As long as your heart remains
An ever-mounting aspiration-flame,
It makes no difference
What your weaknesses are.
Sri Chinmoy, Ten Thousand Flower-Flames, Part 17, Agni Press, 1981.
photo: Tejvan, Sri Chinmoy Centre galleries.
Posts Tagged ‘sri chinmoy’
Just Love and Love More – Sri Chinmoy
JUST LOVE AND LOVE MORE
No remedy for black hate?
Who says?
Just love
And love more,
That’s all.
Sympathy does not think
Sympathy does not think.
It acts.
It acts to remove
The ceaseless sufferings
Of the world
– Sri Chinmoy
Related
photo: Tejvan
Silence is the Eloquent Expression of the Inexpressible
“Meditation is silence, energising and fulfilling. Silence is the eloquent expression of the inexpressible.”
– Sri Chinmoy
– Sri Chinmoy, God The Supreme Musician, Agni Press, 1976.
The Only Way
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
Love Is
Love is not a thing to understand.
Love is not a thing to feel.
Love is not a thing to give and receive.
Love is a thing only to become
And eternally be.
– Sri Chinmoy
Spirit Over Matter
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.
Spirit Over Matter
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.
Related
- Challenging Impossibility
- Inspiration – Lifts
- Spiritual Guru’s strength on display at Tribeca
- A Monument to Strength as a path to enlightenment – at NY Times