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 and his students perform a concert of spiritual music in the auditorium of Public School 86, at the intersection of Parsons Blvd and 87th Ave, Jamaica, NY, USA.
Tributes for Sri Chinmoy’s 50th birthday are read into the US Congressional Record at Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, USA.
The Sri Chinmoy Grand Prix — 31 races over 31 days — begins, in honour of Sri Chinmoy’s 50th birthday. Sri Chinmoy runs 440 yards (402.3 m) in a time of 1 min. 21.1 sec. at the Sri Chinmoy Grand Prix on Jamaica High School Track, Jamaica, NY, USA.
Sri Chinmoy runs 7 miles solo in a time of 52:58 (a 7:34/mile pace) in Westerly, and offers a concert at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, USA, as part of his ‘Fifty Oneness-State-Songs’ tour. During the run, he records unofficial personal bests times for 4 miles (30:21), 5 miles (38:07), 6 miles (45:47) and 10 kilometres (47:11).
The Governor of Rhode Island proclaims Sri Chinmoy Day and awards Sri Chinmoy honorary citizenship in the state. Providence and four other cities issue proclamations.
The first Sri Chinmoy Masters Games is held at Greenwich High School in Greenwich, CT, USA.
An exhibition of Sri Chinmoy’s 3,000,000 Soul-Bird drawings is held at Aspiration-Ground in Jamaica, NY, USA. More than 400 people come to celebrate his peace-bird project, which he calls ‘My Three Million Heart-Bird-God-Manifestation-Songs’. Events include, silent meditation, musical performances, a play and a huge meal.
Sri Chinmoy offers a memorial service for John F. Kennedy Jr. at the United Nations in New York.
Sri Chinmoy offers a Peace Concert at the Old First Reformed Church in Brooklyn, NY, USA.
Sri Chinmoy lifts 27 people, including nationals of Angola, Bangladesh and India, in Jamaica, NY, USA.
Sri Chinmoy lifts 14 people, including Scott Donie, 1992 Olympic silver medallist in the 10-metre platform diving, at a ‘Lifting Up the World with a Oneness-Heart’ function at Aspiration-Ground in Jamaica, NY, USA. He also give a short esraj concert.
Sri Chinmoy offers a Peace Concert in Jamaica, NY, USA.
Sri Chinmoy offers a Peace Concert — the 31st anniversary of his first bamboo straight flute performance — in Jamaica, NY, USA.
A tribute to Sri Chinmoy is read into the Congressional Record by Hon. Gary L. Ackerman of New York in the House of Representatives, in Washington, DC, USA.
Sri Chinmoy offers a Peace Concert at Riverside Church in New York, NY, USA.
Sri Chinmoy offers a Peace Concert in Jamaica, NY, USA.
A print of Sri Chinmoy’s original Jharna-Kala artwork hangs in ‘My Rainbow-Dreams’ Vegetarian Café in Canberra, Australia.
By Lyndee Yamshon
One could hear a pin drop as Sri Chinmoy, artist of 70,000 Peace-Bird drawings, voiced several prayers to visitors of the exhibit of thousands of colourful birds unveiled at the United Nations building on 42nd Street and First Avenue last week.
He told the gathering how his idea to draw the birds came from deep prayer and meditation and how he believed that the birds were given to him as a gift from God.
“These birds are a collective repetition of prayers for peace,” he said.
“They are a reminder of harmony, the highest stage of being. I thank God that I can be here today, sharing these birds with you.”
The Indian-born artist who moved to New York in 1964, passed out peace bird cookies to guests, who included Kate Zuma, wife of the Deputy President of South Africa, Conrad Zuma, who spent many years in prison with Nelson Mandela.
A lecturer at several Ivy League schools including Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Columbia, Chinmoy meditated, eyes closed, smiling as he met with people from different nations, religions and cultural backgrounds who attended his opening at the magnificent headquarters. As they gathered around him, he recited a series of prayers and said:
“You may ask why I draw birds in countless numbers. In my case, I can not separate quality and quantity. These birds represent unity and multiplicity — if we have both these components in this world of ours we’ll have peace and bliss in boundless measures.
“The birds represent freedom. This freedom travels far beyond the horizons carrying the message of eternal peace. Freedom, as it is divine, it is boundless and it is bound to carry.
“The birds fly in boundless forms singing a victory of God the creator and God the creation at the same time. Each bird is a prayer from my heart, from my spiritual inner life. Each bird embodies a new hope.
“Peace is the golden bridge of earth tears and heaven smiles.
“Peace is the eagerness of the heart to discover God....
“Peace is the perfect voice of the inner world.”
As well as being an accomplished artist, Chinmoy also performs on several musical instruments, including the esraj, flute, violin and cello.
During his travels, he often offers free music concerts for peace, hoping to awaken the world’s consciousness towards the necessity of a higher existence. His exhibition at the UN building runs until Friday, August 4.
MAN OF PEACE — the exhibition by Indian-born artist Sri Chinmoy runs at the UN building until August 4.
TOWN & VILLAGE, VOL. 53, NO. 31, NEW YORK, NEW YORK, JULY 27, 2000
The first Sri Chinmoy Masters Games is held from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Greenwich High School in Greenwich, Connecticut.
The Games include both track and field — track events for men from 100 metres to 5,000 metres and for women from 100 metres to 3,000 metres, and field events for both men and women include long jump, high jump, javelin, discus, shot put, and tennis ball throw.
Opening remarks by Sri Chinmoy:
“Sri Chinmoy Masters Games is the smile of a Oneness-Family in a Oneness-Home. Masters-Games is at once the aspiration and dedication of the body, and the vision and illumination of the soul. Here each participant is competing against his or her own present capacities. The goal of these games is self-transcendence. Humanity’s self-transcendence gift is the only perfection-beauty that God the Absolute Athlete Supreme truly and fondly treasures.
“And now, for tremendous outer success and momentous inner progress, may each participant receive the highest benediction from Heaven and the strongest aspiration from earth. Sri Chinmoy Masters Games begins to proceed on, forever on!”
HON. GARY L. ACKERMAN
OF NEW YORK
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Mr. ACKERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I consider it an honor and a distinct privilege today to rise and offer birthday congratulations to a man many in this country and the world have come to respect and admire, Sri Chinmoy, who on August 27, will be celebrating his 75th birthday in New York City. He is a selfless individual who has dedicated himself to nurturing world harmony and to the creative expression of the limitless potential of the human spirit.
Sri Chinmoy’s many contributions to American life and culture have been expressed through teaching, athletics, art, music, poetry and literature. He combines the contemplative traditions of his native India with the dynamism of his adopted America to serve humanity through programs such as the World Harmony Run torch relay, The Oneness-Heart Tears and Smiles worldwide humanitarian service, and the Lifting Up the World with a Oneness-Heart awards program. Through these initiatives for world harmony, he has touched countless lives and offered hope to thousands of individuals worldwide.
Mr. Speaker, Sri Chinmoy Kumar Ghose was born on August 27,1931, in India in East Bengal, the present day Bangladesh. On April 13, 1964, he arrived in this country from Southern India, where he had received his education and training in the ancient methods of yoga at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.
When he came to this country, he founded the Sri Chinmoy Centre, headquartered in Jamaica, Queens. The first Centres were established in 1966 in Puerto Rico and New York, and have since grown to include branches all over the United States and 73 other countries worldwide. The Centres are dedicated to the twin goals of public service and personal spiritual growth through the use of meditation. The students of Sri Chinmoy include individuals from all faiths and walks of life who seek to cultivate harmony and goodwill both in themselves and in their communities. They also compose the community of volunteers who carry out, at the grass-roots level, Sri Chinmoy’s vision of loving service through such varied projects as humanitarian aid and the sponsorship of musical concerts and athletic events.
Considered one of the world's foremost authorities on Eastern philosophy, which is a systematic method of expanding consciousness through meditation, prayer and selfless service, Sri Chinmoy has lectured on this topic at many of the major universities in the United States. His first lecture tour began at Yale on December 4, 1968 and included talks at all 8 Ivy League Universities. In the early 1970s he lectured at 20 universities on topics of Indian wisdom and philosophy. In 1974, he spoke at universities in all 50 states.
He continues to lecture here and around the world. In his writings and speeches, he endeavors to share eastern light for the western mind. A prolific writer and poet, Sri Chinmoy has written over 1,550 books of essays, poems and short stories. The largest university library collection of his works is at Harvard Divinity School.
Meditation classes under Sri Chinmoy’s guidance are always provided free of charge. He offered his first public meditation at Columbia University on April 23, 1971, and his first meditation in Congress at the Rayburn House Office Building on May 23, 1979, under the sponsorship of my former colleague, the distinguished late New York Congressman Joseph P. Addabbo.
Mr. Speaker, Sri Chinmoy believes that sport is a powerful instrument for promoting global harmony. He has long found that athletics can be an invaluable source of motivation and enrichment for thousands of people, young and old alike. In 1976 he was recognized with a commendation from the President’s Council on Physical Fitness for his role in inspiring young Americans to run the 50-State, 9,000-mile “Liberty Torch” relay held in honor of the U.S. Bicentennial. He founded the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team in 1977. In 1982, several of his students organized “America's Freedom-Ride,” a 50-State public participation bicycle relay that celebrated the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution.
The lessons of these early 50-State American relays became the foundation for the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team to organize a global torch relay. Now known as the World Harmony Run, it was held from April to August on a biennial basis from 1987 to 2001 and resumed as a yearly event in 2005. The World Harmony Run seeks to promote international friendship and understanding. This year, an international team of runners will carry a flaming torch, symbolizing the human aspiration for oneness, through more than 80 countries around the globe together with a 10,500-mile, fifty State U.S.A. route. The event serves to connect thousands of grassroots efforts for world harmony taking place in communities across the globe. It does not seek to raise money or promote any political cause, but rather to create good will among peoples and nations.
The Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team has made a city block in my district world famous. It’s where the longest running race in the world takes place around the shortest course--a half-mile certified loop on paved sidewalks adjacent to the Grand Central Parkway. To complete the Self-Transcendence 3,100 Mile Race, participants run 5,648.688 laps around the block, a distance equivalent to more than 118 marathons. The Tenth Annual edition began on June 11 and continues into August with the largest field yet of 15 ultra-distance runners. As in all his endeavors, Sri Chinmoy sets the highest standards of organization, logistics and support to help ultra-marathon runners achieve their greatest potential. We can expect of this race to see new world records and personal bests.
A decathlon and 100-meter sprinting champion in his youth, Sri Chinmoy believes in the necessity of a sound mind and a sound body. He began his own long-distance running career in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco on June 1, 1978. In March 1979, he ran his first marathon in Chico, California, and, later that month, his fastest marathon in 3:55:07 at the Heart-Watchers Marathon in Toledo, Ohio. He has completed 22 marathons and 5 ultra marathons and now, at age 75, still regularly exercises.
Mr. Speaker, Sri Chinmoy first began weightlifting on June 26, 1986, and embarked on a new dimension in his weightlifting career 2 years later when he inaugurated “Lifting Up the World with a Oneness-Heart.” This is his way of recognizing individuals from all walks of life who inspire humanity and excel in their respective fields. At these programs, Sri Chinmoy lifts each honoree overhead on a special platform, symbolically reflecting their own uplifting contributions to the world.
Bill Pearl of Oregon, a Five-time Mr. Universe, was the first person lifted in this fashion. Sri Chinmoy has lifted Members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, heads of state, ambassadors, Nobel laureates, university professors, spiritual leaders from all faiths, Olympic athletes, citizens serving their communities, and school children whose dreams are so important to our future. In Hawaii, on December 23, 1990, he lifted Senator Hiram L. Fong, who was Hawaii’s first Senator at the time of statehood.
On July 10, 2001, in the Rayburn Gold Room, Sri Chinmoy simultaneously lifted my esteemed New York colleague Benjamin Gilman and me on a two-platform lifting apparatus, one of us with each arm. If I had not experienced it, I could not imagine this to be possible. In a day-long lifting program at Boeing Field Auditorium in Washington State on July 13, 2003, held to celebrate the centenary of the Wright brothers first flight, Sri Chinmoy lifted 123 airplane pilots in appreciation of their dedicated services in carrying humanity into the skies. From 1988 to 2006, Sri Chinmoy has honored more than 8,000 individuals from many countries with this award.
Mr. Speaker, The Oneness-Heart Tears and Smiles is the voluntary humanitarian service program of the Sri Chinmoy Centre. Since 1991, centre members worldwide have collected and shipped tons of humanitarian supplies to countries in need including South Africa, Angola, Mozambique, India, and, after the tsunami, Sri Lanka. It responds to disaster relief requests, health and education needs, and regional development projects. The program obtains and distributes medical, domestic and educational supplies and toys, working closely with other aid agencies, local NGOs, community groups and corporations.
One would think that this busy schedule and numerous interests would be enough for one man, but not so for Sri Chinmoy. An accomplished composer of music for choir and instruments with 13,000 songs composed in his native Bengali and 7,000 in English, Sri Chinmoy has performed his music free of charge at over 750 concerts worldwide since 1984. Last year, to celebrate his 74th birthday, he played his original compositions on 74 different pianos at an outdoor concert in Queens.
Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York and Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island sponsored an art exhibit of Sri Chinmoy’s soul-bird drawings in the Russell Rotunda of the U.S. Senate in 1995.
All told, Sri Chinmoy has written 20,000 songs, taught 300 university lectures, authored 1,550 books, including 112,000 poems, penned 15 million bird drawings, and completed 200,000 “Jharna-Kala” paintings (“Fountain of Art” in his native Bengali).
He has dedicated his life to inspiring and serving all those trying to make the world a better place, whether ordinary citizens or those entrusted with the stewardship of a nation.
Mr. Speaker, on this, the celebration of Sri Chinmoy’s upcoming Diamond Jubilee 75th birthday, I ask all my colleagues in the House of Representatives to please join me as I wish Sri Chinmoy success in the years ahead and best wishes for a long and continuingly fruitful life.
Pages E1568-E1569, CONGRESSIONAL RECORD – Extensions of Remarks July 27, 2006