Sri Chinmoy Quotes (1931-2007)

“Life is nothing but the expansion of love. We can cultivate divine love by entering into the Source. The Source is God, who is all Love.”

“Death is not the end. Death can never be the end. Death is the road. Life is the traveller. The soul is the guide.”

“Since life is but a continuous series of experiences, everything ultimately helps me towards my final enlightenment.”

“Since life is but a continuous series of experiences, everything ultimately helps me towards my final enlightenment.”

“Hope knows no fear. Hope dares to blossom even inside the abysmal abyss. Hope secretly feeds and strengthens promise.”

“If failure has the strength to turn your life into bitterness itself, then patience has the strength to turn your life into the sweetest joy. Do not surrender to fate after a single failure. Failure, at most, precedes success.”

“My books, they all have only one message: the heart's Power Of Love must replace the mind's Love Of Power. If I have the Power Of Love, then I shall claim the whole World as my own … World Peace can be achieved when the Power Of Love replaces the Love Of Power.”

“He was very pure in mind and heart. He was a lover: a lover not only of his race but a lover of all mankind. His heart was so broad, so great, so magnanimous, and this gave him a most sincere feeling of absolute oneness with everyone. This is what made him so divinely great.”

“When it came to finding pathways to spiritual enlightenment, the guru Sri Chinmoy had few equals. Chinmoy, who has died aged 76, spread his message of world peace through a mixture of meditative art, performance and extreme sport. … Chinmoy's teachings were a mixture of Hindu meditation, Vedantic yoga and Vaishnavism, which stresses belief in "the Supreme" the one transcendent force in the universe. He was unusual in giving equal importance to extreme physical activity, first long-distance running, and later heavy lifting, as a means of opening oneself to spiritual enlightenment. He also possessed a remarkable ability to win over doubters, particularly people of prominence, who inevitably succumbed to his message of peace. It gave him a Zelig-like ability to attach their celebrity to his work, particularly when he was lifting them off the ground. During the past 20 years, he elevated everyone from Nelson Mandela to Muhammad Ali, figures as light as Yoko Ono or as heavy as sumo wrestlers, and, perhaps most amazingly, two New York congressman from opposing parties.”

“Popular mythology tends to imagine a guru – in the word's original and proper Hindu sense of spiritual adviser or teacher – as a placid and mostly sedentary figure. Not so Sri Chinmoy, who wove vigorous exercise into a meditational system that preached peace and inner harmony and gained him thousands of disciples worldwide, as well as admirers ranging from the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, to the Olympic champion Carl Lewis and the soul and jazz singer Roberta Flack. … Some derided his activities as gimmickry. Others claimed he ran a sinister cult. More fundamentally, his success reflected a paradox of the modern age, where official religion has manifestly failed to provide answers to the world's problems, leading man's unquenched spiritual thirst to seek less conventional outlets.”

“Santana … was already looking for some spiritual guidance. He had been fasting and praying, and, inspired by the example of John Coltrane, he had started to read about Eastern mysticism and philosophy. Then, when he met guitarist John McLaughlin, McLaughlin had a photo of Sri Chinmoy, and the guru seemed to have an enormous peace about him. The thing that really got Carlos was one of Chinmoy's statements: "When the power of love replaces the love of power." That made plenty of sense to him. Chinmoy gave him the name Devadip, which means "the eye, the lamp of the light of God." Deborah, who had joined with him, became Urmila. They signed up to a stern regimen. "Cut your hair, no drugs, total vegetarian," he summarizes. "It was like a West Point approach to spirituality. Five o'clock in the morning mediating, every day." Long-distance running was an enthusiasm of Chinmoy's, and Deborah ran marathons. She also ran a devotional vegetarian restaurant in San Francisco. "We used to do ridiculous things," she says. "There was always this competition in how much we could do to prove our devotion – who could sleep the least and still function, because you were working so hard, how many miles could you run. I once ran a forty-seven-mile race. It wasn't enough just to run a marathon." Carlos avoided most of the roadwork: "I was, 'This shit is not for me – I don't care how enlightening it is.'" Instead, he would play Chinmoy's songs at meditations and performances that, to his increasing frustration, were often announced as though they were Santana performances. The few interviews Carlos gave in those years are crammed with reverence toward Chinmoy. "Guru has graduated from the many Harvards of consciousness and sits at the seat of God. I'm still in kindergarten," said Carlos. Likewise: "Without a guru I serve only my own vanity, but with him I can be of service to you and everybody. I am the strings, but he is the musician." Eventually, says Carlos, "everything about him turned into vinegar – what used to be honey turned into vinegar." One turning point was when he heard Chinmoy pontificate meanly about Billie Jean King because she'd talked of a lesbian relationship. "And a part of me was, 'What the fuck is all this – this guy's supposed to be spiritual after all these years; mind your own spiritual business and leave her alone.'" Carlos emphasizes that he took much that was good from these years with Chinmoy – "It was a good learning experience about spirituality" – but the end was awkward. "He was pretty vindictive for a while," Santana says. "He told all my friends not to call me ever again, because I was to drown in the dark sea of ignorance for leaving him."”