Part VI

SCA 466-469. On 3 July 1997, Sri Chinmoy was interviewed by a reporter from the New York newspaper //Newsday//. The reporter was observing the ongoing Sri Chinmoy 3,100-Mile Race in Jamaica, New York.

Interviewer: Sri Chinmoy, the runners who are your students talked a lot about meditation, your philosophy and how that helps their running. What do you tell them to help them find the strength they need to go on day after day and run 16 hours a day?

Sri Chinmoy: Our philosophy is very simple. We love God, and we would like to serve God. There are many, many ways to please God. Right now we cannot please God in each and every way. But when we pray and meditate, we feel that there shall come a time when we shall be able to please God in each and every way. Why do we have this feeling? Simply because He will give us the capacity. So right now we are praying to God for the capacity to please Him in His own Way.

When we take the next step, then we tell God, “We would like to please You cheerfully, eagerly plus unconditionally.” If He wants me at this moment to converse with Him, I will do it happily, gladly and proudly. The next moment if He asks me to play tennis, I will gladly play tennis. Then, the following moment, if He asks me to do something else, that I will also do, happily and proudly. Ultimately we would like to do everything for God unconditionally. We shall not set any condition: “God, if You give me this, then I shall do that for You.” That is not our philosophy. We tell God, “We shall give You happily and self-givingly what You want from us. To please You in Your own Way we came into the world.” This is our philosophy.

We also have something else in our philosophy, and that is self-transcendence. We shall not be fully satisfied with our past or present achievements. We must go forward, we must go upward and we must go inward.