Question: When we go to the track to exercise and you are not there, can that be substituted for our early morning meditation?

Sri Chinmoy: You have to meditate for five or ten minutes at home. More than that you don't have to meditate, but only if you are taking exercise with the understanding that you are pleasing me in my own way and becoming more perfect for my manifestation. If you can consciously feel this, then only is it part of your meditation. If you are practising running or walking only to defeat me or the other disciples in competition, then it is not part of your meditation. But if you are doing it in order to please me and become a more perfect instrument, then it is part of your meditation, real meditation.

You have to see the attitude that you have while you are running in my absence. It is your attitude that counts most. If it is to please me in my own way, to become a more perfect instrument so that your body can hold the divine reality, then, definitely, it is meditation. But if it is to show off or to defeat someone, or to get pleasure by taking exercise in the morning, or to prove how great and how spiritual you are, then it is not meditation. When I come to take exercise, a hundred people come. When I am not there, only three people come. If the idea comes that you are great if you come to the track when Guru does not come, then you are getting zero from me. If you feel that it is you and nobody else who is practising, so you are very sincere and very great, then you are not getting any mark and it is not part of your meditation. But if you do it with the right attitude, then, definitely, it is meditation. So, it is your inner attitude, your approach to me, that can determine whether your activity is meditation or is not meditation.