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I ran the Dublin City Marathon last Monday. I hadn’t particularly trained for it, and the events surrounding the passing of my meditation teacher, Sri Chinmoy, meant that during the month of October I had run less than ever, but when ever I thought about the marathon, I felt intuitively that running it would be some kind of fitting tribute to my teacher and all that he has given me since I became his student four years ago. (I’m always praying for more of this kind of inner clarity as regards what to do, so when I do get an inner feeling like this, the least I can do is act on it post haste)

However with the paucity of training I had done, it wasn’t long before it got pretty tough out there on the course. But at around mile fourteen the following song came to me, and I was singing it under my breath for the next few miles:

All Your Grace, all Your Grace,
All Your Grace, all Your Grace,
My Lord Beloved Supreme!
All Your Grace, all Your Grace,
My soul and I are able to join
In Your birthless and deathless Race.
- Sri Chinmoy (1)

And in this song something which had been perturbing me since the previous night’s meditation resolved itself, like one of those shoelace knots you pull on to find out it isn’t a knot at all. I was reading something after the meditation had ended - my teacher had been talking about how often when we do something, we often outwardly give credit to God or our Higher Self to appear spiritual, but inwardly our ego is still busy grabbing the credit for itself. It’s quite interesting actually, because I had probably read that very same passage three or four times over the years without taking much notice. Yet this time, the very same words seemed to set my whole life situation alight. How often I had secretly exulted in doing something when I knew quite well it wasn’t really ‘me’ that did it, that my ‘doing’ was merely the fortune of being in the right place at the right time when the inner suggestion came? There simply are not enough fingers to count.

And yet now, whilst I was running and singing, singing and running, the song made me realise that races like these are one of the few times I actually do give credit to a higher source - during a race, you often reach a stage where you just realise what is bothering you are mainly mental and emotional fluctuations, and they have no basis in reality outside of you creating them. So you stop creating them. And then the inner power takes over in such a tangible way that the mind cannot take any credit whatsoever. All Your Grace, indeed.

The marathon also was an illustration of how close the members of our meditation centre have all become as a spiritual family over the last few weeks: at the half way mark we were unexpectedly greeted by Ambarish, who spent the rest of the race cycling all over Dublin with drinks and energy gels in hand (and taking these photos). Mile 18 and 19 are the toughest miles on the course, but lo and behold, my brother Colm was standing there fresh off the plane from New York, and we travelled the mile together whilst he told me all the things that had happened during his stay.

* * * * *

I waited a few days before I felt sufficiently recovered to run again; my first run was on Saturday morning. I was in Cambridge for the weekend, meeting up with all my fellow students form Ireland, England and France for a weekend of meditation and remembering the outpouring of service to humanity that was our teacher’s life (2). So I left Steve’s house at seven in the morning, intending to run for twenty minutes and armed with some vague directions to some green space half a mile down the road. I reached some railway bridge; there was a young guy standing on it looking at the trains passing by, with a bottle of rum for company. Probably someone on an extended Friday night, I thought, as I passed him and said hello.

You’re Irish, aren’t you, he asked. Where in Ireland are you from.

From out the country, I replied, though I’ve been living in Dublin these past seven or eight years.

So then, as if it were the natural next step in the conversation, he told me his best friend’s sister had just passed away. Aged just eighteen. Just went to bed one night and never woke up. And so he was out here contemplating, reflecting on life and death, and wondering what his friend must be going through. There really is nothing like having someone pass away to make you realise how precious life, we both agreed. Or how frail and mortal you are.

I told him how I had also lost someone very dear to me in the past few weeks, and how his passing had spurred me on to embrace every second of life, to squeeze every last moment out of the time I had left. Because my departed friend had never wasted a moment when he was on earth.

He didn’t really believe in God or heaven or any of that stuff. Outwardly, I said nothing - it’s none of my business what other people believe - but it made me realise how lucky I was in the gift Sri Chinmoy showered upon all his students and loved ones with his passing: namely, the realisation that the human soul is eternal journey in which death is only a checkpoint. I tried to imagine how people could cope without any certainties about spirituality or what happens after death, but I couldn’t. Maybe one can in a Buddhist-like ‘everything is impermanent and everything ceases to exist’ kind of way, I don’t know. In a strange way, I was almost grateful for that bottle of rum he had.

We talked about marathons; he’s definitely thinking of doing one soon. I told him he should; he has the runner’s physique.

He was a very nice guy; I enjoyed talking to him tremendously. On occasion, I have been guilty of dishing out plenty of lofty advice and walking away with a rather unbalanced elated feeling, like something went wrong somewhere; essentially, I had been giving out advice to feed my ego rather than out of true service to the person I was talking to. This time I went away feeling that perhaps this time I had done some little service. Grateful for the fortune of being in the right place at the right time.

From beyond, the teaching continues.

Footnotes (the Sign of a Serious Blog Entry)

(1) Sri Chinmoy had composed this song only a few months ago; during the running of the 3100 Mile Self - Transcendence Race between June and August, he would arrive early in the morning and teach a new song to a group of singers who were cheering on the runners in this epic race by singing songs for them. The above words are from memory; I think they’re right, but I’ll keep an eye out for the published version to check them against.

(2) While we were in Cambridge, some of us found time to attend a service in King’s College Chapel; Sumangali Morhall from York describes the experience in her blog far better than I ever could.