Sri Chinmoy

Sri ChinmoyWe are inspired to offer these free meditation classes by the vision and teachings of Sri Chinmoy, who devoted his life to making meditation as widely known and practiced as possible. Sri Chinmoy says,  “Meditation is everybody’s birthright. In meditation we establish our oneness with the entire world and our whole being is inundated with peace.”

Sri Chinmoy was born in 1931 in the village of Shakpura, Chittagong, in the easternmost part of India (now Bangladesh). All seven brothers and sisters in the family chose a spiritual life and became residents of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in South India. Chinmoy Kumar Ghose was the youngest child. After the death of both his parents, he joined this spiritual community at the age of twelve.

During the next twenty years he spent many hours of each day and night in meditation and had profound inner experiences, which deepened and widened as he continued his inner journey.  He also led an active outer life writing poetry, essays and music, studying, working and excelling in sports. In 1964 he came to New York to begin his service of teaching and inspiring spiritual seekers worldwide.

Sri Chinmoy has said, “Each spiritual seeker has an inner hunger. This hunger is for the Unlimited, for Infinity itself.” The spiritual hunger within us is our aspiration – the inner cry or longing for a higher reality, mounting up like a flame in our hearts. Meditation and service to the world are the expression of our aspiration. Living in the heart, we find our own true satisfaction and our oneness with others.

With aspiration we continually transcend ourselves “from light, to more light, abundant light, to infinite light.” It is the aspiration within each person that creates progress in all areas of human life – religion, science, the arts, culture, public life and sports.

Sri Chinmoy entered his Mahasamadhi, or final union with the Supreme, on October 11, 2007, leaving his physical body at the age of seventy-six.

Sri Chinmoy’s own words on world peace

“My students and I have only one goal in all our peace-serving activities: to serve the message of peace. My partial goal is for the places which are now in conflict is to establish harmony on the basis of our prayers and meditations. Now some countries are having serious problems, and they are affecting the whole world. On the individual level, my partial goal is for people to lead better and more progressive lives and to work for the welfare of the world.

My next partial goal is for the nations of the world to dedicate themselves to peace and to go give utmost importance to the aims and guiding principals of the United Nations. Both nations and individuals shall transform the feeling of superiority and inferiority – which are the root of world conflicts – into feeling of mutual support and encouragement.

My ultimate goal is for the whole world to walk together in peace and oneness. Just as the rose has many petals, all of which add to the beauty and fragrance of the rose, so too the world shall become one world-family. Together we shall live in harmony in a spirit of self-giving for the good of all. By giving joy to others and by receiving inspiration from others, each individual will contribute to the perfection of the whole.

This ultimate goal requires the transformation of the human nature. There must be a great synthesis between the inner life and the outer life. The inner life wants love, the outer life wants power. Now we are all exercising the love of power. But a day will come when this world of ours will be inundated with the power that loves. Only the power that loves can change the world.

My ultimate goal is for the power of love to replace the love of power within each individual. At that time world peace can be achieved, revealed, offered and manifested on earth.”

Challenging Impossibility – From Inner Peace to Outer Strength

Sri Chinmoy was an athlete, and he saw that athletics and sports could benefit hugely from the power of meditation. In 1985, he began weightlifting at the young age of 54! This award-winning documentary documents some of Sri Chinmoy’s remarkable feats in that field.

By Sanjay Rawal

 

Sites about Sri Chinmoy