The New Zealand Sri Chinmoy Centres

Established in New Zealand since 1983

Our philosophy

The philosophy of the Sri Chinmoy Centre is simple – to improve the world around us we must first improve ourselves. Through regular meditation and the awakening of our spiritual life, inner peace can solve all of our challenges, clearing aside the doubts, insecurities, fears, unhappiness and other ailments that beset us. Only when individuals of the world are flooded with peace, light and joy, will we have a world where outer harmony and brotherhood are predominant.

 

Meditation

We all long for inner peace and self-perfection, but few of us ever discover a method to achieve these in any lasting fashion. Successfully tried and tested over the course of millennia, meditation is recognised as a powerful life skill that brings a lasting and tangible sense of peace, joy and happiness to those who practice it. To this end, the Sri Chinmoy Centre offers free meditation classes year-round and provides a peaceful haven where its members meet to practice.

The cornerstone of the Sri Chinmoy Centre's activities is meditation, for it can be said that meditation is the very beginning and end of spirituality itself. Meditation transforms the experience of spirituality for it's practitioners from a theoretical knowledge to a living immersion, bringing to the fore the peace, joy, light and love that is locked away deep inside all of us.

 

Awakening the human spirit

For over four decades the Centre has developed a repertoire of initiatives with a single aim – the fulfilment of the limitless potential of the human spirit.

Through public meditation classes, musical performances, fun runs, ultraraces, to humanitarian aid projects and the New Zealand leg of the Peace Run - we strive to reflect Sri Chinmoy's example of service and personal effort. Below we highlight a number of these activities.

Concerts of spiritual music

Experiences in which both performers and audience try to create together a meditative atmosphere that nourishes the spirit. Many of the songs are in Sri Chinmoy's native Bengali – a language well suited to spiritual expression – and have simple melodies that are sung repeatedly in a mantric style.

Sports and spirituality

Sri Chinmoy's life philosophy of inner and outer dynamism and joyful self-transcendence go hand-in-hand with sports, physical fitness, health, balance and inner peace.

Sri Chinmoy in training

We have the body and we have the soul. A spiritual person has to give equal importance to both the body and the soul. If he pays attention only to the body, if he becomes physically strong but spiritually very weak, then for him there will be no peace of mind or inner happiness. If someone does not get any exercise at all, then the physical will remain unlit, lethargic and a real hindrance to the aspirant. If the physical consciousness does not aspire, it will remain separated from the soul. Then rest assured, you will never be able to achieve perfection. The physical has to aspire in its own way to increase its capacity so that it can hold light. Then the physical will contribute to the spiritual and you will be able to aspire and manifest much more. So physical fitness and spirituality must go together. It is like having two legs. With one leg I cannot walk; I need two legs to reach my destination.

Sri Chinmoy

More: Sri Chinmoy's writings on sports

 

Each year the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team in New Zealand organises a variety of athletic events ranging from the National 24 hour Championship track race to distances including the marathon, half marathon, 15, 10, 5 and 3.2 kilometres.

Each year, the global Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team stages over 500 events world-wide from 100 metres to multi-day ultra-marathons. These include races such as the world's longest footrace of 3,100 miles and Australia's largest participant triathlon in Canberra.

New Zealand Races website

 

The Sri Chinmoy Oneness Home Peace Run

The Peace Run is an international relay that seeks to promote international friendship and understanding. As a symbol of harmony, runners carry a flaming torch, passing it from hand to hand between members of thousands of local communities, travelling through over 70 nations around the globe.

This event is a true grassroots event that touches the lives of millions of people along its route. The runners visit schools, community groups, running clubs, and local and national government organisations. At these stops they celebrate the goal of world harmony as well as recognise people in the community who work for harmony in their own special way.

Run founded by Sri Chinmoy - a tireless ambassador for global harmony - and does not seek to raise money or highlight any political cause, but simply strives to create goodwill among peoples of all nations and strengthen a sense of international brotherhood and oneness.


The Oneness-Heart-Tears and Smiles

Since 1991, The Oneness-Heart Tears and Smiles in New Zealand has provided humanitarian aid to many countries in the Pacific and South-East Asian regions. more »

 

Joy and the spiritual life

As Sri Chinmoy's students, we endeavour to meet together nationally at least once a month. By coming together as a spiritual family, we are able to share and also multiply our enthusiasm, inspiration and joy - recharging our spiritual batteries in one of New Zealand's many places of natural beauty.

Sri Chinmoy enjoys a joyful moment.
Sri Chinmoy enjoys a light-hearted moment - joy is essential in life.

Our Joy Weekends are a dynamic, modern form of spirituality - a new blend of silence and action for the singular purpose of joy, where neither tradition or ritual, cave or cathedral are prerequisite to the elevation of consciousness.

A typical Joy Weekend sees activities such as sports and games, running and tramping combined with traditional spiritual pursuits like meditation and singing. It is a melding of the simple, child-like qualities of spontaneity and enthusiasm with the meditative states of tranquility and poise, all for the uncomplicated invocation of joy.

I wish to say that if this is not meditation, what else is meditation? Meditation does not mean to enter into the Himalayan caves and keep our mouth, eyes and ears shut. That is not meditation. Perhaps in the hoary past the Indian ascetics tried and perhaps they succeeded in that particular kind of meditation; but now, in the modern world, meditation is different and has to be different. Here meditation means the acceptance of life, and anything that liberates us from depression and frustration is nothing short of meditation.

Sri Chinmoy
talking about joy in the spiritual life

 

We are all divine

Fundamental to all the endeavours of the Sri Chinmoy Centre is a belief in our divine potential, the spiritual heritage of all humanity as commonly described by the great religions. We are not merely human beings having a spiritual experience, but rather we are spiritual beings having a human experience. The fostering of inner peace and outer harmony then is but a natural extension of our intrinsically spiritual nature. In seeking inner peace we seek to reconnect with this; in fostering outer harmony we then reveal our divine nature – inner peace – to the entire world.

Sri Chinmoy himself believes in the acceptance of life for its eventual transformation and perfection. Thus members of the Centre combine spirituality and inner awareness with dynamism and outer activity, bringing the ancient truths of meditation into the hustle and bustle of our every day life.