Here you can see Aspiration-Ground, the place where we gather to meditate when we go to New York to visit Sri Chinmoy; I think at the moment this photo is being taken at a lull in between events. As you can see, many of Sri Chinmoy’s students dress in very bright colours (brighter colours are more expansive and evocative of the joy and vastness of the spirit than darker ones) and they add a touch of colour to any photo! The white streamers overhead are an ubiquitous feature of our April and August visits; as well as shielding us from the often harsh New York sun, there is something about them that really create a feeling of stillness; perhaps the wind rustling through them, or the shadows they cast on the ground, I don’t know what it is, to be honest with you! Depending on the weather and what is going on, Sri Chinmoy sometimes has his seat on the ground to the left of the photo, and then other times he sits in a covered area at one end of the grounds which is blocked by the tree.
The highlight of our April visits to see Sri Chinmoy is invariably April 13th, the anniversary of the day Sri Chinmoy first arrived in America to be of service to seekers of truth there. The meditation functions that take place on that day have a supernally beautiful quality to them: there might be over 1,500 of Sri Chinmoy’s students visiting him on that particular day, but in my memory it is always the ethereal silence of the meditations I remember most, a silence so beatific and tangible one could almost reach out with a knife and carve it.
And in the silence, the day unfolds. Sri Chinmoy begins by offering his deep gratitude to the soul of America, for hosting him so generously and self-givingly for the past forty-three years. As you may have read previously in this blog, Sri Chinmoy often lifts heavy weights in a vivid demonstration of the power of the spirit over matter; sometimes he uses these weightlifting events as an expression of appreciation, lifting overhead men and women of inspiration using a specially-designed overhead apparatus. in the same vein he offered his appreciation to the soul of America, by lifting overhead a stone fountain weighting 312lb (shown on right) containing fifty flowers, one for each of the states. Then he called all of his American students together to sing “America the Beautiful”, that quintessential evocation of the divine natural and human qualities of America, which many people take as her unofficial national anthem.
But Sri Chinmoy had not forgotten about all the other countries either. Afterwards we had a walking meditation where we all were grouped by our country of origin. As all his Irish students passed by him, Sri Chinmoy, hands folded and head bowed, humbly said “I bow to the soul of Ireland”; he did likewise for the other countries. Later we were treated to a wonderful Indian meal, eating it sitting cross-legged on the floor around our teacher as he related some fond anecdotes about when he first arrived in America.
For some of Sri Chinmoy’s students, the day really begins on the evening of April 12th; there is a 12-hour walk beginning at seven o’clock in the evening and ending at seven the morning of the 13th, in which many participate either in a walking or helping capacity. (My brother Colm took this photo at sunrise on the morning of the 13th; you can see the walkers in the background) Last year, I had gotten tremendous joy from playing my flute for all the participants and I was really inspired to do it again. So after a few hours’ sleep, I got up at 3:30 and made my way out to a nice spot on the course and started playing away. It as really tough at first, my fingers started freezing with the cold, but then some beautiful flow of the heart overtook me, songs came to me that I hadn’t played in a long time and even a couple that I had never played before, and the time flew by without me realising it. At every ultra race I ever have helped at, there has always been a very strong sense of oneness between all the participents and helpers, like we were all there to help each other have joy and make progress, and this one was no different; walkers helping walkers, helpers helping walkers, walkers helping helpers. Actually, unbeknownst to me, on the other side of the course there was a small group of musicians led by Arthur from Berlin on harmonium who actually played the entire twelve hours! it would have been nice to meet up with them; I have great memories of myself, Arthur and Sandin from Austria on tabla playing away into the small hours of the morning last year.
The rain during our stay in New York was unbelievable. They said it was the worst April in New York in 200 years. Thankfully it let up a little during the 13th, but in the succeeding days, it was back with a vengeance. Not to mention the near zero temperatures at nights. It was really really cold. You get some idea from seeing my brother Colm here in this photograph, together with Martin from Graz in Austria who is actually visiting Dublin at the moment, but they still have smiles on their faces. I have to say, I didn’t mind it at all, in fact in some strange way I was grateful for it - it was kind of a challenge where you just had to shut all out incipient negative thoughts about the weather and stay cheerful and happy.
Arguably the worst day weatherwise was thankfully a day we were all indoors: every April and August, one day during our visit is given over to - a circus! We all prepare an act or join up in groups to perform, and the result - clowns, acrobatics, choreography, skits - can take up the best part of the day. Every year, myself and my brother Colm invariably find ourselves in the grand final extravaganza directed by Charana from Wales, a glorious hotch-potch of themes and happenings which are rather incoherently strung together but no-one in the audience cares because they’re all too busy laughing their hearts out. So this time there was monkeys from the Jungle Book, nuns from the Sound of Music, custard pies, regrowing heads and a generous helping of Bollywood dancing. Myself and my brother Colm were amongst the monkeys; before the play, i noticed everyone was cutting rather large holes in their masks to see through, which in my infinite wisdom I didnt see the need for. Boy, was I wrong. i must have spent half the performance peering around in my limited sphere of vision wondering where everyone had gone. But in a performance like Charana’s, everything is so chaotic that no-one in the audience knows when something goes wrong, so i just went with the flow and really enjoyed myself.
A couple of days later, we were making our way to something entirely different - the inaugural Self-Transcendence Invitational Marathon. Every year in August, many of Sri Chinmoy’s students run the Self-Transcendence Marathon in Rockland State Park, but this year Sri Chinmoy proposed that an additional marathon be held, with entry limited to those who had a previous marathon best of 3:55 in the past five tears. I was eligible to run, but a knee injury picked up a few weeks back kept me from participating and instead, and so I instead I was helping with the race set-up. I did however get a run in after all; I was busy entertaining the runners with my flute (with much less success, it was so windy it was hard to get an music out of it at all) when Colm came past with just four miles to go. Without thinking I joined him for the last four miles, encouraging him on until he crossed the finish line in a time of 3:21, eleven minutes better than his previous best. I hadn’t thought of testing my legs out again for another couple of weeks, so it was great that I got the run in; it didn’t do my knee one bit of harm.
A highlight of the celebrations for many was the very fine performances of spiritual theater that took place. The scene on the right is from a wonderfully done play about the life of Thomas Jefferson, specifically his contribution to making religious tolerance a cornerstone of American public life. It is something that we now take for granted, but the first scene of the play brought us back to those nightmarish days where you could be persecuted for your most cherished inner beliefs, and gave us an idea of the magnitude of what heroes like Jefferson were up against. Another great play was in fact the second in a three part series about the childhood of Lord Krishna: the one running motif throughout the play is the prophecy given to Krishna’s greedy and power-hungry uncle that he would be slain by a son of Devaki, Krishna’s mother. Kamsa embarks on various unspeakable acts to quash this prophecy, only to find that the thread connecting him to the fulfilment of this prophecy is being pulled ever tighter. There are great performances by Devashishu Torpy as Krishna and especially Tejaswi can der Walt as Kamsa, who really gives an impression of a man with a giant clock over his head ticking its way down to his ultimate doom, which all his power and scheming cannot avert. I was fortunate to have a tiny role in this play, and I was very struck at the speed at which this international cast of actors could come up with something so accomplished at such short notice.
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The song, titled Dyulok chariye nara narayan, is a profoundly elevating experience of song, the words of which come from a poem my teacher, Sri Chinmoy wrote when thirteen years of age (roughly around the time that photo on the left was taken). The poem was written for his spiritual Master, Sri Aurobindo (right), in time for his birthday on August 15, 1945. Fifty years later, in 1995, Sri Chinmoy set the entire poem to music in the form of this song. I began learning the song at 7 a.m. armed with a recording sung by my friend Hiyamallar from California, only to retire five hours later with a severe bout of head-spinning, and not a lot to show for my efforts! But at least it was a start; I kept learning it for a while. But then I mislaid the MP3 player I was using to learn the song for a while and the whole thing fell apart. But in the past few days I’ve been listening a lot to a very haunting recording of that song sung by my teacher, and snatches of it kept floating to my recollection. So I dusted down my copy of the music and went at it again, and am pleased to record I have now done 17 verses out of the total 56. Hopefully I can keep a routine of learning one or two verses a day, and have the lot learned by the time I go to visit my teacher in New York in August.
and that can only be a very good thing…
). Okay. Back up to the meditation room and settle down. Our meditation room is not used for anything else except meditation, and the atmosphere of tranquility and silence that has built up there is so tangible that it is nigh on impossible not to have a good meditation, but last night was a stern test of that particular hypothesis; fitful spells of the heart shining through a tired mind’s dozy thoughts. Safe to assume there would be no reminder of my soul’s purpose today, I thought.
