On a recent visit to Wales, the World Harmony Run presented a ‘World Harmony Peace statue’ to the city of Cardiff. The statue is located on Cardiff Bay and gives people a chance to share in the aims of the World Harmony Run to promote peace and understanding.
World Harmony Peace Statue
Last weekend, 500 of Sri Chinmoy’s students from all over Europe convened in the South of Germany for an uplifting weekend of meditation, sports, music and other inspirational activities.
True inner joy is self – created.
It does not depend on outer circumstances.
A river is flowing in and through you carrying the message of joy.
This divine joy is the sole purpose of life.
– Sri Chinmoy [1]
Sri Chinmoy aptly called these events a ‘Joy-Day’. This Joy-Day took place in Weinheim, near Heidelberg. Most people arrived late Saturday afternoon; after an opening meditation and dinner there was a versatile spiritual evening program with music, meditation, video’s, slideshows, a play and news about all the activities of the Sri Chinmoy Centre in various parts of the world, such as the recent concerts of the Gandharva Loka Orchestra in Bangladesh.
Sunday morning started with an early 6 a.m. meditation followed by a 2-mile running race. After a late morning program with more music, singing and video’s the Joy-Day ended with a final silent meditation.
Footnotes
[1] Sri Chinmoy, The Wings of Joy
Recently, the 2012 European leg of the World Harmony Run began its journey in Figueira da Foz, Portugal.
 Some of the participants who joined the World Harmony Run.
The city of Figueira da Foz played host to the international team of runners who will cover over 24,000 kilometres in the coming 8 months, carrying the Peace Torch through 45 European countries. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Run, which was founded by Sri Chinmoy in 1987.
World-renowned marathon legend Tegla Loroupe was part of the international running team in Figueira da Foz. Over 900 local school children joined her in the opening run through the city. The mayor warmly welcomed the runners and wished them a good journey ahead.
Follow latest at World Harmony Run.org
Recently, Gandharva Loka Orchestra gave a concert in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Gandharva Loka perform the spiritual compositions of Maestro Sri Chinmoy. In the Dhaka concert they were also joined by renowned Bengali artist, Rezwana Chowdhury Bannya.
The Gandharva Loka orchestra include members of the Sri Chinmoy Centre from many different countries around the world.
At Radio Sri Chinmoy there is a new recording by Hiya Bhasha of songs dedicated to the Lord Buddha. Some of these songs were composed by Sri Chinmoy after he visited the Kamakura Buddha, in 1982, on a visit to Japan.
Recently, members of the Sri Chinmoy Centre offered a Songs of the Soul concert at Kamakura as part of a Japanese tour. The musicians also performed by the great Kamakura statue.
The latest edition of Inspiration Letters focuses on the topic of luminaries, and includes a selection of thoughtful articles on inspirational people.
“…Luminaries are those who spread light and knowledge — and since God the pre-eminent Illuminer is spreading His light through every human life — each of which is His own life — it follows that we are all luminaries. It is really only a question of to what extent… (From Jogyata’s Travels in Iceland.)
The World Harmony Run was founded by Indian Peace-Philosopher, Sri Chinmoy, 25 years ago; recently the run returned to its roots visiting cities in south India. The run which seeks to promote peace, friendship and harmony was joined by many Indians in Delhi and Agra.
Sri Chinmoy was born in East Bengal (now Bangladesh) in 1931 and he moved to New York, US in 1964. On the spirituality of India, Sri Chinmoy wrote:
“India’s strength is not in her arms, but in her heart. More so, it is in her seer-vision.
India tells the world that the realisation of unity is the only strength which can conquer the world.”
…
“India has three world-conquering weapons: Non-violence, Peace and the Wisdom which tells that she is in All as All is in her.”
– Sri Chinmoy 1
The run was joined by many local Indians who were happy to participate and join the run.
The runners visited the Bangla Sahib Sikh Temple (Gurudwara) in the heart of Dehli.
A local school who enthusiastically received the run.
Related
At Radio Sri Chinmoy, there is a new recording of one of Sri Chinmoy’s Peace Concerts from the 1980s in Paris.
Concert de Paix features Sri Chinmoy playing on the flute, esraj, and his own soulful singing.
After the concert, the prestigious French newspaper Le Monde remarked the “extraordinary sociological factâ€Â that “a single man, simply by standing with folded hands, is able to impose several minutes of silence upon thousands of people of varied origins.â€Â The reporter went on to say,“Curiously, one had the feeling that the crowd had not come for the music but rather for what was in between the compositions, that is, the inner peace that the sound only served to prolong.â€
Listen Online
Concert de Paix – at Radio Sri Chinmoy
First I hope they will pick it up at all! If they do, that they will see that spirituality is not abstraction. That it is based upon self-improvement and world-improvement and not merely mumbo-jumbo (or wearing copper triangles on one’s head!)
I do not really understand how anything actually works and the more I do understand the more miraculous it all seems. For instance, how do I survive. Of course, I have to be able and perhaps more importantly, prepared to work, to exploit every opportunity, but how those very opportunities come about still remains a supreme mystery.
A comedian will stand-up and say: “You know how when you go to the fridge and you’ve only got a couple of packs of Chinese duck sauce and two end slices of stale bread but you’re still thinking, “That would make a pretty good sandwich,†and the audience (hopefully) laughs, well what I think is happening is that our awareness is being expanded. Of course, we are also laughing at our own frailties or learning not to take ourselves so seriously or something, but in the macro sense, even unconsciously, I believe we are becoming aware that existence itself is fundamentally delightful.
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The World Festival of the Heart is an event to be held in Melbourne, November 2012; it will seek to explore how we can use ‘heart-power’ to improve the well-being of the world.
Sri Chinmoy has a very famous and much quoted aphorism:
“When the power of love replaces the love of power, man will have a new name: God.†[1]
In an explanation of this, Sri Chinmoy elaborated by saying that here ‘God’ means universality.
He said that when we use the power of love, individuality immediately disappears and is replaced by universality or a positive feeling of oneness; however when we use the love of power, we feel separate and superior, feelings that very often lead to destruction.
Using this deeply insightful and meaningful ideal to build upon, the World Festival of the Heart, an event to be staged in Melbourne, Australia in November this year, was born. The Festival is a gathering of luminaries across the fields of spirituality, science and the arts, to celebrate their wisdom and life achievements, and to collectively explore how we can use “heart-power†to improve the fundamental wellbeing of all life on our planet.
Our world is standing on the brink of a new era and all around us we are witnessing a thrilling convergence of these three amazing fields of endeavour. Festival organisers are planning a three-day program that will explore this “convergence†and the possibilities it holds to change our lives in unimaginable ways.
Festival organisers are creating a program full of activities: workshops, music, dialogue, devotions, performance, concerts, an expo and a grand forum. The program is designed for anyone who has a passion for life, for the world and our future. Themes for Festival participants to explore will include:
Further information and contact details for the Festival can be found at www.festivaloftheheart.org.
Footnotes
[1] Sri Chinmoy, 1970, Meditations: Food For The Soul
At Radio Sri Chinmoy, we have a new streaming channel featuring some of Sri Chinmoy’s vocal recordings.
The Streaming channel is available using Windows Media player, iTunes, Flash and Winamp.
See home page of www.radiosrichinmoy.org for details.
We will be adding more streaming channels and also adding new content to Radio Sri Chinmoy, in the near future.
Sri Chinmoy was a prolific composer of songs. He often performed his own compositions at his 777 Peace Concerts which he offered around the world during his lifetime.
