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 delivers a lecture, entitled ‘Ignorance’, at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, USA.
Sri Chinmoy writes to US President Gerald R. Ford offering his prayers for the quick recovery of the President’s wife Betty Ford. In his reply, the President remarks that his family deeply appreciated Sri Chinmoy’s message of prayerful concern and friendship during the time of his wife’s illness.
Sri Chinmoy delivers a lecture, entitled ‘Wisdom-Light’, at the University of Miami in Miami, FL, USA.
A photograph of Sri Chinmoy meditating with Muhammad Ali, taken the previous day, appears in the New York Times. Sri Chinmoy speaks about the photograph of Muhammad Ali, at the United Nations in New York.
Sri Chinmoy delivers a lecture, entitled ‘Self-Transcendence’, at Bakersfield State University in Bakersfield, CA, USA.
Sri Chinmoy delivers a talk entitled ‘Indifference’, after a morning sports practice and meditation at Jamaica High School track in Jamaica, NY, USA.
Sri Chinmoy meets with Aristides Royo Sánchez, President of Panama, and Panama’s Foreign Minister Dr. Jorge Illueca at the Panama State Reception at the United Nations in New York. There, he also meets with Dr. Carlos Ozores Typaldos, Ambassador of Panama to the United Nations.
Sri Chinmoy offers a 7-hour meditation at Ottawa University in Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Sri Chinmoy meets with Alan Hovhaness, American composer, at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA, USA.
Sri Chinmoy offers an early evening Peace Concert (40) and an evening Peace Concert (41) at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA, USA.
Sri Chinmoy meets with Harri Holkeri, Prime Minister of Finland, at the United Nations in New York.
Sri Chinmoy meets with Sergey Lavrov, Director of the Department of International Organisations and Global Problems of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, at the Russian Mission to the United Nations in New York, NY, USA.
Sri Chinmoy offers a Peace Concert (569) at Aspiration-Ground in Jamaica, NY, USA.
Sri Chinmoy lifts Dr. Mari Alkatiri, the first Prime Minister of Timor-Leste, at the UN Plaza Hotel in New York, NY, USA.
Sri Chinmoy meets with former UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim in Vienna, Austria.
Left: Muhammad Ali wearing garland given to him by Sri Chinmoy, left, director of the United Nations Meditation Group, after they spent an hour in meditation yesterday morning at apartment in Manhattan.
Right: Shavers and Ali exchanging long rights In the second round of their fight last night.
Published in The New York Times, Vol. CXXVII, No.43,714, New York, Friday, September 30, 1977
A photograph of Sri Chinmoy meditating with Muhammad Ali, taken the previous day, appears in the New York Times. Sri Chinmoy speaks about the photograph of Muhammad Ali, at the United Nations in New York.
by Sri Chinmoy
My Supreme, my Supreme, my Supreme,
I do not know what I am doing,
But I do know that You know
What You are doing
In and through me
For Your own Manifestation-Light
Here on earth
And for Your own Satisfaction-Delight
There in Heaven.
My Supreme, my Supreme, my Supreme!
Sri Chinmoy offers this prayer at 4:53 a.m. before lifting 127 lbs with each arm once.
Published in My Morning Soul-Body Prayers, part 1
by Sri Chinmoy
We love our desire-life
Infinitely more than we love God.
God loves only us,
And never, never, never, never
Our desire-life.
Sri Chinmoy attends the ‘Self-Transcendence Race’ in New York — one of the weekly 2-mile races held each Saturday morning. At the conclusion of the event, he offers this prayer.
Published in My Race-Prayers, part 3
from Sri Chinmoy
The President
The White House
Washington, D.C.
30 September 1974
Dear Mr. President,
On behalf of the United Nations Meditation Group,
I most humbly offer to you our deepest concern. We are praying to the Lord Supreme for your beloved wife's quickest and most satisfactory recovery. We are also praying to the Lord Supreme to grant her a very long life of inner achievements and outer manifestation.
With our soulful concern,
Sri Chinmoy
Spiritual Director
United Nations Meditation Group(Room 3401)
United Nations, New York, N.Y. 10017
Published in AUM – Vol 1, No.10, 27 October 1974
to Sri Chinmoy
Our family deeply appreciate your message of prayerful concern and friendship. Your good wishes extended to us during this illness have been most heartwarming.
Betty Ford
Gerald R. Ford
Published in AUM – Vol 1, No.10, 27 October 1974
by Sri Chinmoy
while in residence at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, India
30 September
In the evening Nolini-da met me at the Ashram gate. "Oh Chinmoy, I have been looking for you. Will you go to Amal's place and give him this?" he said, handing me something. "I had to write the introduction for Sri Aurobindo's The Human Cycle and The Ideal of Human Unity. Show it to Amal and ask him if he has any suggestions to make."
I went to Amal's house immediately and knocked at his gate. His wife opened the door. "I am so sorry to come to you at this hour," I said.
"Chinmoy, it is perfectly all right," she said. Then she called out: "Amal, Amal! Look, Chinmoy says he is sorry because he has come at this hour."
Amal said: "Chinmoy, you must know that you are always welcome. You can come at any time. Even if you have no specific reason, you can come and chat with me. You should have realised by now our mutual affection." Then he read Nolini-da's introduction.
I told him that Nolini-da wanted to see if he had any suggestions to make. He read it twice and said: "It is excellent. I have no suggestions to make." Then, with a smile, he said to me: "Sometimes when we offer suggestions to Nolini we just create unnecessary confusion for him."
"In that case, I am a real culprit. How often I offer suggestions! What is worse, sometimes they are unsolicited."
Amal said: "I have always admired your simplicity and modesty, but not your unnecessary and disproportionate humility."
A Service-Flame and a Service-Sun
A lecture by Sri Chinmoy delivered at
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
Dear friends, I understand that you have a volley of questions to ask me after my talk is over. I am eager to know your deep, spiritual questions. Here at this august university you have been devotedly studying to cultivate knowledge. Today you will learn something about a subject diametrically opposite, ignorance.
Each man has a nature of his own. Each man has ignorance of his own. Complex is his nature. Manifold is his ignorance. But what is more, each man has a divine soul of his own, carrying in it his ultimate Perfection.
True, man is likely to stumble through the thorny forests of ignorance. It is equally true that God will someday lead him into the sunlit path of knowledge.
Ignorance says that God is to be found outside oneself. Knowledge says that God is to be found within oneself. Wisdom says, "God is within. He is also without."
What with unconscious ignorance, what with conscious ignorance, man's desire to see God face to face is to hope against hope. What with conscious self-sacrifice, what with unconscious self-sacrifice, man's dream to see God is not only possible and practicable but also inevitable.
Ignorance has a free access everywhere, yet it stays not, rather it cannot stay anywhere for good.
My name was obscurity. Ignorance was my teacher. What did I learn from my teacher? Only two things: how to be imperfect and how to be self-limited. Ignorance was my mother. She fed me with her despair. Ignorance was my father. He blessed me with his stupidity.
I have known. I have known that few are those who want to be free from the snare of ignorance. Fewer are those who are willing to pay the price, although they want to be free. I have realised. I have realised that man's knowledge is only a higher degree of effective ignorance.
Slowly ignorance travels in the world of night. Annihilation speedily and ruthlessly overtakes ignorance. When ignorance reaches the abysmal breath of self-limitation, man is compelled to turn into his grave with a living body.
The soul says that it has no enemy. But ignorance fails to see eye to eye with the soul, it says, "Oh soul, I am your eternal enemy. I don't want you, I don't want your light." The soul says, "I am your Eternal Friend, O ignorance. I want you because God wants me to awaken you from your endless sleep. My Light wants you because God wants you to come out of your self-chosen perpetual limitation and death."
When we are freed from the fetters of ignorance, our hearts grow into the divine beauty. This divine beauty, which is the pride of the soul, is the blessedness of life.
Human ignorance wants to control the world. Human love wants to bind the world. Human truth wants to lead the world. Divine Knowledge wants to inspire the heart of the world. Divine Truth wants the world to be fulfilled in God and for God.
“Better be unborn than untaught, for ignorance is the root of misfortune.” — Plato
What Plato says is absolutely true in its own way. But if an individual cries for God-realisation and the perfect manifestation of his inner divinity on earth, then he has to come into the world, no matter how abysmal his ignorance is. Ignorance is and may be the malady of today's life, but tomorrow's life can and must be otherwise. Tomorrow's life can be flooded with the soul's glowing Light. The life's journey has to start from where it is. The healthful hunger for the divine Light, more Light, infinite Light is not only today's necessity, but also tomorrow's inevitability. The Goal Supreme is neither behind us nor with us. It is ahead of us. It is in the Heart of the Beyond. The Goal is beckoning us. Let us walk, march, and run towards the Goal, We need not hesitate to go to our Goal. The Goal is ready and eager to embrace us with our ignorance. Once we are embraced by the Goal, what remains is to bathe in the Sea of our Goal's eternally infinite Light.
Our teeming ignorance and the Devil's binding desire are hand in glove with each other. Our growing knowledge and God's glowing hope are hand in glove with each other. Our flowing wisdom and God's illumining choice are hand in glove with each other.
Doubt says to ignorance, "At long last I have come to know that you are my sister." Ignorance says, "Sorry, even now you are mistaken. I am not your sister, but your mother. And you are my bravest son."
Ignorance has a weapon. Its name is human reason. To question human reason is not unreasonable, but to question the Wisdom of the Infinite is foolish audacity. How can we judge His Wisdom without a corresponding Wisdom?
Humanity has a host of enemies. Of these, by far the most terrible is lack of knowledge. This ignorance is the last thing in man to become impotent.
What is ignorance, after all? Ignorance is the hyphen between imperfection and limitation. Ignorance signifies weakness. The greatest of human weaknesses is to be consciously unconscious of any.
The atom bomb destroyed Hiroshima. Our conscious fondness for the night of ignorance can destroy our divine Ideal on earth. Even successive failures are not certain or adequate signs of the impossibility of God-realisation. But spontaneous and stubborn fondness for ignorance is a true sign of this impossibility. Ignorance is power. When man uses this power he actually exercises his love of power. But when man is totally freed from the snares of ignorance, he will be able to offer his power of love to mankind. At that time man will have a new Name — God, and a new Home — Immortality.
Published in My Ivy League Leaves
A talk by Sri Chinmoy
at the University of Miami, Miami, Florida
Dear sisters and brothers, dear seekers of the infinite Truth and Light, I wish to give a short talk on wisdom-light.
Wisdom-light is life-loving. Wisdom-light is self-giving. Wisdom-light is God-becoming.
He who loves life is beautiful. He who gives himself to others is fruitful. He who becomes God — like the Christ, Lord Buddha and Sri Krishna — is complete, perfect and supreme.
Why does one love? One loves because he knows that loving is self-expansion. Why does one give himself to others? He gives himself to others because he knows that in self-giving is the real satisfaction. Why does one want to become God? He wants to become God because he knows that God-becoming is perfect Perfection.
Our heart embodies the message of self-expansion. Our life embodies the message of satisfaction. Our soul embodies the message of perfection. In Heaven the message is the light of Divinity. On earth the message is the night of Eternity. In God the message is the delight of Immortality.
When we pray, Divinity blesses us. When we meditate, Eternity blesses us. When we surrender our earth-bound life to the adamantine Will of the Absolute Supreme, we become the delight of Immortality.
Divinity, Eternity and Immortality. Divinity we already had. Eternity we already have. Immortality we are in the process of becoming.
God’s Vision and God’s Reality we embody together. Our earthly existence is the transformed Vision of God manifested in living reality. Each vision is a seed of the reality-tree. Each form of reality is the tree which is embodied in the vision-seed. Silence-cry is the soul of the vision-seed. Sound-smile is the body of the reality-tree.
Each human being has a seeker and a lover in the inmost recesses of his heart. The seeker in him wants to reach the Highest, the transcendental Height, and then wants to come down to transform the teeming ignorance of earthly life and make of earth a Kingdom of Heaven. The lover in him wants to spread his universal wings and satisfy the inner hunger of millennia the hunger that can be fulfilled only by God’s infinite Love, Compassion and Light.
The seeker in each human being is the collector and the receiver of God’s Light. The lover in him is the distributor of God’s Light to the world at large.
Wisdom-light is the awareness of God’s Presence all-where, the awareness that God is omnipresent. This reality we can be aware of only when we see God within and without. There is an Indian parable about a spiritual teacher who offered a fruit to each of his disciples. He said to them, “Children, go and eat your fruit unseen by anybody at all. You must eat your fruit in complete privacy.” Each went and ate his respective fruit except one. That one came back to the Master with his fruit. The Master asked him, “How is it that you have not eaten your fruit?” The disciple answered, “Master, how can I eat? You have asked me to eat the fruit only when there is nobody observing me. But God is all around me, so I have not eaten. If I eat, I will be caught red-handed.” The Master was exceedingly pleased with this disciple.
From this parable we learn that a sincere seeker of the transcendental Truth sees and feels God both within and without. There also dawns in him a higher and deeper vision. He comes to realise that he is expected to say and do to the world at large only those things that can be said and done before God. Today’s world of imperfection can easily be transformed into a world of perfect Perfection when the seeker in us sees God everywhere.
The motto of the State of Florida is, “In God we trust.” For an ordinary seeker this loftiest message may seem redundant, for since we are all lovers of the highest Truth and Light, it goes without saying that we trust in God. But from the spiritual point of view I wish to say that there is a significant hidden truth inside this motto. This freedom-loving country has something significant to offer to the world at large. When we live an ordinary life, we place our trust in ourselves. When we have faith in ourselves, we sing the song of separativity and individuality, the song of “I”. At that time the question of “we” never arises. But when we say, “In God we trust,” our individuality merges into the sea of universality. On the strength of our inner cry we are trying to grow into God’s Universality. When a seeker says, “In God we trust,” he feels that his individuality has left him. He has now embraced God’s entire creation as his own, very own.
A seeker trusts God and God trusts him. A seeker trusts God in order to reach the highest pinnacle of Light, Truth and Bliss, and God trusts him in order to reveal Himself and manifest Himself on earth. They enjoy a reciprocal need. The seeker needs God for his self-discovery and life-mastery and God needs the seeker for His perfect manifestation and complete satisfaction on earth.
Published in Fifty Freedom-Boats to one Golden Shore, part 5
A talk by Sri Chinmoy after a morning sports practice and meditation at Jamaica High School track in Jamaica, New York
Indifference reigns supreme in my life.
My body is indifferent to the dynamic urge of my vital. My vital is indifferent to the well-earned rest of my body.
My mind is indifferent to the soulful cry of my heart. My heart is indifferent to the inquisitive quest of my mind.
My soul is indifferent to the slow efforts, slower success and even slower progress of my life.
Even my Beloved Supreme, it seems, is indifferent to my supreme realisation. Had He flooded my entire being with His Concern supreme, I am sure I would not have been waiting for millennia for my realisation.
Alas, alas, O my Beloved Supreme, do tell me why You are indifferent to me, and why the rest of the members of my family are indifferent to one another.
"My sweet child, I am not indifferent to you. Dive deep within and you will see that constant Concern is My only name.
“And about your body, vital, mind, heart and soul, I wish to tell you that they can be freed from the fatal disease of indifference only by using the medicine oneness-concern. When oneness-concern plays its role within and without, satisfaction at every moment shall loom large in your life. At that time the indifference-blow will be found nowhere. Only the oneness-flow will be found all-where.”
Published in Aurora-Flora