Sri Chinmoy's poetic gift manifested itself as early as his adolescent years. As the young Chinmoy reached higher and higher meditative states, he found himself writing poetry in his native Bengali language. His first major creation was the 54-stanza Dyulok Chariye Nara Narayan, written in praise of Sri Aurobindo at the time of his birthday on August 15th. His even longer Ksmar Adarsha, a poetic retelling of Sri Aurobindo's story, won praise from Sri Aurobindo, a master of verse himself, who encouraged the young poet to continue. He also received tremendous encouragement and appreciation from the legendary Bengali poet and singer Dilip Kumar Roy, who took the time to give suggestions and corrections to over 200 of his Bengali poems.

His forays into English poetry were not to come until later - his brother Chitta records that one day a young gentleman called Romen took him aside to teach him the rudiments of English metre, whereupon he began producing poetry in structured stanza form. His first efforts, including the Absolute, only his third poem in English, described his meditative experiences of union with the Highest:

No mind, no form, I only exist
Now ceased all will and thought;
The final end of Nature's dance,
I am it whom I have sought.

A realm of Bliss bare, ultimate;
Beyond both knower and known;
A rest immense I enjoy at last;
I face the One alone.

I have crossed the secret ways of life,
I have become the Goal.
The Truth immutable is revealed;
I am the way, the God-Soul.

My spirit aware of all the heights,
I am mute in the core of the Sun.
I barter nothing with time and deeds;
My cosmic play is done.

This poem was published in the literary magazine Mother India; when the editor finally met Chinmoy, he could not believe that the Absolute was only his third poem in English! Many of the poems written around this time describe the depths of his meditation experience and the joy and freedom of inner discovery; some of them also identify with the struggles and travails of a seeker of truth.

Upon his move to America, Sri Chinmoy began writing poetry in a shorter, less metricated style, reminiscent of Japanese haiku. Each short poem shines a light on some corner of the spiritual life, a self-contained nugget of wisdom inducing the reader into a moment of silence and reflection.
The example below is taken from his collection of 360 poems entitled 'The Goal is Won' which he wrote in the space of 24 hours:

What is Heaven?
Harmonious madness.

Who is man?
Suspicious reality-sigh.

Indeed, many of Sri Chinmoy's students have made reading these short aphorisms part of their regular meditation practice, soaking up the before moving on to the next. The two themes of approaching God through love and living in the heart rather than the mind feature quite prominently in Sri Chinmoy's aphorisms.

Sri Chinmoy has always had a prolific creative output - "I take care of the quantity, and my Supreme takes care of the quality", he says - and his poetry has been no different. To date, he has produced over 100,000 of these short aphorism-poems, the bulk of which lie in his three major collections.

Ten Thousand Flower-Flames: These poems were written between 1979 and 1983 in 100 volumes containing 100 poems each.

Twenty-Seven Thousand Aspiration Plants: These poems were written between 1983 and 1998 in 270 volumes containing 100 poems each. Unlike his Flower-Flames collection, these poems are all untitled, leaving the reader to focus soley on the inner meaning of the aphorism.

Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees: Sri Chinmoy began this collection in 1998, releasing the collection in volumes of 1000 poems. He is currently over half-way towards finishing this enormous task, with over 40,000 poems completed. If anything, his rate of output seems to be increasing with age, writing on average almost four thousand poems a year for this collection, compared to an average of 1,500 for Twenty-Seven Thousand Aspiration-Plants.

In addition, many of his 'smaller' collections such as The Dance of Life and The Wings of Light, at 1000 poems each, would trump most poets' lifetime output.