The inner and outer setting

Question: As far as physical surroundings are concerned, where is the best place to meditate?

Sri Chinmoy: We have to be sensible when we choose a place to meditate. If we try to meditate in the street, a car will come and run us over. If we decide to meditate in the kitchen, what kind of meditation will we have there? There will be all kinds of noise, activity and smells to disturb us. Instead of meditating on God we will meditate on food.

We will get the best result from our meditation if we have a shrine in some quiet corner of our living room or bedroom. But while we are seated before our shrine, if we do not feel an inner shrine within our heart, we will not have a satisfactory meditation. Wherever we meditate, we must enter into the heart where we can see and feel the living shrine of the Supreme. At our inner shrine, it is all safety, all protection. We are guarded by divine forces there. If we can meditate at this inner shrine, we are bound to make the fastest progress, because there we will meet with no opposition. In the mind there is a constant battle raging. The mind is like Times Square on New Year's Eve; the heart is like a lonely cave in the Himalayas.