Chinmoy Kumar Ghose was born in the village of Shakpura in East Bengal (now known as Bangladesh) in 1931. The youngest of seven children, Sri Chinmoy entered the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, a spiritual community near Pondicherry in South India in 1944, after both his parents had passed away.
Here he spent the next 20 years in spiritual practice – including long hours of meditation, practising athletics, writing poetry, essays and spiritual songs.
In his early teens, Chinmoy had many profound inner experiences, and in subsequent years achieved very advanced states of meditation. In 1964, he moved to New York City and began establishing spiritual centres and giving lectures. Throughout the seventies his teachings drew more and more students including famousmusicians whilst settling in Jamiaca, Queens, New York and Sri Chinmoy became a prolific author, artist, composer as well as an athlete, inspiring his students by living and practicing the principles he taught.
In 1977, he founded the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team, which holds running, swimming, and cycling events worldwide, from 2 mile fun runs to ultramarathons including the worlds longest certified footrace, the Self-Transcendence 3100 mile race.
Its precursor was the 1976 Liberty Torch Run, a in which 33 runners marked America’s bicentennial by covering 8,800 miles in 7 weeks, mapped out over 50 states.
This idea grew in 1987 to become the international Peace Run and which was later renamed The World Harmony Run, generally held every year in some form.
In 1985 Sri Chinmoy, with the then Mayor of Oxford, inaugurated the first “Sri Chinmoy Peace Mile”, which is a measured mile in giving joggers something to measure their progress against. There are now several “Peace Miles” around the world.
In 1989 Sri Chinmoy inspired the international Sri Chinmoy Peace-Blossoms programme.
This initiative has seen the dedication of some 800 natural wonders, noted landmarks and significant places to world harmony. Each Peace-Blossom is marked by a commemorative plaque and is intended to provide an inspirational focal point for harmony in communities worldwide.
Today Sri Chinmoy centres flourish around the globe with initiatives to promote a more harmonius world and activities to encourage and inspire humanity. Throughout his later years, Sri Chinmoy embarked upon a program to honour those people who had also encouraged and inspired humanity, a list of some 5,000 individuals who were physically lifted by Sri Chinmoy in the Lifting up the world with a Oneness-Heart program.
Till his passing on October 11th 2007 Sri Chinmoy exemplified, in the human field, the Divinity that he assured was our birthright.
Useful links:
Sri Chinmoy.org contains more information on the life of this spiritual master.
Sri Chinmoy Centre
Also checkout the Sri Chinmoy community page