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 pays a moving tribute to Nishtha Margaret Wilson, the eldest daughter of US President Woodrow Wilson, in the Peace Room of the Church Centre for the United Nations, in New York. She was one of the first Westerners to live permanently at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, India.
Sri Chinmoy offers an organ recital at Riverside Church in New York, NY, USA.
Sri Chinmoy offers a Peace Concert (239) at the Palace Theatre in New Haven, CT, USA.
Sri Chinmoy offers a Peace Concert (374) – the 36th in a series of 39 concerts dedicated to Swami Vivekananda – at Aspiration-Ground in Jamaica, NY, USA.
Sri Chinmoy visits the Sri Chinmoy 700-1000-1300-Mile Ultra-Distance Trio to inspire the competitors as they run the on the course at Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, New York, NY, USA.
Ukraine’s Minister of Physical Culture and Sports Alexander Volkov declares Ukraine a Sri Chinmoy Peace-Blossom-Nation.
Sri Chinmoy lifts 18 people, including Reinhart Helmke, UN Assistant Secretary-General, Executive-Director of the UN Office of Project Services (UNOPS); Murari Raj Sharma, Permanent Representative of Nepal to the United Nations; Dr. Anastase Gasane, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Rwanda to the United Nations; Abie Grossfield, US Gymnastics Olympian in 1956 and 1960, coach of the gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Team; Tim Jecko, Captain of the US Swim Team in 1956 Olympics, world-record holder in 3 swimming events; and Gail Marquis, 1976 Olympic silver medallist in women’s basketball, in Jamaica, NY, USA.
Sri Chinmoy lifts 32 people at Hotel Salmen in Zurich, Switzerland.
Sri Chinmoy honours composer and Oscar nominee Philip Glass by lifting him as part of the ‘Lifting Up the World with a Oneness-Heart’ programme at Aspiration-Ground in Jamaica Queens, New York, NY, USA.
LATIN SLANT
Former Puerto Rican Gov. Hernandez Colon enjoyed a welcome respite from his diplomatic battles Tuesday night when he attended a reception in his honor at the New York art gallery of Indian spiritual Master Sri Chinmoy.
“You don’t know how much gladness is in my heart to be here with you,” Colon told the Guru. “Or perhaps you do, because you are able to read our hearts.”
Sri Chinmoy, whom Colon had proclaimed an “honorary resident of Puerto Rico” during his governorship, replied: “Every day you are in my prayer. Every day you are in my consciousness. Every day you are in my soulful meditation.”
As 200 of the Guru’s followers applauded, Sri Chinmoy presented Colon with a cake and personally escorted him around the gallery in New York’s Grand Central Station, where several hundred of his paintings are on display.
Colon told the assemblage: “I feel united with all of you and with Guru in our aspiration. I feel oneness in our souls. I feel that your hearts touch mine and that we are all together travelling on the same path.”
To the Guru, whose first spiritual Centre in the Western world was established in San Juan 12 years ago, Colon said: “This opportunity to see you comes at a time when I am very much in need of help because I am engaged in a very serious matter for Puerto Rico.” He is in the city on a diplomatic mission to the United Nations concerning Puerto Rico’s relationship with the U.S.
While he was governor, Colon invited Sri Chinmoy to his home on several occasions in Puerto Rico, but hasn’t seen him since 1976. “I have thought about you very much during the past two years... always with the deepest respect, admiration and love,” Colon said. “I had a great desire to see you and this desire has been fulfilled tonight.”
Sri Chinmoy told the former governor: “We are one. We are sailing in the same boat, and together we shall fight against ignorance. Ours is the ultimate victory.”
Sri Chinmoy is head of a worldwide spiritual organization headquartered in New York. He is also author of 350 spiritual books, a prolific artist and composer of some 3,000 devotional songs.
Some of his 130,000 paintings had previously been exhibited at the Museo de Arte in Ponce, Puerto Rico.
Sri Chinmoy has also been conducting twice-weekly meditations for delegates and staff at the United Nations since 1970.
Left: Warm Greetings are exchanged by Ex-Governor of Puerto Rico Hernandez Colon, and Sri Chinmoy, when they met in N.Y. for a moment of respite and conversation. Hernandez Colon in the City for diplomatic mission on Puerto Rico’s status, hadn’t seen the religious Master since 1976 in Puerto Rico.
Right: Former Governor Rafael Hernandez Colon of Puerto Rico is escorted by Master Sri Chinmoy to the private meditation room at the N.Y. Art Gallery.
Published in EL DIARIO-LA PRENSA, Viernes, 8 de Septiembre de 1978
Go to your Master, go to your Master, go, go, go, go, go!
Tahar majhe nitya nache param prabhur dyo dyo dyo
Published in God Answers Prayers
A small version of 85-45, Sri Chinmoy’s house, stands trackside at the Sri Chinmoy 700-1000-1300-Mile Ultra-Distance Trio, in Randalls Island, Manhattan New York.
Sri Chinmoy observes the scoreboard at the Sri Chinmoy 700-1000-1300-Mile Ultra-Distance Trio, in Flushing Meadows Park, in Queens, New York.
Sri Chinmoy inspects the catering section, which provides around-the-clock food for the runners.
|
Sri Chinmoy offers this prayer at 9:13 a.m. before doing 620-lb. seated double-dumbbell lift — a new record.
Published in My Morning Soul-Body Prayers, part 16
A talk by Sri Chinmoy
in the Peace Room
of the Church Centre for the United Nations
We all know about your President Woodrow Wilson. He had a daughter named Margaret Wilson. Here we have someone who happened to be her childhood friend, Mrs Pearce K Drake. Mrs Drake, today I wish to speak about your friend, Margaret Wilson.
Many years ago she read a book written by the great spiritual Master, Sri Aurobindo. The book Essays on the Gita, is about Sri Krishna's conversations with Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita. Sri Krishna was the divine soul and Arjuna was the aspiring human soul. We have many, many scriptures in India, but the Bhagavad-Gita is our matchless scripture. The quintessence of all our other scriptures can be found in the Bhagavad-Gita it is India's Bible. Sri Aurobindo wrote some most beautiful, luminous essays on the Bhagavad-Gita. Once Margaret Wilson happened to find and read the book. She was extremely moved and wanted to meet the author. But in those days the author of the book was in complete seclusion; he never left his room. But nevertheless, Margaret Wilson went to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and stayed there permanently. Four times a year she used to see the Master, as others did, for two or three seconds each time. But she was deeply moved by Sri Aurobindo's books, by Sri Aurobindo's philosophy, by Sri Aurobindo's yoga. So she stayed in his ashram.
Sri Aurobindo eventually gave her the name Nishtha, which means faith — divine faith, intense faith. One who has total faith in the Divine, in God, in the Supreme, is Nishtha. Nishtha became the perfect embodiment of divine faith. She led an exemplary life full of devotion and had a surrendering attitude towards the inner, spiritual life.
Unfortunately, we are all susceptible to disease. In her later years Nishtha developed a serious illness. The Indian doctors, in spite of their best efforts, could not cure her. So one of the doctors suggested to her: "Why don't you go back to America? American doctors are far more advanced than we are in the medical field. If you go back to America, the doctors there will take care of you and cure you." But Nishtha's immediate answer was: "True, the doctors in America can take care of my body, but who will take care of my soul? My soul is infinitely more important to me than my physical body. I shall stay here." So she stayed in Pondicherry. She delayed death for a few years more while leading a most dedicated, most spiritual life. Then she passed away.
What do we learn from Margaret Wilson? The soul is infinitely more important than the physical body. But again, in the physical is the soul. We have to give the necessary importance to the physical, but when it is a matter of comparison, when it is a matter of choice, the soul is far more important. If we care for the body all the time, then we shall lead a most ordinary human life. We shall live on earth to no avail. In Indian villages there are farmers who are more than one hundred and fifty years old. But they have no aspiration. Just to live here on earth and count the years on the calendar is of no avail. But if we can stay on earth for even forty or fifty years and can bring the soul's light and divine qualities to the fore and try to manifest them here on earth, then life is meaningful. But for that, we have to live in the soul, not in the body. If we live in the body, we become constant victims to teeming desires.
Today's meditation said that God works in our teeming desires. But again, we have entered into the spiritual life, so for us God is in our climbing aspiration. And tomorrow, in the future, we all shall realise God, and at that time God will be in our glowing realisation. Margaret Wilson knew what desire is. She was brought up in America, so desire was not foreign to her. But she left America for India, and there she lived the spiritual life, the life of aspiration. And what she wanted was realisation and liberation, the third and last step. We can all learn from her. We started our journey with desire. Now all of us here live at least sometimes in the world of aspiration. And in the future, near or distant, we all are bound to enter into the world of realisation.
Nishtha had a Corona typewriter. She typed on that machine for many, many years. But when she passed away, after a few years I was given that typewriter to use. It is not a coincidence that out of two thousand or so disciples, admirers and followers of Sri Aurobindo in the ashram, it was I who was given that particular machine, Nishtha's type writer, to use. Thousands and thousands of times I have typed on Nishtha's machine. And whenever I typed, my soul used to show loving concern and sweet gratitude. From my highest concern, I used to bless her soul.
Thrice I visited her home in the cemetery; three times I paid my soulful homage to her soul there. The cemetery was three and a half miles from the place where I lived. According to our Indian tradition, one has to go to the cemetery with utmost love, concern, purity, simplicity; and finally, if one has real concern for the person's soul, then one has to go barefoot. One cannot carry an umbrella, one cannot wear shoes or sandals and one has to walk. So I walked all the way barefoot. And you can well imagine the scorching heat of South India! Three times I paid my deepest homage to Margaret Wilson. 'Faith' in its purest, simplest and highest form, this is Nishtha. I wish to say that all of us can have this kind of faith. It is already within us. We do not have to invent or create faith in ourselves. We have just to discover it. It is not something unknown or foreign or inconceivable or unimaginable to us. No, it is deep inside us. We have only to search, and then we will be able to discover our own treasure. If we have faith in God, then there is no such thing as impossibility.
If one does not have faith in oneself, then one can never, never have real faith in God. This faith in oneself is not arrogance or a showing off of what one can do or say. This faith is the conviction of one's inseparable oneness with the highest Absolute: "I can do this, I can say this, I can go into this, I can become this precisely because deep inside me is my Supreme Lord. It is on the strength of my identification with the Highest Supreme, the Inner Pilot, that I can do this, I can say this, I can become this, I can help the world because God has made me His conscious instrument."
Faith in oneself and faith in God must run together. Otherwise, if one has faith in God and not in oneself or if one has faith in oneself and not in God, then progress will always be unsatisfactory and transient. But if we have faith in ourselves, if we can feel that God has chosen us and we are His chosen instruments, if we can feel that He is with us, in us, of us and for us, then here on earth we can achieve the message of Immortality in our consciousness and the message of universal Perfection in our day-to-day lives. Let us try. We shall succeed.
Published in Reality-Dream