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In 2006, Sri Chinmoy composed Shakpura, his 13,000th song in his native Bengali language, whilst on the ultra-fast Shinkasen train from Yokohama to Hiroshima in Japan. In contrast, the song referred to his birthplace in the simple village of Shakpura, in what was then India, but is now modern-day Bangladesh. My teacher gets tremendous joy from recalling memories of his childhood in Shakpura. “In every field, we appreciate, admire and adore vastness, but the qualities of sweetness, fondness and intimacy develop inside littleness”, he says. “For me, that littleness is symbolised by my childhood village home.”

In January 2007, a choir of Sri Chinmoy’s students, led by Prachar Stegemann of Austraila, performed an extremely elaborate arrangement of this song. The arrangement consisted of four different movements, evoking in turn the sweetness and simplicity of Shakpura village, the bustle of the nearby city of Chittagong, the pride the composer feels for his Bengal homeland, and the love and affection felt for Mother India. I wasn’t there on January to see the arrangement, but Sri Chinmoy asked the choir to sing a reprise of the arrangement a couple of weeks ago when I was in New York to visit him, and I joined in at the back of the choir and helped sing it. It was a very moving experience, especially the last part; only a stone could fail to have been moved. The original January performance has just been released on Radio Sri Chinmoy…

I was leafleting for some upcoming meditation classes run by the Dublin Sri Chinmoy Centre, and I went into one cafe to find the manager of the cafe having a good old yelling match in Chinese with one of her staff. It struck me how no matter where you are in the world, anger comes uniformly dressed in a raised voice. But much more importantly: a smile is still a smile.

Later on, someone came up to me from a local radio station and asked me to describe the leaders of all the political parties in only one word (it’s general election time round here). If ever there was a task specifically crafted to send my brain into absolute lockdown, this was it. I responded with the word ‘populist‘ for three politicians in a row before realising maybe thats not what the poor girl is looking for. I did, however, come up with ‘velvet-gloved‘ to describe one particular party leader - maybe you can guess which one

have just returned from New York, where I’ve been spending the last ten days or so with my meditation teacher, Sri Chinmoy, and his students who flew in from all around the world. It has been quite an action-packed time; for sure there has been meditation (and plenty of it), but in keeping with Sri Chinmoy’s philosophy that inner progress and outer action can and must go together, there were also many singing and insrumental performances, spiritual plays, a marathon and even a circus! There is a tremendous energy present during the whole time, and I find myself getting by on much less sleep than I would normally, as I try and involve myself in as many things as possible.

The past few times I came to visit Sri Chinmoy in New York, I wrote a daily diary of goings-on both inner and outer during my stay. However this time I felt I should I just put my laptop away for a week or so and just let myself enjoy the whole experience. I daresay a few stories will emerge in the near future though.

Maybe I will actually keep ‘hello world’ as my first post title. At the moment I’m in New York under a beautiful blue sky. Sitting on a stairwell looking at a beautiful blue house. Perhaps my brother will come by and then I can get him to take a picture of said blue house. I have to be quick so I can rehearse my (very few) lines I have for a play tonight. I am to play a weary traveller in the kingdom of Akbar the Great, the legendary Moghul Emperor of India, who gets captured after stealing a box of treasure because he was upset at the way he got treated. So I am in quite an angry state in the play, but I am remembering some advice from a good friend of mine who directed a play I was in when I was in college - she said ‘whatever you do, don’t think “OK now I have to be angry” ‘. I guess she means that it is more important to have a oneness with the character you are playing. Which is a bit hard because the play is partly comedy. Must remember not to yell too much. I had an unfortunate experience at age 7 when I was narrator of a nativity play performed in front of the whole local community, and I shouted the whole script into a microphone, deafening the audience. Twenty years later, when I go to visit my parents, I still get people (my mother’s friends, usually) coming up to me, shouting “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” -  mimicking my childhood performance.