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I mentioned in a previous blog post my wish to take the reader on a guided tour of Aspiration-Ground in New York, the place where I consider to be my spiritual home. It is the place where my meditation Teacher, Sri Chinmoy, spent much of the last 25 years of his life, meditating with his students. I would visit him three times a year there, and even though he has departed the earthly scene, it will still always be a place of pilgrimage for me - in fact, I am going there at the end of next week, and I can hardly wait.

Here is an overhead view taken from Google Maps. The meditation grounds (1) was originally a tennis court in which Sri Chinmoy used to spend a lot of time playing tennis with his students in the eighties and nineties, and is in fact sometimes still referred to informally as ‘the court’. The white block is probably a temporary tent of some description which is gone now (Google mustn’t update their photos too often). Often in summers, Sri Chinmoy would sit where the tent is located talking to his students and listening to the various musical and theatrical performances that would take place, other times he would sit inside a small meditation temple to the south. In later years he would sometimes begin meditations by driving around the court on a small motorized cart meditating on each of his students.

Every day something new and inspiring was happening here; Sri Chinmoy was always encouraging us to inject newness and joy into our lives, and he really led by example. There were meditations of course, but often a whole lot else - theater, music, poetry, Sri Chinmoy might reading from his latest book or talking about the latest CD of his music, honouring visiting guests for their service to humanity, performing one of tthe thousands of amazing weightlifting demonstrations, inviting all the good singers up to learn a song as he spontaneously composed it, relating stories about his youth and adolescence in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, asking us to come up to share inspiring stories or even just tell a joke! You never knew what was going to happen next. One time I came in to find a giant merry-go-round in the middle of the court; his students had built it in such a way that Sri Chinmoy could power the whole thing with his legs. Another time, a couple of months before his passing, we all stayed up till three o’clock in the morning on his birthday as some students of his performed magic tricks for us.

The entrance to the tennis court is ‘guarded’ by two majestic stone lions (2) which have affectionately been given the names Raja and Rajeshwar. As you can see from the picture, these statues really have a tremendous sense of nobility and dignity to them. Just like sentries to a palace, there is something about these statues that command the wandering mind to halt, and make you aware that you are entering a place where peace and silence reigns. They also serve as a reminder that the spiritual life, as well as requiring patience, compassion and love, also demands something of a warrior’s spirit - a never-say-die approach in the face of one’s own fear, limitation and insecurity. I saw Sri Chinmoy lift these lions from a standing position so they were dangling off the ground in November 2004 - it sticks in my mind for the sheer intensity of my teacher’s effort; it seemed as if he had reached the very limit of human effort, but then somehow he just went beyond it and the lions rose up off the ground. When you see something like that, your life is never quite the same again.

The trees on the left give us all a tremendous amount of shade during the heat of New York summers and add a quiet majesty to the place, the wind rustling through them accentuating the great silence. In summer, the crickets and grasshoppers lend their contribution to the atmosphere (they add a very nice background to some of the singing performances recorded on Radio Sri Chinmoy - for example, this one).

Nearby there is a museum which stores many of Sri Chinmoy’s artworks are displayed as well as various exhibits and photographs from his 43 years of service to humanity in the West. While Sri Chinmoy was still with us, his students were always at full stretch just keeping up with his tremendous output in so many fields, now attention has turned to preserving and storing the vast array of artworks he created, as well as the many sound and video recordings that were made of Sri Chinmoy over the years, only a fraction of which have been made available for public distribution so far.

The grounds also hosts a beautiful lawn (3) which rumour has it may at some point in the future be turned into a meditation garden - in that case my brother Colm will have his hands full as he is a landscaper by trade. At the back of the meditation grounds there is a 100m tartan sprint track (4) where Sri Chinmoy used to practice his running. Sri Chinmoy was sprinting until well into his sixties, clocking up a time of 13.62 in 1992 at the age of 61 and competing at the World Masters Games in Miyazaki, Japan one year later. I remember one of the first videos I ever saw of Sri Chinmoy was of him practising sprinting on this track with his friend and athletics coach Carl Lewis giving him advice.

The driveway (5) has seen some rather unusual sights in the last couple of years - in August 2005 a group of Sri Chinmoy’s students led by Ashrita Furman (the world’s most prolific Guinness record breaker) created a 27 foot high cake made entirely out of popcorn for Sri Chinmoy’s 75th birthday, the largest popcorn structure ever built. One year later the driveway was again home to a Guinness World Record feat - the largest pencil ever created. This 76 foot long monster took up the entire driveway, and it even showed up on satellite photos, leading the police to stop by and see if it was a missile! Last month, the pencil was moved to a museum in St Louis, leaving the driveway clear for another record, perhaps….

Across the street is an Indian restauraunt, Annam Brahma, (6, just off picture) which has been operated by Sri Chinmoy’s students since the 1970’s. The words Annam Brahma mean ‘food is God’. Coming from Ireland where going out to eat is always a financially sobering experience, I can never believe the prices here when I sit down to eat. The place is festooned with Sri Chinmoy’s artwork (many of them originals) and an entire library of Sri Chinmoy’s early books in one corner. During our visits in April and august the restaurant closes and the place is instead turned into one giant kitchen to feed us all. Every country takes it in turn to cook - needless to say, we particularly look forward to the day when the Italians cook….

Perhaps this account would not be complete without a visit to Sri Chinmoy’s place of residence, just fifteen minutes walk away. He lived in a modest two bedroom house - in fact so modest that I can’t definitively state which one it is (It is definitely one of the 2 houses beside the number 7 - I have strategically placed the number in between ). The house is painted in Sri Chinmoy’s favourite colour, sky blue, the colour of vastness and infinity, but unfortunately the top-down view doesn’t reveal any trace of colour to mark it out. One room in the house was turned into an exercise room where Sri Chinmoy would exercise for two or three hours a day, and many of his most impressive weightlifting feats were performed and recorded here. Sometimes during our visits to New York we would all travel to this quiet little street where his house was located, and he would sit at either the front door or on the porch and meditate on each of us as we walked past in complete silence.