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 ‘The Secret of Inner Peace’, at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, CT, USA.
Sri Chinmoy delivers a lecture, entitled ‘What has life taught me?’, at 8 p.m. in the Memorial Chapel, Stanford University in Stanford, CA, USA.
Sri Chinmoy receives the Seal of the City of Berkeley from Mayor Warren Widener in Berkeley, CA, USA.
Sri Chinmoy plays four tennis pros, winning 48 out of 101 games, at Randalls Island, NY, USA.
Sri Chinmoy delivers a lecture, entitled ‘A Seeker’s Heart-Songs’, at the Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, MA, USA.
Sri Chinmoy receives the Paul Revere Patriot Award from the State of Massachusetts at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA, USA.
Sri Chinmoy offers an afternoon Peace Concert and delivers a lecture, entitled ‘God’s most treasured gift’, at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, CT, USA.
Sri Chinmoy offers an evening Peace Concert and delivers a lecture, entitled ‘The way to abiding peace’, at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, USA.
An exhibition of Sri Chinmoy’s Jharna-Kala paintings opens at the State Capitol Building in Stamford, CT, USA.
The Sri Chinmoy Oneness-Home Peace Run was launched in 70 countries this spring, bringing the Torch of Peace to the far corners of the globe.
In the U.S., runners left New York on April 19 on a four-month journey that was to carry them through almost all the 50 states.
A 9,500-mile Peace Run was held in Russia, with teams taking off from Moscow and travelling in four separate directions.
The eastern team covered some 3,700 miles, ending up at Chita in the far reaches of Siberia; the northern team went nearly 3,000 miles to Murmansk on the Arctic Ocean.
In the Balkans, runners passed through the various countries that emerged from the breakup of the former Yugoslavia: Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia and Macedonia.
Major events were held in Belgrade and, for the first time since the war, in Sarajevo. In Macedonia, President Kiro Gligorov held the Torch.
In Italy, runners carried the Peace Torch into St. Peter’s Square, where they were received by Cardinal Virgilio Noe on behalf of the Vatican.
Segments of' the Peace Run will continue to be run through the fall
Published in Anahata Nada, Volume 28, April-August 1997
Sri Chinmoy offers two Peace Concerts, an afternoon concert at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, and an evening concert at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.
by Sri Chinmoy
at Public School 86 in Jamaica, Queens, New York
If you take me as your spiritual Master, please consider The Invocation as my life-breath and your life-breath. The Invocation is the living Presence of our real Guru, our Beloved Supreme. In the morning, start with The Invocation. At that time sing The Invocation, before you go to work, before you leave for your job. If you cannot sing, please recite the words.
Then, during the day, whenever you sing Jiban debata and Bhulite diyona, please sing Jiban debata first. Kindly throw your soul, heart, mind, vital and body into the songs when you sing or recite them.
There is a million and billion-mile gap between The Invocation and other songs, including Jiban debata and Bhulite diyona. The Invocation is not just a song; it is infinitely more meaningful and fruitful. No song of mine can be compared with The Invocation. Each thought, each line and each word is from my aspiration-heart and realisation-breath, so we cannot put The Invocation on the same footing as any other song of mine. It will remain immortal inside my aspiration and inside my realisation throughout Eternity.
Again, I have composed quite a few songs, at least fifty, which will definitely remain immortal. Among them, these two — Jiban debata and Bhulite diyona — will be considered by aspiring humanity as most precious spiritual jewels. The old Bhulite diyona is also very nice: “My Lord, allow me not to forget you.”
Good singers, as many years as you have been on earth, you should sing every day that many songs to please your soul. It does not have to be done all at once, but whatever your age is, you should sing that many songs. I have done many things, and even now I do many things secretly — I do not want to say what they are — according to how many years I have been on earth. Every year I increase the number according to my age.
With regard to singing, every day after The Invocation I sing ten or twelve songs, including Jiban debata and Bhulite diyona, as well as songs on Mother Kali and Lord Krishna. Daily I sing with my synthesizer at least fifteen songs. The Invocation I sing before I come down from upstairs. Sometimes it is four o’clock or four-thirty in the morning when I sing these songs. I turn the volume down on my synthesizer so that the neighbours do not make complaints. In all sincerity I sing these songs, so you also can do it. This is your life-breath; this is your shrine.
I am telling the good singers, for each year of your earthly existence, you should sing that number of songs. Already you have received God’s special Blessings to be good singers, so you should sing. At least a few hundred of my songs are nice! Of those, fifty or sixty songs have really got the stamp of immortality. Jiban debata, Bhulite diyona and Tomare rakhibo are among those. One day I can make a list of those songs according to my taste, not your taste. If I am very, very strict, let us see how many I can get.
I am so grateful to some of the singing groups who have dug deep or dived deep to find songs that have been completely forgotten. How kind of you to sing those songs so beautifully and so soulfully.
Yesterday, how soulfully and carefully the boys were singing the Sri Aurobindo song! Many years ago I used to meditate in Sri Aurobindo’s room early in the morning. It started with two minutes, and from two minutes it went up to two hours. When the boys were singing, I took my body, vital, mind, heart and soul to Sri Aurobindo’s room. Inwardly I was seated in his room meditating while hearing my spiritual children sing the song which I composed on Sri Aurobindo. How soulfully you were singing! I am your worst critic; always I scold and insult you if you do not sing well. But when you were singing this time, absolutely I entered into the sea of ecstasy. I was so proud of my children and so deeply moved.
When I sing juga Avatar in that song, sometimes I use the word nami and sometimes I do not use it. Both ways are correct. From time to time you will find that very sacred and soulful songs have a few extra words, in parentheses. They are not metrically wrong; they are correct.
Dear ones, you are the pioneers in learning my songs. You are with me, in me and for me while I am in the land of the living. You are extremely fortunate to have me, and I am extremely fortunate to have you.
Published in Live in the Eternal Now
Video by kedarvideo
Sri Chinmoy meditates on stage at the opening ceremony of the Sri Chinmoy Oneness-Home Peace Run in New York.
A lecture by Sri Chinmoy
at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut
Dear sisters and brothers, I shall show you how to acquire, here and now, inner peace. My help is not advice. Mine is not the way to advise people what to do or what not to do. It is true that everyone is unselfish and liberal when it comes to giving advice and, unfortunately, I am no exception. Yet I fully agree with Chesterfield, who says, “Advice is seldom welcome and those who need it the most, like it the least.”
This world of ours has everything except one thing: peace. Everybody wants and needs peace, whether he be a child or an octogenarian. But the idea of peace is not the same for each individual. It sadly differs. A child’s idea of peace is to beat a drum. Beating a drum brings him joy, and this joy is his peace. An old man’s idea of peace is to sit quietly with his eyes and ears closed, so that he can escape the fond embrace of the ugly and restless world. The general in Eisenhower spoke on peace: “We are going to have peace, even if we have to fight for it.”
The indomitable Napoleon voiced forth, “What a mess we are in now: peace has been declared.” The Son of God taught us, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall inherit the earth.”
Somebody has very aptly said, “The more we strive for peace on earth, the more it seems that the dove of peace is a bird of paradise.”
To be sure, peace is not the sole monopoly of heaven. Our earth is extremely fertile. Here on earth we can grow peace in measureless measure.
I am supposed to speak on the inner peace. I wish to confine my talk to the spiritual seeker in each of you. A genuine seeker after peace must needs be a seeker after love. Love has another name: sacrifice. When sacrifice is pure, love is sure. When love is divine, in sacrifice there can be no “mine,” no “thine.” Love is the secret of oneness. Sacrifice is the strength of oneness. Self-love is self-indulgence. Self-indulgence is self-annihilation. Love of God is the seeker’s greatest opportunity to realise God.
We sacrifice our precious time to make money. We sacrifice our hard-earned money to fight against time. In order to have something from the outer world, we have to sacrifice something of our own. Similarly, in the inner world we offer our aspiration in return for God-Realisation. The flame of our aspiration is kindled by God Himself. The fruit of our realisation, too, we get from God directly. God is the Inspirer in us. God is the Eternal Giver. God is the Eternal Receiver in us. God uses aspiration to take us to Himself. God uses realisation to bring Himself to us. God is sacrifice when we live in the world of aspiration. God is sacrifice when we live in the realm of realisation. But God says that there is no such thing as sacrifice. There is only one thing here on earth and there in heaven, and that thing is called oneness: the fulfilment in oneness and the fulfilment of oneness.
There are four kinds of seekers: lamentable, incapable, promising and fulfilling. The lamentable and the incapable have to be patient; they have to wait for the Hour of God. The promising and the fulfilling are already singing and dancing in the Hour of God. They are constantly meditating on God. This is their inner life of realisation. They are soulfully and spontaneously acting for God. This is their outer life of revelation.
To come back to the secret of inner peace, our questioning and doubting mind is always wanting in peace. Our loving and dedicated heart is always flooded with inner peace. If our mind has all the questions, then our heart has all the answers. The answers are perfect precisely because they come straight from the soul, which sees the Truth and lives in the Truth. And Truth, Truth alone, is the Goal of Goals.
If you want to have the inner peace, then you must follow the path of spirituality. Spirituality is the answer. There are three ages of man: under-age, over-age and average. To the under-age, spirituality is hocus-pocus. To the over-age, spirituality is something dry, uncertain and obscure. And to the average, spirituality is self-oblivion, self-negation and self-annihilation.
But a true seeker will say that spirituality is something normal, natural, spontaneous, fertile, clear, luminous, divinely self-conscious, self-affirmative and self-creating. If you have a spiritual teacher to help and guide you, then you are very lucky. Listen to him always, until you breathe your last. If you stop taking advice from him, then yours will be the loss and not his. Even in the ordinary human life one needs a teacher, a mentor. There is considerable truth in what Churchill says: “In those days he was wiser than he is now — he used, frequently, to take my advice.”
If you don’t have a spiritual Master and if you don’t care for one, then at every moment please listen to the dictates of your soul in absolute silence. Peace you want and need. To have peace, you must have free access to your soul. To have free access to your soul, you must have inner silence. To have inner silence, you need aspiration. To have aspiration, you need God’s Grace. To have God’s Grace, you must feel that you are God’s and God’s alone, always!
We are now in Connecticut. The motto of Connecticut is supremely significant. My heart of devotion and my soul of love are singing the matchless motto of Connecticut: Qui Transtulit Sustinet — "He who transplanted sustains.” God transplanted truth to earth, and He sustains this truth with love. In the combination of the two lies the secret of inner peace.
Published in Eastern Light for the Western Mind
A lecture by Sri Chinmoy
at the United Nations in New York
Courage challenges the world. Humility illumines the world. Courage strongly urges us to stand up for our own rights. Humility soulfully inspires us to stand up for God’s rights alone.
Courage is not aggression. Aggression is man’s destruction-force. Humility is not humiliation. Humiliation is man’s rejection-force. Courage is man’s self-determination. Humility is man’s oneness-distribution. Self-determination eventually succeeds. Oneness-distribution constantly proceeds.
Courage is man’s conquering force. Humility is man’s unifying force. Courage feeds the divine human in us. Humility feeds the unifying and immortal divine in us.
The seeker in us uses courage to conquer the teeming doubts in the mental world. The seeker in us uses humility to constantly gain faith, to increase faith in God’s universal Oneness and Light.
Courage is the struggle, birthless and deathless, between man’s victory and defeat, between man’s joy and sorrow, between man’s smiles and tears, between man’s acceptance and rejection, between what man has and what man is. What man has is sound-satisfaction and what man is is silence-perfection.
Humility is man’s divine and supreme Glory-bird that flies from God’s Infinity-Dawn to God’s Eternity-Day and from God’s Eternity-Day to God’s Infinity-Dawn.
With courage we manifest God in our own way. With humility, God manifests Himself in and through us in His own Way.
Published in United Nations Meditation-Flowers and To-morrow's Noon