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 meets with Chakravarthi V. Narasimhan, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Inter-Agency Affairs and Co-ordination, at a meeting of the Meditation Group at the United Nations, in New York.
Sri Chinmoy offers a concert at the Blaisdell Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Sri Chinmoy offers a Peace Concert in Miroku no Sato, Fukuyama, Japan.
Sri Chinmoy lifts 27 orphaned child performers and their manager from the Oriental Circus, at the Bali Garden Beach Resort in Kuta, Bali, Indonesia.
Leonardo da Vinci Institute is inaugurated as the world’s first Sri Chinmoy Peace Institute, in Catania, Sicily, Italy.
The Ferrovia Cicumetnea, the train that circles Mt. Etna, is inaugurated as a Sri Chinmoy Peace Train (Treno Della Pace Sri Chinmoy) in Sicily, Italy. At the ceremony, Sri Chinmoy meets with the Archbishop of Catania Luigi Bommarito.
Sri Chinmoy offers the U Thant Peace Award to Dr. Ananda Guruge, Ambassador of Sri Lanka to France, USA and UNESCO, at the Okura Hotel in Takamatsu, Japan.
Sri Chinmoy offers a Peace Concert at the Canal de Musica in Curitiba, Brazil. After the concert he is interviewed about his reasons for visiting Brazil and the importance of peace in the New Millennium.
Sri Chinmoy composes his 17,000th song in Christchurch, New Zealand, just before departing for Australia.
From a public relations news release: “A 5-foot-8-inch East Indian gentleman has been spreading inner peace and yesterday raised one ton of weight with one arm using what he describes as ‘the power of inner peace.’
“Leader of regular meditations at the United Nations and U.S. Congress and honorary citizen of more than 20 states, Sri Chinmoy was recently invited to inaugurate a series of meditations for members of Great Britain’s Houses of Parliament. ...
“Sri Chinmoy led the members in silent meditation and answered a number of questions. At the conclusion, Lord Ennals remarked, “This is a great honor for us. In a place where there is often too much noise, it’s good to have this kind of silence.”
“A few days later Sri Chinmoy returned to his New York home and applied his meditative capacities to raising 1,317 pounds overhead with one arm, just over 17 months after starting weightlifting. Then the 160-pound spiritual leader went out of town for a week.
“Upon returning a few days ago he lifted 1,515¼ pounds with one arm. Then, just yesterday, as a Thanksgiving day tribute, Sri Chinmoy lifted 2,039 pounds on his first day attempting that weight. This represents nearly 13 times his body weight, far beyond the 600 pounds that ·anyone else has been reported to lift overhead with one or two arms.” — Roundup, C3
Published in the Religion section of ARIZONA REPUBLIC, Saturday, January 3, 1987
Video by Sri Chinmoy Centre, Brazil
In an interview at the end of the Peace Concert in Curitiba, Sri Chinmoy speaks about his reasons for visiting Brazil and the importance of peace in the New Millennium. In response to the interviewer, Sri Chinmoy also summarises his philosophy in a few words.
How can a bird of sorrow
Fly in a dream-sweet consciousness-sky?
Published in Journey’s Ecstasy
Sri Chinmoy composes his 17,000th song in Christchurch, New Zealand, just before departing for Australia.
After visiting the Oriental Circus in Denpasar the day before, Sri Chinmoy invites all the performers — young orphans who were taken in and taught circus skills — to a luncheon at the Bali Garden Hotel. Afterwards, he lifts all the children and their manager. (Pictured are just three of the many young performers.)
Sri Chinmoy greets Chakravarthi V. Narasimhan, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Inter-Agency Affairs and Co-ordination, at a meeting of the Meditation Group at the United Nations, in New York.
Sri Chinmoy: On behalf of the Meditation Group at the United Nations, I would like to garland you with my heart's deepest gratitude and my ever-increasing gratitude. An insignificant son of Mother India is offering his deepest love, joy, gratitude and pride to a most illustrious and supremely chosen son of Bharat Mata. This garland is our humble offering of ever-increasing gratitude for what you have been doing for the world at large through the United Nations with your all-loving heart and your ever-mounting inner cry, which is the purest aspiration. To your climbing cry to bring about a new world, a world of peace, harmony and love, we offer this with our heart's ever-increasing gratitude.
You are at once the embodiment of humanity's cry and divinity's grace. This Meditation Group would like to be with you and for you, to serve the world along with you, according to our limited capacity. You have blessed our Meditation Group today by your spiritual and divine presence and for that I shall remain eternally grateful to you and to the Supreme in you.
Today I wish to offer a most special prayer to the Supreme, the Author of all good. My prayer is that my most revered brother, Sri Narasimhan, will ascend to the ultimate height of the United Nations. You have been working for the world most sincerely from the penultimate height for a long time, and it is my most fervent prayer to the Supreme in you that one day in the near future you will ascend to the highest rung of the United Nations ladder. This is my prayer and the prayer of our small Meditation Group.
Sri Chinmoy then garlanded Mr. Narasimhan.
Mr. Narasimhan: I am deeply touched. I did not expect to be so received by you. I just wanted to be here at the first meeting of the Meditation Group in the New Year to express my personal support for the work you are doing here. ln the Eye of the Lord, there is no such thing as an illustrious son of India and a non-illustrious son of India. There is no such thing as an important person and an unimportant person. One of the first precepts of the Lord is that all are equal. And so far as I am concerned, I am very happy where I am and I am very glad that I have been spared many of the headaches that some of my superiors have had.
I also offer my hopes for the New Year, that 1975 will be better than 1974; it certainly could not be worse. Many of you know that music is my second passion. I would like to sing something for you, if I may.
Mr. Narasimhan sang an Indian song.
Sri Chinmoy: I never knew that you had such a haunting voice. I would be deeply honoured if you would come and sing for my students some time.
Mr. Narasimhan graciously accepted this offer.
Published in ‘Meditation at the United Nations’ Vol. 3 No. 1, 27 January 1975, pages 32-34.
by Sri Chinmoy
in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Sri Chinmoy requests the disciples to offer him a spiritual word. He then spontaneously gives these twenty-seven commentaries.
In the spiritual life, acceptance of reality is of paramount importance — not rejection but acceptance. We have to accept the world, we have to accept our life, we have to accept all our weaknesses and shortcomings to transform them and illumine them so that we may become perfect instruments of God. If there is no acceptance, we cannot perfect ourselves and fulfil the divinity within us.
The divine beauty is not in merely observing the world in its sorrows and joys. The divine beauty is in becoming inseparably one with the sorrows and joys of humanity's life.
The animal in us has no compassion. Even the human in us has no compassion. We use the word compassion, but it is nothing other than attachment. Only the divine in us has compassion, and this compassion is for the human in us and the animal in us. Our compassion is the life-changing miracle-power in us. With our divine compassion, we can raise the standard of humanity far beyond our imagination.
Without courage in the outer life we can still walk, but in the inner life we cannot cover even one metre if we do not have courage. Courage is of constant necessity to take one step ahead. Courage is the divinity in us that can take us into the infinite realm of silence, peace and bliss.
Delight is the spontaneous revelation and manifestation of our all-illumining soul.
Determination needs two friends to arrive at the Goal: sincerity of the heart and purity of the mind. When we have a purity-mind and a sincerity-heart, then determination can play its role most effectively and most powerfully inside our inner life and also inside our outer life. Determination is the first convincing step that expedites our Godward journey.
Devotion is the magnetic power in us. If we use this magnetic power, then we can please God sooner than the soonest. God gives us a bridge, and the name of that bridge is devotion. Both the seeker in us and God frequently cross this bridge. God comes to us to take care of our aspiration. We go to God for peace, light and bliss. Devotion is the bridge between our receptivity and God's Divinity.
Effulgence we can have only inside our God-oneness-soul. Effulgence in infinite measure we can see inside our soul. When we see the effulgence of our soul, we become the choicest instrument of our Inner Pilot. Effulgence has the power to illumine our darkness and ignorance in the twinkling of an eye. Again, this effulgence is to be found only inside our all-loving, all-inspiring and all-giving soul.
Enthusiasm is our inner beauty. Enthusiasm is our inner determination. Enthusiasm is our love of God-oneness. Enthusiasm is the capacity to destroy the unaspiring past in us. Enthusiasm is the capacity to expedite our aspiration-journey. When we have enthusiasm in our body, vital, mind, heart and soul, God immediately starts playing, singing and dancing. Our enthusiasm is God's immediate Pride in us.
Faith shows us the way to arrive at God's transcendental Palace. When we have faith, ever-blossoming faith in our heart, God shakes hands with us, God embraces us, God crowns us and makes us sit on His Golden Throne.
When we forgive the world, God proudly shakes hands with us. When we forgive ourselves and when we are determined to do the right thing, to become the right person, God immediately comes and embraces us, and blessingfully assists us to become what He wants us to become. To forgive the world is, indeed, a difficult task. But to forgive oneself is extremely, extremely difficult. In the spiritual life, we are trying to become conscious. When we become conscious, we see how consciously and deliberately we have done many, many things against our own divinity, against our Lord Beloved Supreme. So it becomes very difficult to forgive ourselves. Again, if we cannot forgive ourselves, if we cannot forgive the mistakes we have made, then God feels that no matter what He gives us — peace, light or bliss — everything will be either rejected or misused. So forgiveness of oneself is of paramount importance. That is where we must start. We must forgive the darkness in us in order to transform that darkness into peace, light and bliss.
We all need Grace in abundant measure every day, every hour, every minute and every second so that we can grow into God-manifestation and God-satisfaction-will.
If there is any short cut in the spiritual life to arrive at the Golden Shore, then gratitude is the short cut. If there is a secret and sacred way to love, please and fulfil God, then it is the way of gratitude. Gratitude embodies and reveals all our divine virtues. It is by virtue of gratitude that we can bring down God's infinite Power, infinite Light, infinite Love. Gratitude is the master key to open up all the doors of Divinity's Palace.
There are many types of power, but only heart-power knows when God's God-Hour will strike. When God's choice Hour strikes, at that time heart-power receives peace, light and bliss in boundless measure from the highest Height of Reality and Divinity.
The outer fire burns. The inner fire transforms. The outer fire burns and extinguishes everything. The inner fire burns not to destroy, but to help us to please God so that God can employ us. We feed God with our heart's inner fire. We become God's direct representative by increasing the beauty of our inner fire.
Light in the soul works most powerfully. Light in the heart sometimes works; sometimes it does not. Light in the mind on very, very rare occasions works. Light works more satisfactorily inside the physical body and inside the vital than inside the mind. Light cannot work inside the mind precisely because the mind is revolting all the time against our own inner divinity. The miraculous power of light abides inside our heart of self-giving to humanity, to God the creation.
Obedience is the source of our love, devotion and surrender. He or she who has cultivated obedience, sleepless and breathless obedience, is the Himalayan pride of our Absolute Lord Beloved Supreme.
Oneness in the heart is the fulness of life. The fulness of life is at once God's universal manifestation and God's transcendental Realisation. Today's oneness is tomorrow's fulness. Tomorrow's fulness is God's perfect manifestation here on earth.
If we have peace of mind, if our inner life is inundated with peace, God shares with us His infinite Secrets. If we have peace of mind in boundless measure, then God feels that we are becoming His representative on earth. Each peace-dreamer on earth is a special child of God. Each peace-lover on earth is a very special child of God. Again, each peace-distributor and peace-server on earth is a supremely beautiful, powerful and God-fulfilling child of God in a most surprising manner. Peace we need to become what God has in His universal manifestation and to become what God is in His transcendental Vision.
We all need perseverance in our dynamic vital to remain always under the direct Protection of our Lord Supreme and also to make progress not only in the vital but also in the body, mind and heart. If you have perseverance, then you can make fast progress.
Even by repeating the very word 'purity', one can develop adamantine will-power to protect oneself against ruthless attacks from the physical, vital and mental world.
In the spiritual life, the more we can accept responsibility, the more we can please our Lord Supreme in the manifestation of His Light here on earth. The more responsibility we accept, the more opportunity we get to manifest His Light here on earth.
When you are not one with God the Creator, when you are not one with God the creation, everything that you do for another individual or for other individuals, you feel is a stupendous sacrifice. But when you become one with God and with humanity's life, heart and breath, then there is no such thing as sacrifice. It is only a oneness-song that you are singing in the God-aspiring, God-revealing and God-manifesting universal family.
Self-mastery comes not from exercising our mental will-power. Self-mastery comes from God-obedience. Self-mastery comes through constant and conscious self-giving to the Will of God. There can be no fulfilment of God on earth if we do not have self-mastery. But this self-mastery has to come from our God-obedience, God-dependence, God-surrender, God-willingness and God-fulfilment. We can never develop or acquire the power of self-mastery unless our goal is God-discovery. Self-mastery is the very, very first step and God-discovery is the very, very last step of our God-climbing ladder.
The soul cannot be separated from delight. Delight cannot be separated from the soul. The soul is the universal Beauty of God the creation and delight is the transcendental Fragrance of God the Creator. So if we want to swim in the sea of the soul's delight at every moment, consciously we have to increase our love of God, our devotion to God and our surrender to God and God's Will.
When I pray, I feel that I am a chosen, supremely chosen instrument of my Lord Supreme. When I meditate, I know that He is going to be successful eventually in turning me into another God.
The mind wants to dominate us, but if we surrender to the mind, then we only add more confusion to our life. If we surrender to our heart, which is in tune with the soul, then at every moment we surprisingly and perfectly grow into the universal Consciousness of our transcendental Reality. When we surrender to our heart, we know what God's Will is. Our conscious, constant, sleepless and breathless surrender to God's Will definitely expedites our God-manifestation-task here on earth.
Published in Rainbow-Flowers, part 2
by Sri Chinmoy
in Curitiba, Brazil
My divinity’s heart
Lives far beyond
The sea of time.
My life loves the beauty
Of the finite.
My heart enjoys the fragrance
Of the Infinite.
When life knocked
At my door,
Joy accompanied my life.
When death shall knock
At my door,
Peace shall accompany my death.
God's Forgiveness-Heart
Perhaps has time to waste,
But not God's Justice-Eye-
Never!
God Himself cradles
My devotion-heart
In His Power-Blessing-Arms.
Mine is the life
Of sleepless and breathless surrender.
God's is the Heart
Of priceless and tireless Satisfaction.
May my mind always remain empty
Of freedom.
May my heart be always full
Of God-surrender
And God-oneness-freedom.
A universe of book knowledge
Cannot quench even an iota
Of the heart's thirst for God.
I must trumpet
My soul-
The ignorance-challenger
And ignorance-conqueror.
My mind,
The impossibility-sower,
Must finally surrender
To my heart,
The God-manifestation-fulfilment-grower.
Published in My Christmas-New Year-Vacation Aspiration-Prayers, part 2
by Sri Chinmoy
in Yogyakarta, Indonesia
From the higher worlds
The spiritual Masters,
Out of their infinite bounty,
Come down to visit me,
Bless me most powerfully,
Speak to me most affectionately
And appreciate my God-service
To humanity
Most unreservedly.
Published in My Christmas-New Year-Vacation Aspiration-Prayers, part 28
by Sri Chinmoy
in Varna, Bulgaria
Hope is at once
Sweeter than the sweetest
And
Stronger than the strongest.
Time
Destroys
The human in us.
Time
Employs
The divine in us.
The mind
Wants war.
The hand
Supports it.
Open your heart!
Close your lips!
This is how a seeker
Must speak to God.
Explore, explore!
Very soon
You will be able to knock
At God’s Heart-Door.
Each day is my
Heart-blossom-opportunity-day.
As the highest height
Is for us,
Even so, the lowest abyss
Is against us.
Published in My Christmas-New Year-Vacation Aspiration-Prayers, part 57