to overcome these problems is to talk to people about the spiritual life. If you feel that your consciousness has descended, then sing my spiritual songs or talk to your friends about the spiritual life.
Like today’s song, Bhulite diyona, all my soulful songs are bound to help you. If you want your own light to come to the fore, sing a few songs or listen to a tape of my voice. My voice has a very special connection with your soul and with your heart. No matter whether I am singing well or not, my singing voice has a very, very, very special connection with your soul, with the divine in you. Please listen to my voice or my flute or some other instrument of mine that you like.
This is God’s universal Game. When we play a game, who wants to accept defeat? We will do our very best to be the winners. In this case, who is our opponent? It is the undivine, unlit, destructive forces that are trying to threaten us and devour us. We call them hostile forces. Again, the Supreme has kept inside each human being a roaring lion. We must bring to the fore the roaring lion in us, and roar and roar to manifest the divine light that we already have. The more we can be of service to mankind, even if we only offer an iota of light to an individual, the more the Supreme is bound to bless us with His abundant Light. And when we offer our abundant light to others, then He will be able to give us infinite Light.
In my heart-garden I have employed you with my boundless love, boundless affection and boundless fondness. You are my helpers, and I want each of you to bring a few more plants with your aspiration, with your dedication. Try to make our heart-garden as vast as possible, as beautiful as possible, as fragrant as possible. My children, you have the capacity and you are the capacity. I want each one of you to offer the supreme success, supreme glory and supreme victory to our Lord Beloved Supreme.
I do not mind if you are not proud of me, but in all sincerity, I want to tell you how proud I am of your souls, for they know who I am and they know what I stand for. Their soul-lives and soul-breaths at every moment are for me, for me, for me. Your outer life may not be for me. It may be for yourself, for other human beings, for your career or something else. But your soul has a breath, Eternity’s Breath. Your soul’s breath is for me, for me, for me, only for me. Therefore, how grateful I am to your souls, how proud I am of your souls, you cannot imagine. It is far beyond your imagination the love, devotion and surrender that your souls have for me, for they know who I am and who they are. They are my supremely chosen instruments. In your souls is my life-breath.
I am begging each and every one of you to give me the opportunity and to give me the assurance to be inside your life-breath at every moment. I have you inside my heart. Unfortunately, some of you do not have me inside your heart. If you see me and feel me, my living presence, inside your heart, you will not be able to do even one thing wrong, discouraging or displeasing. The moment you do not feel my living presence or my nectar-smile, the moment you fail to see me inside your heart, alas, alas, you fall victim to self-doubt, lack of faith, frustration and other undivine forces.
I am telling you, I see inside you the living Presence of my Lord Beloved Supreme. Him I see and Him I feel at every moment inside you. Therefore, at every moment I am dealing with my own Guru inside your heart. Please feel my smile, my tears, my gratitude, my pride in you.
How many good things you have done for me over the years! I will not be able to count how many good things you have done for me. I am requesting all of you only to think of how many good things you have done for me, not how many good things I have done for you. I am begging all of you to think of how many good things you have done for me since you joined the path. Think of how many ways you have pleased me, how many ways you have loved me, how many ways you have served me, how many ways you have fulfilled me over the years. You will be so proud of yourself. Right from the day you joined our path, try to remember the special ways you have offered your love, devotion and surrender. Think of my oneness-divinity with your heart, with your life, with your soul. Then any discouraging forces that have now become part and parcel of your life are bound to disappear, for your golden moments are the most pleasing fragrance-perfume in your life and in my life. Forget about how many good things I have done for you. I am only telling you to remember and to count in how many ways you have pleased me over the years. Then all your divine qualities once more will come forward.
Do not think, even for a second, about whether you have disappointed me in any way inwardly or outwardly. I am begging you to take the positive side. Think in how many hundreds and thousands of ways you have pleased me with your love, devotion and surrender. Only remember where, when and how. I assure you, you will be inundated with your own divinity. It is you who are going to prove that you are, without fail, my supremely chosen instruments. You are not only for yourselves; you are for the entire Creation of our Lord Beloved Supreme. God the Creator is inside you, and He wants you to serve and fulfil God the Creation around you.
My dear ones, I am inspired and I shall remain inspired. I do hope my inspiration-light, which I have just now brought down from the highest Heaven to offer to you, has entered into you, and you have become a totally different person from this moment. I am a beggar for your smiling heart radiating on your face and from your eyes. The eternal beggar in me wants you to be happy, divinely happy, supremely happy, so that your happiness radiates on your face and from your eyes. From your outer life, it has to radiate all over the world to illumine the world.
I know who I am. Unfortunately, I cannot make you see and make you feel who you truly are, who you are to me, who you are to the Supreme. But if we work together, then I shall definitely be able to make you feel who you are to me and who I am to you. We need each other. I need you for the manifestation of the Supreme here on earth. You need me for the highest realisation. I will be known as the tree, and you will be known as the flowers and fruits. Immortality’s flowers and Immortality’s fruits I want to dedicate to aspiring humanity. Again, I am the bird and you are the wings.
Whatever I have said has gone very, very far, because it has entered into the Universal Consciousness. These words I get from the Transcendental Consciousness and I offer them to the Universal Consciousness. You are part and parcel of the Universal Consciousness, plus you are nearer than the nearest to me.
The most important thing I have said is for you to think of how many good things you have done for me. Only remember in how many ways you have shown your love, devotion and surrender to the Supreme in me. Think how readily, happily, cheerfully, willingly and eagerly you have pleased me over the years. You will be so proud of yourself. Just try to remember those golden moments. It will take a few months to count them! All your depression, frustration, feelings of uselessness and other negative qualities will disappear. Any kinds of spiritual fevers that you may have now, which are making you absolutely miserable and paralysed in the spiritual life, will disappear. You will no longer remain inside the dry, barren mental desert that you have been walking through, or the thick forest that you have created for yourself. You will come back again to your own heart-garden. Again you will be able to run faster than the fastest.
And also try to feel my presence. The way I feel your presence inside me, inside my heart, I want you to feel my presence inside your heart at every moment.
By remembering how many good things you have done for me, I shed tears of gratitude. I swim in the sea of my gratitude-tears. In how many countless ways you have served the Supreme in me, loved the Supreme in me and fulfilled the Supreme in me! Those are your possessions, your own divinity-manifestations.
Published in Live in the Eternal Now

Sri Chinmoy begins a new poetry challenge, Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, in Cancún, Mexico. Read more…
My Lord,
You have commanded me
To offer You
Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees.
I shall obey Your absolute Command.
Published in Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, part 1
In the small hours of this morning, my soul was in my transcendental consciousness and my heart was in my universal consciousness.
My Supreme, my Supreme, my Supreme stood in front of me and said to me, “No retirement, no retirement, no retirement for you, My child!”
I said to my Supreme, “What more do You want from me, what more?”
He said to me, “Seventy-seven thousand.”
Immediately I said to Him, “Is it Your Wish, is it Your Request, is it Your Will or is it Your absolute Command?”
He said, “It is My absolute Command.”
Then I said to Him, “I do not think I am going to live on earth that long.”
He said to me, “My child, I command you to start, I command you to start. You know and I know how long you are going to be on earth, but I want you to start. This is My absolute Command.”
“My Supreme, my Supreme, I shall obey Your Command, I shall.”
— Sri Chinmoy
24 January 1998
Published in Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, part 50
Sri Chinmoy speaks about the book and answers questions in Huangshan, China
Sri Chinmoy: When I wrote this particular book, I was really, really in a childlike consciousness. With a childlike consciousness, there is no mind involved. If we can approach children’s hearts, if we can be at their level, how sweet it is! In this respect, sometimes grandparents are so good. They are seventy or eighty years old and their grandchildren are little, but they never think of the age difference; they never try to give the little ones advice. On the contrary, they would like to be as simple and as spontaneous as their little ones.
If teachers can teach their students with the same feeling, the students will get tremendous joy from learning. In a child’s game, if a grown-up who is very strong and stout joins, and if this person just shows off and scolds the other players, then the children will get tired of playing with him. Why do they need him? But if the same grown-up comes and plays with enthusiasm, and if in spite of being an excellent player he makes mistakes, then the children get such joy. Similarly, when you are teaching children, you have to feel that you are seven years old. Do not feel that you are the oldest and wisest person. Do not think of your power-aspect. Think of your love-aspect.
Children are our dreams. Children are our heart-flowers. If we can welcome them with our hearts, it is to our great advantage.
Question: In your book, you present an ideal vision of childhood. What of those people whose childhood experiences were not sweet?
Sri Chinmoy: You are saying that in some countries, because of their poverty, children perhaps have not got sweet experiences from their childhood, from their parents. But, in general, even if they are poorer than the poorest, those children have received affection. There is not a single country where children are not shown affection.
In wartime it is different. During a war, there are horrible stories. There may be a dearth of food. But these stories are very rare. In general, no matter how poor a country is or how poor a family is, as soon as a child takes birth it receives affection. Affection does not depend on material prosperity.
I tell you, many poor people in India have more affection for their children than some wealthy people in America, forgive me to say. I come from Bengal, India. There, in one of the poorest countries, we have more affection and love than many people in the so-called rich countries. In America and in other Western countries, people have money. They can have a maidservant, this and that. Then the parents can go out to work and the children will be with the maidservant in the home. But in India it is not like that. When the children are born, the mothers give up their jobs. No matter how poor the family is, it is a matter of heart. What I am saying is a matter of heart.
If circumstances are adverse, the children may not get sweet experiences; but I wish to say that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, children have got sweet experiences in their childhood.
Question: What if your childhood experiences were of suffering rather than sweetness?
Sri Chinmoy: If you feel that your parents were not nice, if you did not get good treatment from your parents right from your infancy, then you have to take your imagination as a reality. Imagine once again your childhood. You were brought up in one family, but right around you, in your vicinity, some parents were extremely, extremely nice to their children. Identify with them, identify, identify! This is not a false approach. Your parents brought you into the world, true, but I wish to say that imagination is a reality of its own.
Always try identification. You did not receive love and affection, perhaps, but now you can definitely apply your imagination and imagine love and affection. Just think of one particular family where the parents were so indulgent to their children. That imagination will definitely give you sweetness, happiness and a feeling of inner fulfilment. Just spread your imagination-wings! You are like a bird. Spread your wings and just fly to a country, imagine a village and see a particular place. What you are seeing is so true!
Again, you cannot separate your existence from your parents. You were born into a particular family. Definitely you had a father and a mother. If you are dissatisfied with them, with their way of being, you will go your own way. Children grow up and start their own families. But after going their own way, can they say that their parents are no longer their parents? Never!
Now I am coming back to the question. If your parents were not kind, just imagine sweetness, sweetness, sweetness. Early in the morning, look at a flower, look at the dawn. If you can identify yourself with nature, you are getting tremendous joy. At that time, are you thinking about how your parents struck you black and blue? You are the same person, but your wisdom has to work. You have to bring forward sweet memories, sweet memories, sweet memories. If you do not have sweet memories in your immediate family, that cannot prevent you from getting sweetness from your childhood.
Now that you are mature, you have to use wisdom at every moment. Exercise wisdom, wisdom, wisdom! Sometimes in a family, parents get angry. They stop their children when they want to go to university, or they do not pay the costs. Then days turn into weeks, weeks into months and months into years. In the end, if one accepts the spiritual life, it means one has to forgive them. It is very difficult sometimes, when we do not forgive a person, to bring sweetness out of our memories of that person.
If your parents were not nice, first forgive them. By harbouring bitter memories of your parents’ so-called misconduct, you will never be able to bring your own inner sweetness to the fore. You have to forgive your parents and forget the sad experience. If absolute necessity demands, you may even have to forget about your parents. Only try to imagine yourself, with your consciousness as a seven-year-old, to see how children elsewhere were given tremendous affection, sweetness and fondness.
Question: How much does our childhood influence us?
Sri Chinmoy: It depends on the family, it depends on the parents, it depends on the environment. If you come of a religious family, a spiritual family, then there is every possibility that this will be stamped on your forehead, or it will be written on the tablet of your heart. There is every possibility that the seed that was sown by your parents will germinate and become a huge tree with many flowers and fruits.
It all depends on the individual. There are many people who have received tremendous, tremendous affection as children. It is stamped in them. I was mischievous to the extreme, I was notorious, but this did not prevent my parents from showing me affection. I still have the source, the inner source. My parents were good, kind and compassionate.
Sometimes, at the very end of one’s life, the parents’ affection and compassion remains because they have influenced the person’s life so much. Again, after fifteen or twenty years, some people do not care for their father’s good qualities or their mother’s good qualities. They want to stay on their own.
One particular disciple is one of those who thought of their parents’ strengths. She was not yet on the wrong side of fifty when her father died. Look how much affection she had for her father! By that time, he was unable to see; he was blind. How lovingly she took care of him! If she had not been a good daughter, she could have said that she had her own life, she had her own husband and children to look after. But the affection and love which she received from her father when she was a little child became so solid and permanent in her heart that at the very end of his life she was full of gratitude to him. Otherwise, during those last years of his life she could have said, “Oh, no — I have other things to do now.”
Many children keep no connection with their parents. When they hear that their parents have gone to the other world, only then they come for two or three days. Even for one day some children will not come. And, to my greatest astonishment, even if they live in the same state it may happen that they do not come. Even for two or three weeks at the very end, they cannot take care of their parents. They think that somebody else will do it, their brothers or their sisters will do it. They feel that they have played their role and the parents have played their role.
Everything depends on the individual — how much the individual wants to retain the affection, love, sweetness and fondness from his parents. In some cases, no matter how much you give to the parents, they want more and more and more. Their demands never end. Then what can you do? I have seen a few cases like that. At every moment the parents will expect something from their children. Even when the children are thirty, forty or fifty years old, even when they have their own families, the parents do not give them freedom. They will phone up in the morning and say, “Do this for me, do this for me, do this for me.” What can you do at that time? There is no hard and fast rule. Some parents make constant demands. They say, “Because I am your mother” or “Because I am your father you have to do this.” These parents have to think of their children’s new life as well.
Published in You Belong to God