Interviewer: What about sports? What does it have to do with your mission?

Sri Chinmoy: Physical fitness is of paramount importance. We are not practising sports to be the world’s greatest runner or athlete. We are praying to God to keep our body physically fit so that early in the morning we can pray and meditate and begin our day’s journey with a prayerful heart. If we do not do sports and take exercise to keep the body fit, then we may become weak and sickly and suffer from all kinds of pains and ailments. Then we will not be inspired to get up early in the morning to pray and meditate. So when we think of sports, we think of physical fitness, not physical supremacy. The most important thing in our life is prayer and meditation, and that we cannot do if we are not physically fit.