Quiet Quest to Sow Peace – Hartford Courent covers Concert and Peace -1985-Dec-04 - Historical Repository for Sri Chinmoy: The Peace Meditation at the United Nations

Quiet Quest to Sow Peace – Hartford Courent covers Concert and Peace -1985-Dec-04

Filed under 2 or more | media coverage Text & Photos | Music and Songs

United Nations Assistant Secretary-General Robert Muller

and Sri Chinmoy appear in main Photo in the

“Hartford Courant” newspaper of Connecticut, USA 04 December 1985.

The article has a number of quotations from Sri Chinmoy such as “We accept the world in order to change it.”

The main them covers the

Upcoming Peace concert in Hartford Thursday, December 5th 1985 and
the “Quiet Quest to Sow Peace”

“We accept the world in order to change it,” Sri Chinmoy says

Excerpt from: “Chinmoy Hopes to Sow Peace with Meditation” – by Matt Damsker, Hartford Connecticut, Courant Staff Writer.

New York – Silence – Profound … Welcome to…Chinmoy’s Peace Meditation at the United Nations – – an hour of quiet spirituality- attracting diplomats and UN staff members for 15 years….

There‘s a series of free “ Peace Concerts” in which he sings and performs – on various Indian instruments such as the cello like esraj – some of the meditative tunes he has composed over the years. (One is) set for Bushnell Memorial Hall in Hartford.

“We accept the world in order to change it” Chinmoy says in an interview after the meditation hour (at the UN) …his eves seem to swim behind his lids in blissful transcendence, only to focus suddenly, almost fiercely, upon his questioner. “If you do not accept” he continues, with a smiling sageness, “then what are you going to change?”

Chinmoy is doggedly non-political, non-controversial in his pronouncements. His message is one of pure peace, harmony, human understanding and cooperation – all familiar ideals of the United Nations served with a heady aura of Eastern spirituality. (“If the inner world is inundated with peace, then the nightmare of world war cannot even come into being,” he affirms). He will even go so far as to tie the Peace Concert into the hopefulness of the recent Regan-Gorbachev Summit conference… “I am a seeker, “he says, his voice soft and liltingly accentuate by his Bengali roots. “And I am a humble instrument of God. I can say only that God is using me at this hour, so for me this is a special time, but I cannot say this is a special time for everybody. I try to be of service to him consciously and devotedly, so right now I get the inspiration from the Lord Supreme to be of service to him through the Peace Concerts”

Chinmoy seems steeped in UN Credibility, It was former Secretary General U Thant who first invited him to conduct his meditation workshops there, and since then the guru has won praise from leaders as diverse as Pope John Paul II and New York Mayor Ed Koch. The meditation hours are certainly impressive, if low-key, rituals. During a recent one, the Bahamas permanent representative to the UN, Davidson L. Hepburn was serenaded by a chorus who sang a song of praise written by Chinmoy. Later in the hour, Robert Muller, assistant UN Secretary general presented Chinmoy with a medal commemorating the United Nations’ current 40^th anniversary.

“In the mind we doubt and suspect, and we get a kind of pleasure, a kind of joy from that. But in the heart, we try to encompass the full world, and by loving the world we get joy. So, we have to know what we want, and from which place we get joy – the mind or the heart. In the mind we doubt – we doubt our own capacities, doubt our own life, our own motives and afterwards we feel miserable that we have doubted ourselves. By doubting we weaken ourselves…By saying you are a nice person, I gain strength by calling you a bad person, I divide myself.”

“All my life I have been inspiring my students to run, because spirituality is an inner run and you have to keep the body fit”… “if in the morning you suffer from headache and stomach upset, that‘s a wonderful excuse not to pray and meditate. So physical fitness is of paramount importance in spirituality”

“I have answered thousands of questions,” he says politely “and if I try to answer more, I will only display my ignorance.” The eyes retreat into bliss. Someone hands him the pink rose from the table and he touches it to his brow, meditates on it for a fervent moment, as if drawing sustenance from its organic harmony. Then…takes his leave.

On Dec 17 , 1985 an article also appeared in the New York area Newspaper Newsday in slightly different one page format with similar text and byline with sub title “ The Quietest room in the UN”.