August Celebrations Centers Around Queens
by JUDI FREEMAN
The August Celebrations have come to Queens. Two weeks of plays and art displays, track & field competitions, parades and music began on August 15 in locations around the Big Apple. Over 400 students of spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy are expected to attend, arriving from as far as Japan and Australia.
Playing host to the festival is the Queens chapter of the Sri Chinmoy center. Sri Chinmoy's followers have shaped a community in North Jamaica where its members live and work. Those who study under him make up an international clan. They hail from the West Coast and Canada, Scandinavia, Britain and parts of Asia. During these two weeks, visitors are staying at the Queens homes of Sri Chinmoy’s followers.
Within each household is a place set aside for the daily practice of meditation. Those who do not hold jobs at the United Nations and other places in Manhattan help run the “Divine Enterprises” shops near Hillside Avenue on Parsons Blvd. Their shops are easily recognized by their colorful names, such as the “Smile of the Beyond Ice Cream Parlor,” “Guru Health Foods,” and “Divine Robe Supreme Boutique.” Further up the block Sri Chinmoy himself beams down from over the Agni Press Shop.
Serving as the hub of community life is the Annam Brahma restaurant featuring Indian style vegetarian dishes. It is a showplace of eastern art fashioned from stained glass and metal by Sri Chinmoy craftsmen. While regularly opened to the public the restaurant closes during the August Celebrations to host banquets in honor of the guru's 49th birthday.
As part of their daily routine most of the Queens center members use the athletic field at nearby Jamaica High. Two days track & field events are being held as part of the festival. Using physical disciplines as part of their spiritual development, many followers are long-distance runners and cyclists. 250 students finished in last October’s New York marathon. Scheduled to be held at Jamaica High’s track, the events will be capped off by the third running of the moonlit ultramarathon. On Wednesday at midnight, 100 runners set off on the 47 mile race. The race was first run two years ago when Sri Chinmoy celebrated his 47th birthday.
Throughout the festival exhibition of Fountain Art will be on public display at 170 Thompson Street, Greenwich Village. The paintings are representative of a body of 140,000 works ranging in size from postage stamp art to 8' murals.
To commemorate his achievements, Sri Chinmoy students led the noontime Jharna-Kala parade down Hillside Avenue on August 23. As an award winning author, painter and musician Sri Chinmoy encourages creative expression among the students. An 18 hour marathon of plays, recitals and musical performances to showcase their talents began at three P.M. on August 27.
Among those to appear was Carlos Santana, chosen number one rock guitarist by ‘Guitar Player’. At the Cathedral of St. John the Divine he took part in a program entitled ‘Sri Chinmoy in Concert’ on August 21. Joined by the Rainbow band which he helped form at the Sri Chinmoy center they performed inspirational pieces composed by their leader.
Published in Queens Tribune, August 28, 1980
Interview with Sri Chinmoy
by an independent filmmaker in Chicago in connection with his participation in the World Parliament of Religions.
Question: What do you feel is the significance of this Chicago Parliament of Religions, which may be the largest gathering of the world's religions ever to be held?
Sri Chinmoy: The spiritual significance of this Parliament, according to my aspiring heart, is interdependence. The one and the many have to realise their interdependence. Just as the tree and its branches, leaves, flowers and fruits are interdependent, so we are all interdependent. Here many religions are meeting together to sing the oneness-heart-song.
Question: This centenary of the Parliament of Religions is, for many, associated with the name of Swami Vivekananda, one of the major figures of the Parliament that was held one hundred years ago. You have spent much of the past year giving concerts in his honour. Who was Swami Vivekananda, and what did he offer to the world?
Sri Chinmoy: I strongly feel that today’s centenary of the Parliament of Religions is taking place precisely because of Vivekananda. He was the dreamer, the lover and the possessor of a truly universal spirit. People came to the original Parliament of Religions from various religions and various cultures. In most cases they came to preach or speak about their respective religious beliefs. But Vivekananda came as a lover of humanity to sing the song of a oneness-world-home. He did not come here to propagate the views of his Hindu religion. He came to propagate the one religion that is known as Man. He spoke of the individual man who is evolving into the universal man and consciously accepting the world as his own, very own. Vivekananda was at once an ancient silence-heart and a modern dynamism-life.
Question: What does Swami Vivekananda mean to you personally?
Sri Chinmoy: Swami Vivekananda is the indomitable spirit who tells us how to love and worship God the creation. Without loving God the creation, who can ever fulfil the Message of God the Creator?
Question: There is a growing sense that spiritual values are necessary if we want to achieve peace or even survive in the future.
Sri Chinmoy: Spiritual values are of paramount importance if we want to achieve peace, for it is spirituality that consciously embodies peace. Without peace there can be no future.
Question: Which spiritual values in particular do you feel are most important in the world today?
Sri Chinmoy: Not only in the world today, but also in the world of the hoary past and in the world of the future, there are only two things that we sleeplessly need: prayer and meditation.
Question: How do you believe world peace can be achieved?
Sri Chinmoy: World peace can be achieved only through prayer and meditation. It is from our prayer and meditation that we can establish the feeling of a oneness-world-home.
Question: How, in practical terms, can spirituality actually be effective for change? This seems to be the most difficult challenge.
Sri Chinmoy: According to my inner conviction, spirituality is not something theoretical; it is something practical. Who can be more practical than God Himself? He created the world to give Himself joy and fulfilment. Spirituality is definitely practical; likewise, prayer and meditation are definitely practical. For prayer and meditation to be effective, we need only one thing: the indomitable, heroic spirit that can conquer the pride of impossibility.
Question: The average person may feel that you are exceptional and that all your achievements have nothing to do with him or her.
Sri Chinmoy: This is not true. We are all God’s children. What God wants and needs from us is receptivity. If we can be receptive or if He can make us receptive, then He will be able to accomplish in and through us whatever He wants to.
Question: What is the spiritual significance of music, which is something that every culture on earth has and cherishes?
Sri Chinmoy: There is an outer existence and an inner existence. Music touches immediately the inner existence, the existence that aspires to become happy and, at the same time, tries to share its happiness with the rest of the world. Music touches the depths of our being and brings to the fore what it discovers there. The melody and the harmony of music are not only giving joy to mankind but are also helping mankind to reach the highest state of consciousness, which is filled with peace, love, joy and fulfilment.
Published in Sri Chinmoy Answers, part 6