Giving peace a chance
The completion of one million “peace-bird” drawings in a span of two years last week in Fiji is among the latest achievements of unusual international peace ambassador, Sri Chinmoy.
Currently visiting Rarotonga for a week with a large group, Sri Chinmoy unlike politicians and social activists believes that “freedom can come into being only when we have inner peace.”
That he demonstrates through his accomplishments in the fields of literature, music, athletics and through his art.
The message being our potential as individuals is boundless if we tap the unlimited source within, through prayer and meditation. His current peace tour of the South Pacific is with 140 of his students from New Zealand, Australia, Europe, North America and Japan.
They have already visited Samoa and Fiji, and from Rarotonga travel on to Tahiti.
Among their activities on Rarotonga this week are meditation classes that started last night and continue through to Thursday, and then 1 pm on Saturday. There is the nine and a half hour Sri Chinmoy Oneness-Home Peace Run on Saturday, and that evening the Sri Chinmoy Masters Games for athletes 50 years or older.
Sri Chinmoy will be giving a free concert for peace this Friday evening in the National Auditorium. Similar concerts in Fiji and Samoa he has dedicated to former Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev, whom Sri Chinmoy considers “the highest peace-dreamer, the deepest peace-seeker and the greatest peace-lover here on earth.”
Sri Chinmoy says “The greatest reward I can have is the opportunity to be of service to mankind. If I see that somebody is getting an iota of peace from my drawings or from anything else that I do, then I feel I have accomplished something because I have been able to share my inspiration and my aspiration with others.”
In a relaxed quietly spoken manner with his eyes closed most of the time, Sri Chinmoy wearing thongs, shorts and a shirt, in a media interview yesterday, explained how world peace had gained greater ground.
He said not long ago there was talk of world destruction through war, then the Cold War and now an end has most certainly been put to the Cold War era.
Now, Sri Chinmoy said people are talking even more about peace.
— Alex Sword
Caption:
Sri Chinmoy, the Indian born and now New York based international ambassador of peace.
Published in Cook Islands News, Tuesday 11 January 1994, Rarotonga