Our Soulful Prayer and Our Fruitful Meditation
A talk by Sri Chinmoy
at 2:00 p.m., University of Southern California, Pasadena, California
Our soulful prayer and our fruitful meditation. Our soulful prayer is answered even before we pray if we have a pure aspiration-heart. Our fruitful meditation is fulfilled even before we meditate if we have a sure surrendered life.
What is a true prayer and what is a true meditation? A true prayer is constant self-giving and a true meditation is constant self-transcendence.
We pray to God for His Greatness. We meditate on God for His Goodness. When we pray we feel that God is above us. When we meditate we feel that God is within us. We pray to God because He is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. His Greatness inspires us. We meditate on God because of His Love and Compassion, His unconditional Love and unconditional Compassion. Not because He is great but because He is good is the reason we meditate on God. We pray to God to give us what He has and what He is. We meditate on God for His manifestation in and through us.
When we pray, we feel our closeness to God. When we meditate, we feel our oneness with God. Closest intimacy we enjoy on the strength of our soulful prayer. Deepest ecstasy we enjoy in the inmost recesses of our heart by virtue of our fruitful meditation.
The finite in us desires the Infinite, the unknown, the unknowable. Therefore, it prays. The conscious reality, which is aware of itself in infinitesimal measure, wants to bring down the Infinite, the Eternal and the Immortal here on earth, in the immediacy of today. This is what our meditation wants.
Both prayer and meditation are of paramount importance. We pray because prayer constantly makes us feel that there is someone for us. We meditate because we feel that what we are now is not everything that we have or everything that we are. But there shall come a time when we shall grow into the very image of our Absolute Lord Supreme, which is our own perennial Source. With divine humility we pray, and thus we satisfy our Absolute Lord Supreme. With divine dignity we meditate, and thus we satisfy our Beloved Supreme.
Published in The Vision-Sky of California
Music
A talk by Sri Chinmoy
at 8:00 p.m., University of California, Los Angeles, California
Music is inspiration, soulful inspiration. It inspires the human in us. Music is manifestation, fruitful manifestation. It manifests the divine in us. Music is satisfaction, supreme satisfaction. It satisfies the Pilot Supreme in us.
The human musician plays in order to become great. The divine musician becomes good first and then plays divinely, while soulfully and unconditionally offering the results to the Beloved Supreme. The Supreme Musician does not play in order to become great. The Supreme Musician does not have to become good in order to play. But the Supreme Musician at once embodies the universal sound-music and the transcendental Silence-Music.
God the Supreme Music feeds the aspiration-heart of the seeker-musician. God the Supreme Musician illumines the dedication-life of the seeker-musician. The soulful prayer of a seeker-musician and his music-world are the same thing: his soulful music is his soulful prayer. His fruitful meditation is another name for his fruitful music.
The music of the unaspiring musician and God’s Compassion-flood are inseparable. The music of the aspiring and surrendered seeker-musician and God’s Satisfaction-Delight are always interchangeable.
Published in AUM – Vol. 5, No. 9,10, September-October 1978
You have Peace
Sri Chinmoy offers an inspirational message after morning sports practice and a meditation at Jamaica High School track in Jamaica, New York
You have peace.
That means you have wisdom.
You have wisdom.
That means you have love.
You have love.
That means you have concern.
You have concern.
That means you have dedication.
You have dedication.
That means you have aspiration.
You have aspiration.
That means you have
The living God within you.
You have the living God within you.
That means you know constantly
Who you are.
You know constantly who you are.
That means you know that you are at once
Humanity's eternal cry
And
Divinity's eternal Smile.
Published in Aurora-Flora