Sumangali.org: In The Spirit Of Serendipity

The Song-Bird of St Petersburg pays tribute to Sri Chinmoy at the Royal Albert Hall

Boris Purushottama Grebenshikov is a living paradigm in the world of music and poetry, justly lauded in his Russian homeland and throughout the world. Tapping the ‘infinite silence’ within as a source of his prolific creativity, his songs are his direct interpretation of the universal musical consciousness.

No wonder then that he found in Sri Chinmoy a profound inspiration. With almost 1600 books to his name and over 21000 songs, here was a Spiritual Master who shaped his own life’s service from the very fibre of music and poetry, singing the songs of Heaven into the ears of the earth.

Sri Chinmoy was born in East Bengal, 1931. Following an inner calling he moved to New York in 1964, to be of spiritual service and inspiration to the west. From then until his passing in October last year, his meditation brought forth a wellspring of creativity in many fields.

Sri Chinmoy met Grebenshikov in 2005, and offered him the spiritual name Purushottama. A unique friendship blossomed from there. The immediate bond between teacher and student was exceptionally deep given its outer brevity; a recognition and reflection of true inner harmony. In Grebenshikov’s own words:

“Before meeting him I could never imagine I would see with mine own eyes the enlightened spirit operating from within the frail human body. It made me realize we do not really understand how strange it is to be fully realized in the world that misunderstands Divine realization. And I am endlessly grateful for his love and unflinching selfless courage.”

As part of his soulful service, Sri Chinmoy offered over 700 free public concerts in the span of his life, which he dedicated to World Harmony. London’s Royal Albert Hall ranked among the most notable venues, where he last performed in October 2003. In this same spirit, and at the same venue, Boris Purushottama Grebenshikov paid tribute to him last week.

Under a 14-foot portrait of Sri Chinmoy, flanked by statues of Ganesha and Saraswati, the setting was an Indian garden at night. An enclave of trees and glowing candles waited on a backdrop of winking galaxies. Hoards jostled outside for a place in the hall, peering over galleries high up into the roof to catch a glimpse of the artist. The legendary Song-Bird of St Petersburg entered with a smile of joy equal to his air of poise and humility. As he took centre stage his audience could not have been more attentive, appreciative, or more alive with electric anticipation.

Some 20 musicians joined him, mostly from the Indian and Irish genres, and some of the finest in their fields. Two were from Grebenshikov’s original band Aquarium, which dates back to the early 1970s. The tabla talked in rhythm to four Irish bodhrans; a sarangi sang sweet melodies over a group of classical strings. The fiddle, tin whistle and Uillean pipes carried on an Irish banter with such unbounded effusion, precision and harmony, that the crowds could not contain their shouts of delight.

All the while Grebenshikov was an ocean of depth, speaking through an acoustic guitar as if it were a part of himself. His singing voice itself was, as always, an exquisite blend of strength and sensitivity; ageless and imperturbable wisdom with a sweet and heart-melting centre. The essence of the poetry, although mostly in Russian, could be felt even by the uninitiated, such was its earnest delivery.

The songs vaulted from pin-drop soulfulness to ebullient joy, via countless spirited forays into new musical realms. They stopped neither at folk, nor jazz, nor rock, nor classical, nor world music, but spun into a whirl of all these, where no division or identity could be defined, where music sprang forth unbounded and unadulterated from its source.

As a finale, Grebenshikov offered a bhajan he wrote in Sanskrit for the goddess Saraswati, and a loving song in the ballad style, which he wrote for Sri Chinmoy during one of their earliest meetings. The Sri Chinmoy Centre Choir accompanied him on the refrain:

“O, Guru Sat, we may be far apart,
O, Guru Sat, forever in my heart.”

It was a poignant end to a magical evening; an evening whose spirit seemed to have no age, no beginning, no end; no limits or worldly boundaries of any kind. With simplicity and utmost self-giving, Boris Purushottama Grebenshikov offered a tribute to his teacher which was at once fittingly grand, heartfelt and joyous.

IMAGES:
Portrait of Boris Purushottama Grebenshikov by Antonov Pavel

LINKS:
More about the concert at GrebenshikovConcert.com
Review by Tejvan Pettinger at SriChinmoyBio.co.uk
Photographs of the event by Pavitrata Taylor at Pavitrata.com
Download a PDF of the official programme (26Mb)

By far my greatest fear when I was younger was one of deep water. I suppose as fears go that’s quite a rational one. It was perpetuated by Jaws—a movie surely unavoidable by anyone alive in the late 1970s. At the time, Jaws served as confirmation that fear of the sea was absolutely justified and almost constituted common sense. Those who ventured beyond the shallow end of a pool I crowned in my mind as heroes, and as veritable demigods those who would dive head first from a board. Those who would wade out far enough to lose their footing in the ocean however, I labeled as reckless dolts who did not properly value the life they had been given.

When harboured and reinforced for twenty years, even the most rational fear can reach irrational proportions and formidable strength. It seemed God had to carefully engineer an opportunity for its final dismantling, starting with a phone call from a friend—out of the blue so to speak. My friend had planned and paid for a scuba diving holiday in the Caribbean with a partner who had since gone off in a huff about something, so would I go instead? Many excuses came to mind, but you can imagine that none of them would be very convincing faced with such an offer. I accepted, viewing it gravely as a service, and nervously hoping more specific and robust excuses would present themselves when faced with the ocean itself.

It was with much trepidation and considerable self-transcendence that I completed my training and gained my diving license, graduating from the shallow end to the deep end of a pool somewhere in Alabama, then to the murkier regions of a former quarry. I would use up my air in half the time of my peers due to my anxiety, but by that time I had resolved to face The Deep once and for all, and I would not be deterred by any amount of cajoling.

I had to be pushed off the boat on my first adventure in the open sea. With all that outer paraphernalia and inner baggage, the physical and mental strength to do it myself had to be developed over time. I was enraptured though, from the very first moment. The harsh sun, the growl and fumes of the boat engine, the nauseous movement of the waves, the weight of the equipment, were all replaced by purity and gentleness on the other side of the ocean’s skin. Fear turned to awe as I entered a world where I did not belong, but which had ample room to house me. How humbling to be at the mercy of such a body of vastness, floating in a medium of which the human body is largely composed, but which alone would not sustain it for more than a few seconds. Up to then such tranquility was unknown to me, but seemed a perfect natural state. My breathing became slower even than it was on land, and I used less air then even than my peers.

There was no sound then except that breath: the husky drawing in, and the chink of exhalation, releasing plumes of amorphous bubbles. Colours were completely new; their hue and luminosity changed constantly, with a freedom alien to the flat shades known to land. Freedom of movement in all directions was also new and brought boundless fun, though my own mammalian efforts took me nowhere in comparison to the sleek agility of sea creatures. Stillness was a favourite practice, controlling the posture and breath to hover inches from the seabed. Movement without effort was the crowning joy, drifting with the tide over coral gardens, tiny fish hovering and darting, as would bees over blooms.

The creatures seemed to look on us as bumbling enigmas. They showed no irritation by our presence, neither fear, as they knew any lazy flinch of theirs would easily outsmart us. Some were notoriously intelligent, and many seemed positively hospitable, even taking time from apparently busy schedules to play games. The beauty, power, and harmony of that vast and strange environment have etched themselves on my mind and heart. I can still see a flock of eagle rays emerging into view, their massive wings forming slow, graceful arcs suspended in a saline cathedral. I can still catch the cheeky glance of grouper snatching chunks of raw fish from my pocket. I can still feel the specific majesty of depths beyond 100ft. I’d have imagined the form of a shark in those depths would have caused me to expire from sheer fright a few weeks before. In reality its beauty disarmed me, and I saw only the grace and efficiency of movement. The perfection of that creation brought tears to my eyes. In The Deep, to my surprise, I seemed to meet the Creator in myriad beguiling guises.

I have visited other oceans since, but I no longer hanker for sub-aquatic charms. Perhaps it is the growing sense that such peace and beauty are in-built, requiring only the key of meditation for their discovery. An ever-deepening Deep seems accessible without need of a license or expensive airfares, without the use of weights, wetsuits, and cumbersome canisters, and without the job of conquering fear.

Image: Prashphutita Greco at Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries

It was an ordinary day in Ningbo, China, but an extraordinary miracle took place in a muddy 5-metre ditch.

Was it really a miracle, or simply the wise employment of a meditation technique? Maybe a combination of the two.

The Times reports:

“Wang Jianxin was working at a construction site in the booming city. The job that day for the 52-year-old worker was to dig a five-metre ditch…

“Without warning, a wall of the ditch collapsed, burying Mr Wang under a huge pile of earth. Like most construction workers in China, he had little in the way of protective equipment except for his tough plastic safety helmet. It was to be enough to save his life.” [original article]

The peak of his hat trapped a small amount of air in front of his face, which doctors said would usually have been enough to keep someone alive for five minutes. It was two hours before he was rescued. Mr Wang survived by practising Buddhist meditation techniques to stay calm, and minimise his use of oxygen.

There are countless legends from India of yogis, (obviously very advanced in their meditation practice) allowing themselves to be buried alive, and surviving for weeks or even years. I’m not about to discuss the verity of such stories, (let alone their questionable spiritual worth), but if a construction worker can survive for 2 hours on 5 minutes’ worth of oxygen, who’s to say those legends aren’t true? Just when you think you know what’s possible in this world, and what’s not…

“Be not afraid of the impossible.
Be brave!
God is always ready to help you
Conquer the impossible.”
—Sri Chinmoy
Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees #19030

• Image: Kedar Misani at Sri Chinmoy Centre Gallery
• You too can learn to meditate here

I met my second nephew for the first time last week, eight days after his arrival on earth (that’s me on the right, at a similar age). His expressions changed fast, as if dreaming. What could he dream so soon? Memories of other worlds or other lives perhaps. I wondered what his dreams would be in later life, hoped we would be friends, collect beetles in a jar, laugh together over a late lemonade in his grandmother’s garden.

He is huge for a newborn, with hot fists and a determined frown, but I was a little afraid for him. It seems brave to me to be born at all, to be human, to live on earth.

Despite its intensity, nobody remembers being born. Everyone uses their first breath to cry. Raw sound, cold, movement, pain, exhaustion, separation from the source, are too much to bear at once. There is no strength of one’s own to call upon, and nothing certain or familiar on which to depend. Julius Caeser, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Muhammad Ali, however mighty they became, each arrived naked and alone, and cried.

My primal bewilderment stayed with me longer than theirs, and perhaps longer than most. The cry silenced but was always there. Life was a fast road and the human vehicle seemed so brittle on it. I saw pain in others and felt it as my own. I grew no armour in my thoughts or senses.

I was a morbid child, my first dream in colour was of death. I lay awake in fear of everything, craving the release of sleep, but dreading my own dreams more than waking life. “Empty your mind,” said my mother, “think beautiful things or have no thought at all.”

So I made my first tiny flame of peace inside. It lit my world a little in that strange perpetual night; spilled into the darkness so at odds with my safe and gentle circumstances.

I worried about life and the end of it, about the world and myself in it, about being small and about growing up. I worried that God had forgotten me on earth. That’s the strangest thing: I was raised an atheist but always secretly believed in God, that there was more to life than earth, that death was not the end of it. Thank God for that.

It was a vague belief though, like a church bell ebbing and gathering on a faraway breeze, or a photograph faded almost to obscurity. There was nobody to sharpen the image for me. To own to another that I believed in God, and needed to feel closer to Him, would have seemed weak, delusional even; like admitting that I couldn’t handle myself.

But nobody knew anyway. Nobody knew where we are, or even how far the universe goes. Nobody knew for sure what happens after death. Nobody knew where God is. It didn’t seem to bother anyone. That bothered me most of all.

I blundered through my teens as well as anybody can, still haunted by fears I couldn’t name, increasingly sensible to the vulnerability of a world I didn’t understand. As I grew, so did the dark. I was trapped in it, a slave to my own fear. The faint memory of God was swallowed in it too, and I was terribly alone.

Luck has a habit of following me, especially when I need it most. A lady where I lived had taught herself to meditate, and gave me some books so I could do the same. She talked about God, naturally, like a friend. The picture grew in clarity again, in brief glimmers.

Through each attempt, I collected strength beyond my own ability, harvesting happiness from an orchard much more bountiful than my own, an orchard of sweet fruits that went on forever, where it was always summer. I dared remember that my life is not a solo voyage, but piloted by Someone bigger. At last I could breathe, as if for the first time.

One day I turned against fear, and it dissolved, like a serpent made of smoke. God had not forgotten me; I had been forgetting Him.

I was a fair-weather friend to God though. Meditation was difficult. Although I practised every day, my efforts lacked vigour, unless I was desperate or in trouble. I reached an agreement—a sort of dual tenancy—with the serpent of smoke. It was always there but it would keep to its own quarters. God lived somewhere upstairs, and I was often too idle to climb there, perhaps calling a perfunctory hello from the second step each morning.

Courage came then from more comfortable sources, the sort you can buy in a bottle or a pill, that you can win through fickle friendships and small outer victories. It was a cheap happiness, and like most imitations, it fell apart after a few years. I chased it, all over the world, but arrived back where I started, and that time with nothing.

I suppose it was a new birth, a blessing in the form of annihilation. There was an accident which nearly took my life. Soon after that I had no money, no job, no family near me, no friends, no home, barely any belongings, not a shred of hope or self-esteem. I was helpless as an infant. And I cried a good deal.

I knew I had to learn to meditate properly. I had to find someone who knew how to do it and could show me. I dug out the books the lady had given me and tried a new exercise: The Spiritual Guide. It started with imagination, as all visualisations do. I waited on a beach in my heart for someone to come and teach me, and eventually he did.

He was a beautiful Indian man, all softness and sweetness, but with the strength of a galaxy contained in a human form. He loved me, as if he had known me always. He listened and understood, without judgment or harshness. He encouraged me, sincerely, not indulgently, and not in words, but in silence, releasing wisdom and peace like fragrances. I had only to breathe them in.

Here was someone who knew. He knew God. Anything I did not understand, he already knew. He did not need to tell me; the fact that he knew was enough for me, to see it and feel it in him. He contained all opposites, extremes of all I had longed for: subtlety and certainty, beauty and practicality, and most of all, immaculate poise.

He did not answer me or solve anything directly, but having sat with him, I knew what to do in life, and felt the strength to carry it out. Over the span of a year I gained a good job, a car, and a beautiful home. I was safe and healthy, challenged by the world but no longer terrified by it.

I wanted to learn more, to meet with others who knew meditation’s secrets. I wanted to practise with them, find new techniques, exchange experiences. The Sri Chinmoy Centre was the first and only place I found.

I thought it had been my own imagination. How could such a man exist on earth as the one who had sat with me every day that year? There he was, in photographs and videos. He had come to life. He had been there all along. I could read his words and sing his songs. Eventually I could sit in his outer presence, as I had done so many times in my heart.

I cannot account for my good fortune. I am small and full of imperfection, but divine love touches all creation like the fingers of the sun. Luckily we need not wait to deserve it.

In Sri Chinmoy I found answers to questions I had not yet formed. In his brief life of 76 years he gave to all equally and abundantly: not what was deserved but what was needed. In poetry, in songs, in physical demonstration and silent meditation, he made maps for us: maps of immediate inner lands, and others we will not reach for a very long time.

Sometimes I miss him. I had ten years to become attached to the luxury of his living presence. But I know he has given me much more than I need, and much more than all the world can give me. When I miss him, I know I need only sit in my heart and he will come to me.

Is there such a thing as a junkophobe? That’s me. I buy the same thing over and over because I keep throwing useful stuff away; I’m ruthless to the point of impracticality. I can’t tolerate anything old, broken, unlovely, unclean, or out of place.

Then what is this old Cheese Doodles packet doing here? Cheap crinkly empty bag, garish primary print, “Made with real cheese” blaring from the top, like that would make it ok. It’s taped into a big silver book of handmade paper, Indian beads hand stitched onto the front. It sits beside seven others, now amongst my most precious possessions: one of raw silk in a rainbow weave and coloured pages, one embroidered with satin ribbons, one with my name across the face of a dog, and a felt-tip drawing of a bird.

Words are scrawled inside: rough shapes of words, the pen hurried or tired, the phrases hackneyed and dull, but this content has held me stunned over the last two days; compelling as an elysian dream remembered at daybreak.

These, my journals of the last ten years, have stayed mostly unopened. I wrote them for a future self I thought I would not meet for many years to come, never imagining my Master would leave his earthly frame for Heaven so soon.

I knew such apparent debris would turn to treasure then. The spent packets of blessed food from Sri Chinmoy’s hand are now a link to another world which used to be my own; a world of outer instruction, more subtle, more powerful, more inwardly refined than I can even comprehend, let alone fit into the bounds of words. The Path of The Heart; The Silent Teaching; the sacred life of meditation; the unviolable bond between Guru and disciple.

Mostly these packets, photos, notes, bulging out of pages, are triggers to more abundant memories than those recorded. A concert ticket took me to the first time I saw Sri Chinmoy in person, Heathrow Airport 1997. In a bustle of artificial light and noise and movement, waiting for his arrival, I entered into one of the most profound meditations of my life. He passed by, looked into me with such surety and pure affection, I knew my life had found its home. Here at last was a teacher who could take me to God; a journey I knew I needed more than my own breath. His was the most familiar face I had ever seen, recognition flooded with sanctuary. Tears of relief followed me for twelve continuous hours.

* * *

Today I met with four others to meditate, the thirtieth day after Sri Chinmoy’s Mahasamadhi, an official end of mourning. One of our little band was raised a Hindu, as was Sri Chinmoy, and told us that in India, family members take lotuses on such a day, to set them adrift in the Ganges with a prayer. Perhaps we could do the same as a symbolic mark of gratitude and respect.

We took golden roses with only stubs of stems to help them float. We walked a long way down the river Ouse, slipping on the cobbles in the damp of autumn, checking at intervals with each other if “this” could be the “right place.” Two lads, three girls, and one sleek white dog named Pearl, seemingly out for a weekend stroll.

Who would have thought such profundity would come to pass on a rotting jetty by a rowing club somewhere in North Yorkshire. In the space of moments, so many impulses rose up in me that I have not dared to feel these past days. It seemed we grew up all of a sudden. Orphaned, we had only each other then, with whom to carry the legacy of a sacred life into an unknown future, to offer to others what we have had the unimaginable boon of receiving.

I set the small bundle of softness on the wide mass of water and watched it bob away. It seemed to have its own light, glowing with a joy and purity I thought only Heaven could conceive, smiling and shining at the onset of an unknown journey; a warm light above the dark and changeable—on it, in it, yet apart from it. I touched my fingers in the water, then to my head and heart, making some unspoken promise to this beautiful city where I was raised: a sudden totality of love and oneness.

We parted, all but wordlessly, and I went home. I smiled to the homeless man selling magazines and gave him a pound—I will not give to beggars, but he works hard, all in joy and fun, to make others smile. I saw myself in part in him. I smiled to the youth absorbed in a greasy paper of chips and scraps. I smiled to the aged lady struggling in pain and fear from the harbour of her own front door: I saw myself in part in her, and felt only love. I smiled to the big girls in skinny jeans, cursing and shouting (in fun, or in fear of not being heard?); the lady in shades on an overcast day; the pub landlord at his back door in a dressing gown, ruddy from the night’s excess; the sulking seven-year-old whingeing to her Dad for something vitally important.

Today I saw myself in part in them all. Or was it God?

“Thou art one Truth, one Life, one Face.
Supreme, Supreme, Supreme, Supreme!
I bow to Thee, I bow.”

—Sri Chinmoy
from Invocation

Image: Pranlobha Kalagian

My beloved Guru, Sri Chinmoy, passed away yesterday at 7am, at his home in New York.

Sri Chinmoy has been my meditation teacher — the inner and outer inspiration of my life — over the last decade.

On a human level I am naturally shocked and sad at his sudden earthly parting, but inwardly I will never in this life fathom the inner gifts of inspiration he has given me through his teaching.

More than human sadness, which will pass in time, I feel gratitude, gratitude, gratitude for spending these years in the balm of his wisdom. That gratitude will never end. His teachings will always be with me, and I hope only to make my own life — my actions, creations and interactions — a tribute to them.

RECENT NEWS STORIES:
The Independent: Sri Chinmoy, Spiritual Leader & Peace Activist

The Scotsman: Sri Chinmoy, Peace campaigner and spiritual teacher who advocated running

Sri Chinmoy 1931 - 2007

NEW YORK, NEW YORK–(Marketwire - Oct. 12, 2007) - Internationally renowned peace leader and spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy passed away yesterday morning in his home in Queens, New York. The cause of death was a heart attack.

Respected and loved worldwide, Sri Chinmoy’s philosophy for world peace was manifested through a wide array of activities, ranging from literature to art to sports to music. The universal nature of his philosophy embraced and encouraged people of all backgrounds, faiths and nationalities to work together for peace.

Read more at SriChinmoyBio.co.uk

Sri Chinmoy, spiritual leader, dies in Queens

The end came in his modest home in the Jamaica Hills section of Queens at 7a.m. - just a day before the Nobel Committee was to announce if he had won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Chinmoy was nominated for the honor in recognition of his “ceaseless work for the United Nations” for more than 30 years.

Read more at NYDailyNews.com

Image: Pavitrata Taylor

I was brought up as an atheist, so it may count as rebellion that I went to church today: a Sunday… perhaps… until you hear I went as a tourist.

I am not an atheist, far from it. I must get that straight. Straight away. I never have been. I am not a Christian either. My path is the path of meditation. My spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy believes in embracing all sincere religions and other spiritual paths as paths to one God. This is something I have always felt in my heart as true.

I know surprisingly little about Christianity for someone who was born and brought up in a Christian country. It is as if I tried to read Christ’s Words but they are in a language I do not know… yet I feel them in my heart as good and true.

So I entered my local church today, overwhelmed like a foreigner, yet somehow at home. York Minster is very big, and very old; too big and old for my mind to comprehend, thus to express or even appreciate. For a thousand years York has been a site of pilgrimage as spiritual capital of the north of England; her Minster at once the reason for and the result of her wealth.

Many times I wanted to stand back and take some perspective, but it seems the architects made sure I could not, almost as if to remind me that God cannot be captured in the span of my eyes. Caught in the cross-fire of flash photography, I wanted to be there alone so as to grasp it all in silence, but that would almost be more daunting a task.

I decide to start at the top, perhaps thinking the vigorous exercise of climbing 275 steps will bring me some focus. On the contrary, dizzy from turning in a spiral and testing my lungs beyond their usual scope, I take my eyes from the steps to note that carving graffiti is not only a modern sport. I try to find the earliest date. Lost somewhere in the 1600s I return my full attention to the task of placing my feet on ever-narrowing stairs, since a tumble in such a place could be quite inconvenient.

There is something in the human instinct which makes one look for familiar places when reaching a height. Perhaps the thought of seeing my house was embedded in my desire to climb in the first place. Some Italians seem to be hoping for a glimpse of their hotel, while I follow the city walls out of comfortable sight to wonder which brown dot is my own.

Someone is practising the pipe organ as we descend, and I want so much to hear it closely. One can only go so fast on such a precarious route though, especially with legs still jellified from the upward climb. I am disappointed when I find the instrument; not by its commendable beauty, and not by the player, even though he makes and polishes many mistakes, but the sound is damped, so I cannot drown in it as I had hoped, even when standing directly underneath.

I try to avoid treading on the worn names of many distinguished gentlemen long-deceased, but there are so many set into the ground. I imagine them shifting uneasily beneath and tutting under their breath through hundreds of years. I am looking for a happy face in stone, but all are solemnly in prayer, unless they are one of a hundred gargoyles, whose job is not to smile.

St Peter stands forever on a little plinth holding outsized keys. He looks weary from the responsibility of his job. The face is so endearing I think to comfort him, but remember I am nobody to do so, and the image of him only stone. One has no face at all, a boy in grey marble, the body a likeness of one who fell too early some time in the 1300s. Was there a face? Was it worn away by the weight of a mother’s grieving caress, or did the mason fall early too? Some seem at the unflattering mercy of unskilled craftsmen, but I suppose tools were brutish in those days, so could bring only vague refinement in any hands.

Glass painting was clearly easier. I stare long at many windows, great beauteous works of art. Circa 1260? Such devoted intricacy, all in greys and greens, a murky yet mesmeric light gazing back at me through time. 1422? Such delicate lines, yet such strange faces have endured so long the same expression.

But where is God? He is not on the coloured map in 6 folds that the ticket man gave me at the entrance so I’m not sure where to look. I thought I saw a lady talking to Him as she sat alone, until I saw her bluetooth headset. I used to come here in my youth when something troubled me, hoping God would hear out my grievances. I always felt better for sitting in this majesty. It made my problems seem smaller. I sit and listen for Him this time, assuming He must have grown tired of listening to me here. It is too big for me though, too grand, too old, too daunting. I open a book of hymns but there the foreign language speaks again. I follow the pattern of the notes for a while and head for home.

For me God is in my little white room at home. We listen to each other there. I am sad at my failing to truly appreciate the grand and ancient place of pilgrimage on my doorstep, but then remember it is just not my path to tread. I crane my head through the window and smile at her from afar, picking out one face of the tower that I climbed. I can love her all the same, even though I cannot understand her language. I am glad and grateful she is there.

I wonder whether to be sad that an entrance fee is necessary these days; that wealth comes to the city through tourism rather than worship. I decide not to see that as a sign of declining spirituality in our time, as that is too dreadful a thought, but instead that people are choosing to look for God inside themselves at home. I hope it’s true.

“God has an easy access
To every place,
Specially to our heart-temple.”

—Sri Chinmoy
(Seventy-Seven Thousand Service Trees, part 7)

(Related article: God In A Nutshell)

I creep in at the back five minutes early, but my shoes squeak on polished wood, damp from the squalls outside. A stillness has arrived before me and sits like a living presence in the room; the arching roof higher, the golden wood warmer, the white walls purer because of it. Many have followed its silent lead and sit within it, hems soaking above boots from their assorted journeys.

The stage is in the air, it seems, or is it in a tree? The churchyard yew cradles a view to absorb my eyes for the next hour and a half, through a wide bay of glass. A half-dome of starry blue lights pressed into the ceiling above hangs like a child’s dream of Heaven.

But we are asked by our host to close our eyes first, immersing ourselves in a flow of breath, emptying the hubbub of our thoughts from the waiting universe within.

Then the music comes—a warm familiar joy—and I jump headlong into the ocean of it. Each of Sri Chinmoy’s songs is a fond friend, but each dressed in bright newness; a rousing drum here that I have never heard, a sweet player there whom I have never seen. A golden smile is growing from inside me like many suns rising at once: the chuckle of a delighted infant, the Bravo! of a sister, the sweet slow nod of a mother, the vast silent pride of a father. The music is mine, his, hers, theirs. Ours.

Outside, mist runs fast along the mountain’s base like a hungry flock, climbs to show another green band of height and gallops down again, swallowing the roughness of the ground under its pure white hooves.

Adarsha sings Madhavi Latar (translation from Bengali):

“Sweet, soft and translucent creeper
In silence steals away my heart.
Above me, the vast sky.
Under me the wind blowing.
Today I dance in ecstasy supreme.”
–Sri Chinmoy

Does the mountain listen too? Its slow dancer’s petticoat of mist rises to its own rhythm, drifts down with the fall of unseen feet below.

Inside, clear strings, little bells, white lights, listeners a choir of silent faces, canvassing assorted worlds of meditation.

Were crows always beautiful? I had not noticed. They play at rough-and-tumble with the wind, black wings in fast precision like Chinese ink on a painter’s page. They will never seem the same again. Can music open the eyes?

The last song performed stays with me until the next morning, more a suite of five songs, all to the words “I fly in the Heart-Sky of my Dear Supreme.” If there must be an end, then let it be this perfect one.

We listeners move gently so as not to shake up subtle inner worlds. We are back in the outer, but bring a draught of Inner with us. Gradually we are a joyous crowd of smiles and re-unitings.

What of Rydal Cave, I ask? Why is the Concert-In-The-Cave Not-In-The-Cave this year? Stones were falling from its roof. Such scant facts were enough from which to fashion a legend over the past twelve months: that Adarsha’s mighty voice brought down the cave last year and it is now no more than a trembling pile of shale. Still, the Ambleside Parish Hall is a fine backup, and if one is going to fashion a legend then let it be sensational, yet suspiciously credible.

We drive out through a woolly cloak of roughness. Rusty scrubs of heather peer into wind-ruffled water. Aggressive grey sits on the air beside a sweet hopeful green. A waterfall elbows its way between two crags and runs to tell its secrets to a lake.

Then all is soaring majesty. The mountains stretch to see who’s taller.

Everything is different now… yet just as it always was…

* * *

To sample the inexpressible:

• Hear Shindhu’s “Heart-Lotus” at Radio Sri Chinmoy
• Hear Shindhu’s “Sacred Dawn” at Radio Sri Chinmoy
• Hear Adarsha Kelly’s “Singing the Songs of Self-Offering” at Radio Sri Chinmoy
• Hear Ananda’s “In The Heart-Sky” at Radio Sri Chinmoy
• Hear Ananda’s eponymous album at Radio Sri Chinmoy
• Find out more about Ananda at AnandaMusic.co.uk
• Photos from In-The-Cave 2004 at the SriChinmoyCentre Gallery
• Photos from In-The-Cave 2005 at the SriChinmoyCentre Gallery

After eleven years alive, I had lost all thoughts of calling somewhere home. Like a dry leaf on the wind of life, I went where it went, ever poised for the transport of its next gust. It pointed to Yorkshire, so we went north. I was determined not to like it there.

My cat spoke my thoughts that day, so I stayed silent. Her metal-lined box sounded more full of banshee than cat, and after an hour of teeth and claws it succumbed to her wrath. She flew about, heedless of windows or steering wheel, finally to settle groaning for hours under the passenger seat. She and I felt the same way about long journeys, and seemed equally pleased to move house.

The house seemed to have narrowly survived a brunt of exceptional hatred from its last owners. The woodwork had paint thrown at it in a spite of bright violet or pink, the walls asphyxial yellow from nicotine. Names were carved into windowsills, carpets more thrashed than trodden. Without human umpire, plants and trees were left to throttle one another in the grounds outside. The adjoining shop—the reason for our purchase—had been forced to close for failing to meet the basic rules of health. Be glad that my memory forbids a description, but for the weevil holes in every packet. The hungry creatures invited themselves to join us in the house, but I suppose they left or starved eventually, as things were kept in tins from then on.

Secondary school began for me soon after our arrival. My mother—through kindness, to avoid my standing out from other pupils any more than my southern accent betrayed—followed the school uniform guidelines to a T. I did not hint until a year later that I was peculiarly distinctive in my Clarks shoes, A-line skirt two inches below the knee, and shirt with a top button that fastened down to neatly accommodate a tie.

Choice of seat on the school bus said everything about social rank, thus the clamour at 7.30 each morning; thirty or forty gnashing teenagers vying for the back seat, or as far back as they dared. I, vying with a few for the front, so desperate to avoid confrontation, was heaved upward with the mass, often leaving a Clarks shoe behind as my feet quitted the ground.

I have forgotten what was taught to me at school, but I learned many new words and customs. I learned new skills too, such as dodging knives and staying the correct distance from brick fights. I quickly discovered that hair-style and respect had an uncanny, almost perfect, correlation. I longed to study Latin, but would have won the wrong sort of attention, so took a sudden interest in metalwork instead. “Is this it?” I wondered as I finished my first wrought iron candlestick.

Our first was the hardest winter the north had felt in decades. It was hardened still by the boiler—beaten to within an inch of its life—breathing its last at Christmas when nothing could be done to help it. To quell our festive eagerness, and perhaps to stay warm, we took long walks. Drifts of snow towered far above us, drilled with hailstone tunnels like giant weevil-holes. We scraped tracks in the ice to receive shop deliveries. Fizzy drinks froze on the lorry and gushed out of their bottles as they thawed.

I assumed this was what living “up north” would be forever more: cold, leaky, weevil-holed and shaded with nicotine. Of course it was not. Our little shop soon flourished, and I grew some social standing on the back of it, as our forecourt became a fashionable teenage hang-out. Like any 80s tween, life was all about riding horses or bicycles, eating sweets, and waiting for games to load from a tape recorder to a ZX Spectrum. “Is this it?” I sometimes wondered when I lost at Manic Miner. When will life begin? Or does it not? Does one just gradually look older but feel the same?

By thirteen I had grown the right sort of hair style and grown out of my Clarks shoes. Life was all about baby-sitting enough during the week to buy enough Pernod in bars at weekends to obliterate dull memories of evenings spent baby-sitting in the week. “Is this it?” I wondered, waking bruised and confused, but doing it again for want of a better idea. “Must laughter and relief be so quick to perish?”

At sixteen I moved on, alone, packing all my unanswered questions in some part of my memory labeled “York”.

* * *

The leaf, twenty-one years on, has settled in York again. Only twenty-one years? Is this the same life even? These city walls stood for a millennium, but now in the space of my life are they so changed? Through my open window, breezes bring the bells of the Minster, surging like a tide. This is it. Strangers smile at me in the road, one, two, three, before I realise I was already smiling, and they perhaps politely returning. Was that old cherry tree there in those days too, hurling confetti into a brilliant sky like the mother of some cherished bride? Is that the river inn where once I turned sixteen in a frenzy of loud friends, a cheap euphoria of sunny cider, my feet lolling in the green of the water? There are other loud frenzies now, and some look my current age. Is their joy as hollow as my own once was? As fickle as a draught? Are they still wondering “Is this it?”

It was not this place that was bleak then; it was these eyes that saw it so, and these same eyes that see it beautiful now. Many times I have thought and said that only since learning meditation do I really see; before I merely looked, and even then reluctantly. Again it shows itself to me as true, revisiting the same place on the long circular journey of life. I thank Sri Chinmoy for teaching me to see and to walk gladly in the world. He has travelled so much further in his life journey but lives on to encourage those, like me, who are only just setting out.

Journey
Onward, upward my heart proceeds.
I, the finite, perceive the One.
His soulful boundless Heart of Love
Awakes my bosom’s inner Sun.
Impossible deeds of yore to-day
Have reached their lofty wonder-goals.
My heart is changed, my world is changed,
I love all souls and own all souls.
I inspire the world to forget its woe,
I long for its inner cry to increase,
The far no more remains afar;
Now fast approaches my mind’s release.
—Sri Chinmoy

Excerpt from My First Friendship With The Muse by Sri Chinmoy

I watched an illumining and interesting film last week. Into Great Silence is surely one of the bravest films ever made. Almost three hours long, no script, no score, no commentary. I was compelled to see such a daring feat of minimalism.

Over 20 years before the film’s release, German director Philip Groening applied for permission to film at the Carthusian monastery of Grande Chartreuse in a far corner of the French Alps. He was told it was too early, perhaps in 10-13 years it would be the right time.

16 years later his request was accepted.

You can read the rest of my review at WriteSpirit.net (a beautiful and fascinating site “sharing ancient wisdom and modern inspiration”).

If you watch it, or if you’ve already seen it, let me know what you thought…