“The very nature of human love is to stick only to one person and to reject everyone else: accept and reject, accept and reject. But in divine love, which is unlimited and infinite, the question of acceptance and rejection does not arise at all. In divine love there is no possession – only a feeling of oneness.”
– Sri Chinmoy [1. What is Love?]
Related
From the Silence Unknowable
To the Sound knowable I came
To play and sing and dance
With a tiny, fragile frame,
And build a rainbow-bridge
Between Heaven and earth
For my sweet Supreme to travel
And flood all-where His Birth.
Sometimes I must be silent,
For that is the only way
To know a little better,
To think a little wiser,
To become a little more perfect,
To claim God a little sooner.
– Sri Chinmoy
Sri Chinmoy Seated Press
Sri Chinmoy is best known as a spiritual teacher, advocating a path of meditation and inner peace. However, when a knee injury curtailed his running career, in his mid 50s, Sri Chinmoy felt an inner command to take up the sport of weightlifting. From modest beginnings, he managed to rapidly progress to remarkable feats of strength. Sri Chinmoy’s weightlifting is a very visible demonstration of how inner strength can translate into tangible outer strength.
Many weightlifters who witnessed Sri Chinmoy’s lifts were surprised to see how he managed to lift very heavy weights, whilst remaining slightly built and not having the body type of a weightlifter. Sri Chinmoy said, that it was prayer and meditation which gave him the capacity to lift these heavy weights.
“Prayer and meditation are my inner secret and my outer secret. My muscles are next to nothing compared to the muscles of the professional bodybuilders and weightlifters. It is because of the strength of my prayer-life and meditation-life that I am able to accomplish these feats of strength.”
Sri Chinmoy, Aspiration-Body, Illumination-Soul Part 2, Agni Press, 1993.
People often ask why would a Spiritual Teacher take up the sport of weightlifting. Sri Chinmoy would reply it was not to compete with others, but only to compete with himself in a spirit of self-transcendence.
“I do not compete with anybody else; I compete only with myself. You saw my capacity a few minutes ago. Now I am competing with myself. When I do weightlifting, my body is my world. If I can improve myself, if I can go beyond my previous achievements, then that is my goal. My own previous record is always what I am competing with.”
Sri Chinmoy, Aspiration-Body, Illumination-Soul Part 1, Agni Press, 1993.
Sri Chinmoy also sought to inspire people; he felt if people got joy from seeing an elderly person lift weights, it would make them happy and inspire them in their own way. For example, well known bodybuilder, Frank Zane spoke how “the guru strengthened his already devout practice of meditation and Buddhist chanting to overcome nervousness and sharpen his confidence in bodybuilding competitions.” (A Monument to Strength as a Path to Enlightenment) at New York Times.
To Sri Chinmoy his philosophy was not to use ‘mind over matter’, but to use the strength from within. Before lifting, Sri Chinmoy said he would simply silence the mind and be as concentrated as possible allowing no thought to enter.
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The Stormy life can be braved
Only by the heart’s sunny
Meditations
– Sri Chinmoy, Sri Chinmoy’s Heart-Garden
To deliberately criticise
Another individual
May cause an indelible stain
On the critic.
– Sri Chinmoy
Those who serve the world constantly
Do not have time
To criticise others,
While those who do not serve
Others selflessly
Have endless time
To criticise the whole world.
– Sri Chinmoy.
Even absent-mindedly,
We must not
Criticise others.
– Sri Chinmoy.
Alas, how we waste
Our precious time
In the company of
Jealousy and criticism.
~
Each soul, each heart
And each life
Has something very special
To offer
For the betterment of humanity.
~
There is only one examination
That cannot and will not stop,
And that is the examination
Of self-improvement.
Poems Selected from Sri Chinmoy Books
Image by Abhishek, Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries
Pure thinking is not escaping But Self-offering. Pure thinking is not observation But Self-transformation. Pure thinking is not experimentation But Self-perfection. Pure thinking is not God-fearing But God-becoming.
