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’s month-long (22 May – 17 June) Jharna-Kala exhibition at the Bankers Trust Company on Park Avenue in Manhattan, New York, NY, USA, comes to a close.
Sri Chinmoy delivers a lecture, entitled ‘Ingratitude and Gratitude’, at the University of Edinburgh, in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.
An exhibition of Sri Chinmoy’s Jharna-Kala artworks is officially opened by Juan Albors, Secretary of State, at the Department of Education in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Sri Chinmoy offers a concert and meditation at the Kongress Hall in Augsburg, Germany.
Sri Chinmoy delivers a lecture, entitled ‘O My Seeker-Friends’, in Tawes Theatre at the University of Maryland, College, MD, USA.
Sri Chinmoy invites ‘the father of long-distance running’ Ted Corbitt to officiate at the Father’s Day Marathon, beginning at 3 a.m., at Flushing Meadows Park in New York, NY, USA. Later in the day, Sri Chinmoy composes a song, ‘Father’s Day No, Children’s Day Yes’.
Sri Chinmoy offers a Peace Concert at Aspiration-Ground in Jamaica, NY, USA.
Sri Chinmoy competes in the 100-metre event at the USATF Masters Meet at Matawan High School, in New Jersey, USA. His time is 16.20 seconds.
An article about Sri Chinmoy’s third meeting with Mother Teresa is published in Asia Online, No. 127 Vol. II.
Sri Chinmoy meets with Mother Teresa for the fifth and final time at Missionaries of Charity House in the Bronx, NY, USA.
Sri Chinmoy gives a Father’s Day talk to his spiritual children at Aspiration-Ground in Jamaica, NY, USA.
Sri Chinmoy lifts 16 people, including numerous professors, at St. John’s University in Jamaica, NY, USA. Sri Chinmoy also offers a short esraj performance.
Sri Chinmoy honours legendary Indian singer Lakshmi Shankar at a ‘Lifting Up the World with a Oneness-Heart’ programme, at Aspiration-Ground in Jamaica, NY, USA. Sri Chinmoy also offers a short esraj performance.
Sri Chinmoy’s month-long (22 May – 17 June 1975) Jharna-Kala exhibition at the Bankers Trust Company on Park Avenue in Manhattan comes to a close.
280 PARK AVENUE, NEW YORK
J. PHILLIP BURGESS, ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT
July 11, 1975
Sri Chinmoy
Dear Sir:
Thank you for letting Bankers Trust Company host an exhibition of reproductions of your work at our office at the corner of Third Avenue and 52nd Street from May 22 to June 17, 1975.
The exhibition attracted considerable attention both from passers by on the street and from visitors inside the office.
May you have every success in your artistic endeavors.
Sincerely,
JPB/bsc
Published in AUM – Vol. 2, No. 6, 27 June 1975
June 5th (New York), Nobel Prize Laureate Mother Teresa met with international peace server Sri Chinmoy at the Missionaries of Charity House in the Bronx. The two shared privately about their projects and experiences in the service of humanity. Members of the Sri Chinmoy Center sang three songs written by their teacher to the words of the Christ and to Mother Teresa’s words:
“I am so happy to see you, Sri Chinmoy, after such a long time!” exclaimed an affectionate Mother Teresa on seeing Sri Chinmoy.
“Once more I have come to receive blessings from you,” replied Sri Chinmoy.
Mother Teresa recited her own words to the song sung in her honor: “The fruit of silence is prayer. The fruit of prayer is faith. The fruit of faith is love. The fruit of love is service. The fruit of service is peace.”
Mother Teresa described her work in taking young men and women in jail and helping to change their lives. “Your infinite compassion is conquering the whole world,” responded Sri Chinmoy deeply moved. Mother Teresa stated, “you do so much for us all.”
At a previous meeting in Rome in October 1994, Sri Chinmoy presented Mother Teresa with the U Thant Peace Award. Since that time, the two spiritual leaders have kept up an active exchange. Mother Teresa said “I am so pleased with all the good work you are doing for world peace and for the people in so many countries. May we continue to work together and to share together all for the Glory of God and for the good of man. Sri Chinmoy met Mother Teresa 20 years ago at an Interfaith Program held at the UN. Sri Chinmoy is an acclaimed author, poet, artist, composer, musician and athlete who is widely known for his service for peace.
Published in Asia Online, No. 127 Vol. II, June 17–June 23, 1996
Sri Chinmoy competes in the 100-metre event at the USATF Masters meet in New Jersey. His time is 16.20 seconds.
Sri Chinmoy invites ‘the father of long-distance running’ Ted Corbitt to officiate at the Father's Day Marathon, beginning at 3 a.m., at Flushing Meadows Park in New York.
Later in the day, Sri Chinmoy composes a song, ‘Father’s Day No, Children’s Day Yes’.
Sri Chinmoy meets with Mother Teresa for the fifth and final time at Missionaries of Charity House in the Bronx, New York. In honour of her upcoming birthday on 27 August, which is also Sri Chinmoy’s birthday, Sri Chinmoy presents Mother Teresa with a special book of spiritual poems and songs he had written for her, entitled Mother Teresa: Humanity’s Flower Heart; Divinity’s Fragrance-Soul.
Mother Teresa to Sri Chinmoy:
“Pray for us that we continue to do God’s Work, and I will pray for you that you grow in great love for God and spread that love everywhere you go. Thank you very much. You must come to Calcutta and you must bring all the singers from your group to Calcutta.”
Sri Chinmoy about his meeting with Mother Teresa:
“In Mother Teresa I see so much of Mother Mary… Other women saints have prayed and have been very spiritual, but their works have been limited to a particular town or city or village. Here, in her case, the whole world she has covered. Is there any place she has not gone!”
Published in Humanity’s Flower-Heart, Divinity’s Fragrance-Soul, part 2
A lecture by Sri Chinmoy
at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Dear seekers, dear brothers and sisters, I wish to give a short talk on ingratitude and gratitude. These are two forces. Ingratitude is a destructive force, whereas gratitude is a constructive force. Every day in our multifarious activities, either we express ingratitude or we express gratitude to our fellow beings.
Ingratitude is not our inability to acknowledge the gifts we receive from others. Ingratitude is our deliberate unwillingness to acknowledge the gifts we receive from others. Gratitude is receptivity, the receptivity that acknowledges others' gifts, others' love and concern. Each time we express gratitude, we expand our hearts.
Receptivity can be increased. How can we increase our receptivity? We can increase it by cultivating it. The farmer cultivates the ground and then he sows the seed. He waters it and eventually the seed germinates and grows into a sapling and a tree. Here also, when we cultivate our gratitude-heart, we get the opportunity to sow our pure love there. This pure love grows into true concern, and true concern eventually becomes inseparable oneness.
When we want to pick a beautiful flower from a tree, we look around to see if anybody is observing us. We feel that nobody should know that we had to take the flower from some other place. We want to show the world at large that this flower was ours right from the beginning. In order to do that, we try to destroy the branches of the tree.
We receive gifts from our friends in the inner worlds but we don't want others to know about it. So we speak ill of our inner friends, consciously or unconsciously. We want to make the world believe that we are self-sufficient, but the rest of the world knows that we are receiving something from others. Ingratitude is nothing but a sense of inferiority, an inferiority complex. The gifts we get from others we do not want to acknowledge. We are afraid to expose ourselves to others.
Ingratitude, impurity and the doubting mind go together. It is impurity that divides and separates us and does not allow us to have the feeling of oneness or gratitude. And this impurity unconsciously or consciously is treasured by the doubtful mind. Gratitude, purity and the loving heart always go together. The gratitude-flower grows in our purity-heart. Purity expands our heart. Purity awakens our entire being within to the highest level of consciousness. The heart is self-giving. And what is self-giving today becomes tomorrow God-Delight and God-Perfection.
Here we are all seekers. Some of us are extremely sincere, while others are to some extent sincere. Those who are sincere seekers of the highest magnitude are all gratitude to the Supreme. When they observe their relationship with the Beloved Supreme, they see that He showers upon them Peace, Light and Bliss in abundant measure from above. If they forget to offer their gratitude to their Inner Pilot, the Inner Pilot does not mind. He immediately forgives them. The Beloved Supreme is bound to forgive even insincere seekers if they forget to offer their loving gratitude while on the way to the Ultimate Goal. God is infinitely above our ingratitude-heart. But although God may forgive the seeker, the sincere seeker may find it impossible to forgive himself. When his sincerity-flower petal by petal fully blossoms, he gets tremendous pangs in the inmost recesses of his heart if he has not offered gratitude to the Supreme.
God does everything unconditionally. We try to become His perfect instruments and we try our utmost to become worthy of His infinite Compassion, infinite Love and infinite Light, Peace and Bliss. Our ideal is to be like Him. Our inner cry is to become exactly the same as our transcendental, universal Pilot Supreme.
Within us is the animal kingdom, the human kingdom and the divine kingdom. The animal in us does not allow us to become fully human. The human in us does not allow us to be fully divine. The animal in us is anger, jealousy, impure thoughts; these are the animal forces within us. They don't want us to become properly human. The animal in us is a hungry tiger. The human in us often feeds the tiger. But instead of being grateful, sometimes the tiger devours us. The human in us is our sense of division. The human in us wants to control itself without being part and parcel of any collective group. Always it wants to remain off by itself. It does not want to go to the divine, to the all-pervading, the all-loving, all-illumining and all-fulfilling divine. The divine in us brings us joy, love and satisfaction. But the human in us devours this joy and then does not care for the divine. It speaks ill of the divine. It falls short of the divine and then it becomes totally indifferent to the divine. It remains aloof and makes us feel that the divine does not exist. So the animal in us does not want the gift that it gets from the human in us, and the human in us does not want the gift from above.
But again, we are all evolving. The animal in us is evolving into the human and the human in us is evolving into the divine. The divine in us wants to go to its Source, the Supreme. The human in us tries to become divine by mixing with someone who consciously embodies divinity and spirituality. When we see a spiritual Master, when we see a saint or a sage, someone who is embodying Peace, Light and Bliss, we try to serve him, please him, become a member of his inner family, spiritual family. Then when we become spiritual, we try to please our Eternity's Beloved Supreme. We try to become the exact prototype of His universal and transcendental Existence.
The animal grows into the human by serving, the human grows into the divine by serving, the divine grows into the Absolute by serving. While serving, we offer our gratitude, for it is the higher force that has granted us the opportunity to develop through our service. There are millions and millions on earth who are still fast asleep. But we have been awakened. By whom? By a higher force. So each time we get the opportunity to serve, we feel that it is because a higher force has kindled the flame of aspiration and dedication inside us. Therefore we are grateful. Gratitude looms large when we are given the opportunity to be of service to the Supreme in mankind. This gratitude-power is our expansion-power, our self-expansion-power. Each time we offer our gratitude to the Supreme, we expand our hearts and grow into the universal Heart and transcendental Reality.
Published in My Rose Petals, part 6
A talk by Sri Chinmoy
at Tawes Theatre, University of Maryland; College, Park, Maryland
My seeker-friends, do not be doomed to disappointment. Who says that you are helpless in your spiritual life? Who says that you are hopeless? Who says that you are useless? No, you are not helpless, you are not hopeless, you are not useless, my seeker-friends. What you do in your inner life, do in your outer life. Every day in your inner life you cry for greatness, goodness and perfection in your nature. Do exactly the same thing in your outer life. Daily cry for greatness, goodness and perfection.
How can you achieve greatness, goodness and perfection? My seeker-friends, it is not an impossible task. Today it seems to be impossible, but tomorrow it will become possible and the day after it will not only be possible but practicable and inevitable, too.
My friends, in order to achieve greatness in your outer life, what you need is a mind that knows how to concentrate. A mind that knows how to concentrate can easily solve your problem. Now, before you start concentrating, I wish you to imagine a one-pointed arrow piercing the veil of ignorance-night. Please do not belittle the power of imagination. Imagination has a world of its own and imagination itself is a world of its own. Today’s imagination-flame tomorrow shall grow into imagination-reality-sun. Imagine an arrow. Observe it piercing the veil of ignorance and then start concentrating. Lo and behold, yours will be an amazing power of concentration, and greatness will be within your easy reach.
In order to achieve goodness in your life, you need a heart that knows how to meditate. Before you start meditating, try to imagine a beautiful and soulful dawn. Beauty, purity, soulfulness and divinity in all its forms the dawn embodies. Just try to imagine the dawn and then meditate. Feel in the depths of your heart all the divine qualities that the dawn embodies. Yours will be a profound meditation and goodness will inundate your entire being. My seeker-friends, try it. Undoubtedly you will be crowned with success.
Now you need perfection, perfection in your inner nature, perfection in your outer life. In order to achieve perfection, what you need is a life of cheerful, soulful and unreserved self-giving. Before you offer yourself to the world at large, try to imagine a tree right in front of you. On the strength of your imagination-power, try to imagine a beautiful, peaceful tree. Observe the tree and see whether there is anything that the tree does not offer to us, to mankind? The leaves, the flowers, the fruits, the branches, the trunk, the roots: everything that the tree has and the tree is, the tree in silence offers to humanity. The tree signifies self-giving in the purest sense of the term. So before you give yourself to the world, imagine for a few seconds a tree in your mental vision, on the strength of your imagination-power. Lo and behold, your life will, without fail, grow into perfect Perfection. Self-giving, unconditional self-giving, is nothing short of eventual God-becoming.
My seeker-friends, do not hesitate. Hesitation is nothing but frustration and frustration is nothing but destruction. Do it, and yours will be the glowing success. If you hesitate, you will miss, you will miss the silver boat, the dream-boat. If you hesitate, then you will not feel the Compassion-Eye of the Beloved Supreme. If you hesitate, then you will not be able to see the Golden Shore. No, my seeker-friends, you will not hesitate. Wake up! The hour has struck. The God-Hour has struck. Dive deep within. Fly high above, high, higher, highest, on the strength of your greatness, goodness and perfection.
Published in The Oneness of the Eastern Heart and the Western Mind, part 3
by Sri Chinmoy
at Aspiration-Ground in New York
Today I am seeing that two disciples are really miserable and one is half-miserable. This is my fate — even on Father’s Day they have to remain miserable! Miserable people are no good, no good, no good! I beg of them, on Father’s Day, to become happy, happy, happy.
How can I make everybody happy? It is an impossible task. But please try to be happy, happy, happy. If you are from time to time displeased with me, at least try to forgive me and be pleased today. I am pleased with everybody today. I have no complaints against you today. And if you have complaints against yourself, then get rid of them. At least forgive yourself today. If you do not forgive yourself, nobody is going to forgive you. If you are angry with yourself, forgive yourself wisely. And if you are angry with me, forgive me and be happy, be happy. It pains me when my spiritual children are not happy. Be happy, be happy. Smile, smile, smile! The power of a happiness-smile can never be measured.
Once there was a mathematician who was deeply absorbed in his mathematics. His little son approached and stood in front of him. The father paid no attention to his son for a long time. The father thought that he would go away. He thought that it would be boring for the child to watch him, and so the child would disappear. Five minutes, ten minutes passed and the child remained standing there.
Finally the father said to himself, “Let me give him a dime. Perhaps he has come for money.”
So the father gave his son a dime, but the little boy still remained standing there. Then the father said to himself, “Let me give him a quarter.” Still the child remained standing. Then the father gave him a dollar. Nothing worked.
Eventually the father thought, “Oh, he does not need money; he needs candy.” So he opened up a drawer in his desk and gave the child a large quantity of candies. It was a big handful. Even then his son did not move.
The father was becoming irritated. He said, “What is the matter with you? I gave you money, I gave you candies. Even then, you are not going away. What do you actually want?”
His son replied, “Until you give me what I want, I am not going to leave you.”
The father got annoyed. “Now you are talking like a philosopher,” he said. “What do you want that I cannot give you?”
The son said, “I have come here only to have a smile from you.”
“You silly fellow!” exclaimed his father. “Just to have a smile from me you are waiting?”
So the father gave his son a broad smile, and the son also reciprocated and gave his father a smile. Then the child ran away. When the child ran away, the father felt that something inside him had disappeared. And what was that thing? The whole day he had been depressed and frustrated. He had not been able to solve some complex mathematical problems. But when the father gave one smile to his son, all of a sudden a wave of inspiration and divine Grace descended and he was able to solve his mathematical problems. Previously the father had been wasting so much time. First he was unable to solve the problems and then, when he saw his son, he was only getting more and more irritated, wondering why the son was not going away in spite of getting a larger and larger amount of money. And candies also did not work! What did work? A little smile that he gave to his son, and the smile that he received from his son in return.
God entered into the man’s son and made his son an instrument to ask the father to smile. All the depression and frustration-poison that the father had been carrying disappeared when he gave a little smile to his son and when the son reciprocated. Then the father got everything. All his problems were solved. This is the miracle-power of two smiles.
Here, when I smile at you, if you also smile, then you are perfect and I am perfect. When I smile at you, I am perfect; but when you do not smile at me, you are imperfect. Again, when you smile at me and I do not smile, then I am imperfect. But I must say that most of the time I am perfect in the sense that I smile at you no matter what is happening inside me. But you do not always do that when you are depressed, frustrated and angry with yourself or angry with me. Most of the time, I take the better approach because I smile, smile, smile. When I am in deep meditation, at that time I am serious. But otherwise, when you are passing by me or taking prasad, I smile and smile at you.
When it comes to smiling, I have smiled at you infinitely, infinitely, infinitely more than you have smiled at me. Here I have won the race! If you want to win the race, you can do it by smiling, smiling, smiling. If you smile, the depression and frustration-poison that you carry deep inside yourself will disappear and it will be replaced by my love, my affection, my pride and my gratitude. Once you empty yourself of your depression and frustration, once you give me a smile, you will get so many things from me in return.
Published in Live in the Eternal Now
Let us start our programme with a short story. There were two friends. They were very, very, very, very dear friends. One day, God alone knows why, they had to make fun of each other.
One friend said, “Look at your shoulders! Look at your neck! Your whole body is twisted. For forty years you have been walking, and you find on the way pennies, nickels and some material objects. These things are almost useless, but for you everything is useful. You have bent down, bent down, for forty years. Every day, morning and evening, you go out for a walk and look what you have done to your body, to your health!”
Then the other friend said, “What have you done? When you walk, you just enter into another world. When you walk, you look into the sky and enjoy mental hallucination. Your mind is just roaming here and there. In my case, I am concentrating. Each time I bend, I concentrate and pick up a penny or a nickel. Then I have got something. I have accumulated so much money over the years by collecting and collecting. In your case, what have you got to show? You have only fooled yourself by looking into the sky. Your mind was just roaming.”
The first friend objected, “No, my mind was not roaming. I was meditating.”
So the two friends went to God to ask Him to be the Judge. The first one who accused his friend said to God, “Is it not a sheer waste of time? He has collected a vast quantity of nickels and pennies and other earthly objects, but these are all useless. For this, he has ruined his health by bending and bending and bending.”
God kept quiet. Then God asked the other friend what he had to say. The second friend said, “God, I have not destroyed my health. By examining the pavement, I have developed occult power. It has come from my concentration.”
The first friend said, “God, I was not fooling myself for forty years. I have been meditating while I was looking into the sky and at the beautiful flowers. Now I have become the vastness of the sky and the beauty and fragrance of the flowers and trees.”
Now God had heard both sides. One said he had developed occult power and the other said he had developed spiritual power.
God was supposed to say who had done the right thing. First God had to tell them whether they had actually developed occult power and spiritual power by looking at the ground with one-pointed concentration or by looking at the sky and trees and so forth.
God said, “Both of you are right. One has gained occult power and one has gained spiritual power.”
Then both of them began bragging once again. The first friend said, “My spiritual power is far better than your occult power,” and the second friend said, “My occult power is far better than your spiritual power.”
Once again, God had to be the Judge. God said, “When you have to concentrate, you get occult power. You throw away all earthly thoughts until there is no thought, nothing, and then occult power comes. And when you enter into vastness, you get spiritual power. Both are needed.”
At this point, the friend who had developed occult power interrupted God. He said, “I cannot agree with You. Please say that mine is more important. Occult power means that immediately I can do something. If something has happened, I can immediately go and save the person.”
The other friend said, “God, many times when my friend wants to save people with occult power, he does it so hurriedly that instead of curing the person, he can even kill the person because it is done so hurriedly. Whereas, I go slowly, slowly, steadily and with utmost confidence. When I cure them, it is a real cure. I do not kill anybody. But he misuses his occult power. There is a great tendency for the occultist to misuse his power. But people who have spiritual power on very rare occasions misuse it. Perhaps one out of a million times they can make a mistake, whereas occultists can make mistakes in season and out of season.”
God agreed with the first friend to some extent. He said, “True, occult power can be of immediate use, but in occult power there is again another problem. It is so powerful that there is some restlessness involved. You do everything fast, fast, fast. But spiritual power has so much vastness inside. It is already peaceful, silent, calm and quiet. As I said before, both occult power and spiritual power are needed. If you want spiritual power, you have to meditate by looking at the sky, but do not be absorbed. Meditate in such a way that you have become vastness, without fooling yourself. Become the vastness, beauty and fragrance.”
Then God said to the occultist, “When you walk, you have to look at the ground to develop occult power. But you have to be very careful. If you concentrate for a long time and it is beyond your capacity, if you do not have enough receptivity, then you can have some problems with your brain. If you have the power of concentration for five minutes and if you are concentrating for fifteen minutes intensely, then you will be in trouble. You may develop something wrong. Concentration has that problem after fifteen minutes or half an hour, if you do it very intensely, looking at a very small object. But meditation does not have that problem. In meditation, you are looking at the vastness and entering into the vastness, but the vastness will not turn you insane. True, while meditating you can fall asleep. What result will you get then? Nothing. If you are not fully alert while you are meditating, then you may enjoy sleep and you will get no result.
“When you concentrate you have to know how much you can concentrate. For how long? Five minutes, fifteen minutes or half an hour? More than that, if you want to concentrate at a stretch very deeply, very intensely, something may happen. If you are concentrating beyond your capacity, then you can have some serious problem inside your forehead, or inside your brain. Again, if you are fully alert, for five minutes, ten minutes or half an hour you can meditate. But if you are completely in another world and you are only fooling yourself that you are meditating, then it is no good. Here also, beyond your capacity if you meditate, you will find yourself in trouble.
“In a family, if one has mastered concentration and if another one has mastered meditation, they have to work together. If they want to do something, they have to establish friendship. The one who has spiritual power and the one who has occult power have to establish their friendship. They are members of the same family. They have to act like two brothers. When anything happens, they have to work harmoniously. Sometimes, unfortunately, an occultist wants to save someone, but a spiritual person feels that if he saves that person or helps that person it will be wrong. For some inner reason, God may want to give a particular experience to that person. In this case, the person who has spiritual power has more wisdom. The one who has occult power goes very fast because his heart is there. But the one who has spiritual power has more wisdom. He waits for God’s Command. The one who has occult power quite often does not wait, he does not consult God. You can say that he shows off. He just goes to help to show that he has the capacity. But the other one has time at his disposal. He discusses the case with God and takes permission from God before he acts. Somehow he takes approval from God to do it.
“According to Sri Ramakrishna and others, the one who can meditate most successfully is more in tune with God’s Will than the one who has occult power. The occultist develops intensity but union with God’s Will he does not have all the time. He does not care for that. But the one who has spiritual power always tries to be in tune with God’s Will.
“So occult power and spiritual power have to go together. If it is God’s Will, the occultist will play his role for immediate help and the spiritual one will play his role for a permanent cure. It does not have to be a disease. If somebody’s consciousness has gone low, at that time the occultist has to go and raise the consciousness a little higher and the spiritual one will go to keep it permanently high or even to raise it higher.
“So both the brothers must go together — the occult power holder and the spiritual power holder must go together.”
This story came because the other day in Oslo, early in the morning, I came out of the hotel. Thirty metres I was going for a haircut. I saw an American penny on the ground. Some American had dropped it. It was very new and bright. I said, “I do not need this penny.”
Five steps I took and then I said, “I have no sympathy for this poor little penny! Perhaps it wants me to pick it up.”
So I went back to the place. When I bent down, I got such a severe cramp in my right leg. I asked myself, “Now which one is better? Is it because I neglected to pick up the penny that I am being punished or is it because of my stupidity that I came back?” So this debate went on.
Then I came to realise that I should have taken it the very first time. I got the curse of this penny because I neglected it. So any material wealth if you see it and if you disrespect it, you have to know that these material objects have their own power. It is not a matter of seeing a dime and putting it in your pocket, no.
We have to take it that these coins get tremendous joy when we pick them up. We are all spiritual people. When we see some coins, we pick them up. But if it is a very large amount of money, we must be sincere and go to the police station or somewhere and try to give the money back. But for a quarter or a dime or a nickel or a penny, what will you do?
From this experience, I said, “Now let me have concentration and meditation.” So here today on Father’s Day I am saying, try to do both concentration and meditation. Concentration clears the road. Otherwise, many, many thoughts come — unhealthy, uncomely thoughts. They can destroy everything. Whereas, when meditation is successful, thoughts can come, but they do not disturb us. They are like a flight of birds. The sky is so vast that these birds cannot do anything. They cannot scratch the skies. Inside the mind, there is a vast sky. When we meditate, if thoughts come, they cannot damage the mind. Whereas, during concentration time, if wrong thoughts come and if you do not concentrate intensely, then you cannot proceed to meditation. So they go side by side, concentration and meditation. If you can concentrate for five minutes and clear the road, then you will be able to run very fast during your meditation.
When you come here to Aspiration-Ground, first try to concentrate for a few minutes — three minutes or five minutes or ten minutes — then enter into meditation. Otherwise, if you try to meditate right from the start, it does not work. Only spiritual Masters and very, very highly developed spiritual seekers can jump into meditation immediately, after a few seconds. But for ordinary seekers, it is always advisable to concentrate a little so that you can conquer the thought-world. Then you can go beyond the thought-world and meditation comes. So all of you kindly try to concentrate for a few minutes when you come here to Aspiration-Ground. Then meditate. That is the right thing to do. Clear the way and then walk, march, run and sprint. That is meditation.
Published in Sri Chinmoy Answers, part 38