Prayer Service for President Anwar El Sadat – 1981 Oct 06 - Historical Repository for Sri Chinmoy: The Peace Meditation at the United Nations

Prayer Service for President Anwar El Sadat – 1981 Oct 06

Filed under 2 or more | Tributes and Expressions of appreciation

Summary:

In a moving tribute to President Mohamed Anwar EI Sadat, Egypt’s great leader and humanity’s missionary of peace, there was a special memorial service at the United Nations on 6 October 1981 .

Shraddha

Delegates and staff filled the Dag Hammarskjold Auditorium as President Sadat’s many friends and admirers offered their hearts’ final salutations to the man who was earth’s shining hope and Heaven’s choicest son .

Shraddha

Sri Chinmoy opened the ceremony with a silent meditation on a photograph of President Sadat, and followed with a prayer Guest speakers included Mr. Mohamed Talaat S. Khalil, representing the Egyptian Mission; Mr. Robert Mulier, Secretary of the U.N. Economic and Social Council; and Mr. Donald Keys, President of Planetary Citizens. Se more details below:

A prayer service for President Anwar El Sadat of Egypt was held by the meditation group in the Dag Hammarskjold Auditorium at United Nations Headquarters on 6 October 19B1, following the tragic news of the assassination attempt against a great peacemaker. Participants included

Mr. Mohamed Talaat S. Khalil of the Egyptian Mission to the United Nations;
Mr. Robert Muller, Secretary of the Economic and Sodal Council and
Mr. Donald Keys, President of Planetary Citizens.

Excerpts from the ceremony, as well as a tribute song to President Sadat written by Sri Chinmoy on 10 0ctober, were later sent to Mrs. Sadat as expressions of the meditation group’s sympathy.

Shraddha

After a silent meditati’on on a photograph of President Sadat, Sri Chinmoy opened the ceremony with the following prayer:

May we all most soulfully pray for the mortal body and the immortal soul of President Sadat. He is at once Divinity’s choicest instrument and humanity’s brightest hope in the political firmament of today’s world. His earthly frame, the cage, may no longer remain with us. But his heavenly soul, the bird, will remain with us here until it inundates the length and breadth of the world with peace, peace, peace.

Shraddha

Mr. Mohamed Talaat S. Khalz’l,

Permanent Mission of Egypt to the United Nations:

Thank you very much for this ceremony and for your general feelings here.

I have just come from the Mission, which has been in touch with Cairo, and nothing has been confirmed.

Probably any confirmation will come in the afternoon.

But for the time being , we all have to pray for the man who tried to build peace in the Middle East and in the world.

May God prevent any harm from coming to him.

Shraddha

Mr. Robert Muller, Secretary, United Nations Economic and Social Council:

Dear friends, we are all very grateful to Sri Chinmoy for having arranged on such short notice this moment of prayer for President Sadat. It is fitting that whenever such an act of violence occurs in the world, the United Nations should take notice and recollect and reflect on the consequences.

If President Sadat should die from this act of terrorism today, his memory will certainly not die in the years to come. He will be even more alive in the spirit of all people. He will be one more important example of the courage one has to have if one fights for peace. From such an example, we can all draw only one lesson, and that is not to be discouraged, not to feel that the forces of evil are winning.

On the contrary, we must assert the force of good which is in the large majority of people on this planet. We must draw one conclusion: to work even harder to eliminate and to eradicate from this beautiful planet whatever is representative of the forces of evil.

We must feel more confident, we must feel more obligated to work harder tomorrow after an event like this one, of which we have been informed today.

This is what God expects of us: to be His disciples during every moment of our days, to continue the age·old battle between evil and good until the forces of good permanently and finally prevail on this planet, as they will do.

Shraddha

Mr. Donald Keys, President, Planetary Citizens:

There is very little to be added to what has been said. Perhaps I can speak briefly as a representative of one of the non-governmental organisations associated with the United Nations. Many of us are devoting our lives in little ways to peacemaking. We have seen time and time again that the hours available to peacemakers are limited – not limited so much by assassins’ bullets as by humanity’s response. Those who try for peace, who try to lead toward peace, can make gains, but for those gains to be deepened and completed requires a fuller human response.

There is on the walls of this building a bronze or copper replica of a treaty in cuneiform writing, a peace treaty between the Hittites and Egypt many thousands of years ago. And we see that humanity still is struggling to find the way, struggling to live together in peace. It is one thing to hear the words of peace, to be told the ways of peace, and it is another thing for humans to reorient their lives, to change and to grow, so that peace may find a place to descend and the means to persist. When a peacemaker dies, it is as though something is released and becomes universal within our experience which previously was specific and confined, so that even in that moment it seeds the human consciousness and portends a brighter future yet to come.

* * *

Shraddha

Nobody has cared for world peace as the Egyptian leader whom we have lost. To him world peace was not a matter of mere lip service, but rather a spontaneous and sleepless psychic reality.

-Sri Chinmoy

10 October 1981

O HEART’S ONENESS-CRY!

Sadat, Sadat, Sadat, Sadat, Sadat !

O heart’s oneness-cry, O life’s fulness-hat,

O good lover of God, O swift lifter of man!

Bravely you fought, Lovingly you caught ,

Amazingly the Dream of world-peace you ran.