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There are some who say that spirituality is an escape, a way of refusing to accept the realitiies of life. Based on my experiences as a member of the Sri Chinmoy Centre, I can confidently assert the opposite: that spirituality is about accepting circumstances as they are, and working to transform them.

In an age where cultures scramble over themselves to prove superiority over one another, what attracted me to meditate with the Sri Chinmoy Centre was its recognition that no one culture held the complete picture: Eastern contemplation, stillness and vastness posessed one piece of the jigsaw, Western dynamism and forward movement the other. By combining the best of both worlds, one can make spiritual progress without retreating from the outer world.

The key element that links East and West together is the type of meditation that Sri Chinmoy's students practise - the path of the heart. When Sri Chinmoy's students meditate, they enter into the spiritual heart centre, the space in the middle of the chest where they can feel their soul, the essence of their existence. Thus the journey of meditation becomes a journey of self-discovery, as deep within the beautiful qualities of our true nature come to the fore; we come to an acceptance and love of ourselves, warts and all, until such time as those 'warts' are banished for good by the inner strength we accumulate from meditation.

Whereas the mind operates by dividing, sterotyping and separating, the heart knows only how to unite, love and empathise. From meditating in the heart, one feels an increasing goodwill and affinity with humanity and awakens our aspiration to play our part in making a better world. In addition to regularly offering free meditation classes in our centres all over the world, we also participate in many grassroots initiatives which take an imaginative approach towards the age-old problem of how to make the world a happier and more fulfilling place for everyone to live in. For example, the Sri Chinmoy Centres all over the world coordinate the World Harmony Run, a global running relay that travels through over 80 nations around the globe promoting international friendship and understanding. As a symbol of harmony, runners carry a flaming torch, passing it from hand to hand as we visit schools, communities and governments, linking together everyone who holds it in a giant unbroken chain of humanity dreaming of a more harmonious world. Some of our members also volunteer with the Oneness-Heart Tears and Smiles humanitarian organisation, which tries to overcome the attitude of superiority that can sometimes characterise aid situations by an attitude of oneness towards the people we are serving.

In keeping with our integral approach to spirituality, we also believe that every part of our being has a role to play in our perfection - body, vital, mind, heart and soul. Many ancient spiritual paths neglected the body and focused only on the spirit, but Sri Chinmoy advocates that the body, as a temple for the soul, also needs to be cared for. To that end our members try to be active as far as their individual capacity allows, and many of them are into running in particular. The Centre is affiliated with the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team, the largest long-distance running organisation in the world, and many Centre members participate in or help organise races put on by the Marathon Team, ranging from two-mile fun runs to the world's longest race at 3100 Miles.

The Sri Chinmoy Centre aims to embody a living spirituality instead of a dry dogmatic approach, and when we spend time with a teacher like Sri Chinmoy, we learn how spirituality can be spontaneous and dynamic. Sri Chinmoy's own personal example in bringing the inner strength of meditation into multifarious activities such as art, music, athletics and poetry serves as an inspiration to his students as they try to similarly bring meditative awareness into their outer lives. The role of a spiritual teacher, Sri Chinmoy says, is to help the student uncover his true potential. "The real spiritual Master will never claim a monopoly on illumination. He always says that each seeker has a treasure deep inside him. The key to this treasure is inside his heart, but the key has unfortunately been lost. The Master shows the disciple where the key is hidden and how to unlock his inner treasure. Once he has the key, the seeker easily discovers the treasure inside himself." His students from all over the world visit him twice or three times a year in his New York home, and Sri Chinmoy also travels quite regularly to meet with his students and share his inspiration with political, social and religious leaders.

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