World’s Largest Peace Torch

The moon has been growing full for some days now. It is hard for us to resist its pull and attraction when it glows so bright and inviting in the clear Spring night. But on this past Sunday evening there was another lofty brightness illuminating the darkness that caught the attention of several hundred people in a little corner of Queens NY. It is a neighborhood not unaccustomed to the large and the extraordinary. This April 13th however saw the creation and lighting of something that even this, a place where the unexpected often shows up, the World’s largest Peace Torch.

The threads of this particularly story are both very simple and yet also extraordinarily complex and profound. Ashrita Furman is the first name that comes into the mix as the driving force behind this new Guinness record, for he has more of those records than anyone else. (Something like 182) But he himself would say the real inspiration for this unique creation is his late Spiritual Teacher, Sri Chinmoy. Who first came to America 50 years ago, on April 13th 1964.

Ashrita, has always dedicated his achievements to Sri Chinmoy, and so wanted this 50th anniversary to be more than just special, that it also be historic. He, along with a team of helpers wanted to create a Guinness record that would be original, powerful, and at its heart, symbolically represent some of the deep inner values and aspirations that Sri Chinmoy himself tirelessly championed. In particular Sri Chinmoy’s Oneness-Home Peace run, in which a team of runners carry a peace torch. This event has been taking place in more than 140 countries around the world for more than 20 years.

May the flames of peace-torch
Kindle and awaken
Each and every world-citizen.

Sri Chinmoy, A Love-Bathed Heart, Agni Press, 1993

The Guinness record people informed Ashrita, when he first proposed building a giant torch that he could not simply create an original designed torch. Instead it would have to be modeled after a previous Olympic torch and be at least 10 times the size of it. After examining pictures of all possible torches Ashrita selected the 1998 Nagano winter Olympic torch to be the most beautiful. Yet now the dilemma arose. How to find blueprints or even a copy of an almost sacred object that was built 16 years earlier in far off Japan.

Ashirvad just happened to be giving meditation classes in Tokyo when the original idea happened to be formed. Setting up an appointment with the torch creator, he took a 3 hour train trip to Nagano to speak to people there to see if it would be somehow possible to get technical information on the original torch.

“A gentleman from the company received us and he was very happy to see us.” The man was Akio Haruhara who actually designed and created the torch. In order to give him some idea of what Ashrita was planning he showed him a video of some of Ashrita’s other records. “He was extremely inspired by the video.”

Mr. Haruhara then showed them the real torch. “It was really beautiful.” They were also allowed to take measurements. He then asked if they needed anything else. They asked of course for more precise diagrams of the torch and mr. Harahura apologized. He said that Olympic rules forbade that he do that. Then after taking a long look at Ashirvad he said, “Just take the torch. So he gave us a real torch.” Upon returning to New York he mentioned to Ashrita only that he had been quite successful in his search. Not revealing the full extent of his success until he delightfully handed Ashrita the actual torch last December.

“He was like a kid who receives the nicest toy at Christmas. The one he was hoping for. He wasn’t expecting to get the torch. It was a big surprise.”

When Ashirvad was originally with him, he told Mr. Haruhara, “of course if you come (when it is constructed) you will be welcomed. They don’t speak much English so I didn’t feel that he would do it. But his wife was very excited about the idea. She said, yes, you need to go to New York.” Time passes and it was only a few weeks ago that Mr. Haruhara and his wife confirmed that they would come. “It is really nice.”

“There is something about this project, and I have seen many records. That the level of commitment that was put into it that I don’t think I have seen before. Everyone is so focused on making this torch the best way we could. Every little detail was given a lot of attention. From the materials used to the finish, colors, every little thing is an exact copy of that torch. It is just amazing.”

Interview

Ashirvad

Continue reading “World’s Largest Peace Torch”

It Is All Within Us Playing

His instrument rests gently on his knee. His right hand confidently plucks the taut steel strings. The fingers of his left hand dance rhythmically up and down the fret board releasing a cascade of beautiful notes.

There seems to be nothing separating the musician from the instrument he is playing upon. They are one. His eyes closed he plays a song that seems to come not just from months and years of practice. But instead originates from a far deeper source. Of course Vijay can look back and see a long musical family tradition. He is after all the 6th generation to grow up where playing and hearing classical Indian music was as natural as drinking water.

Yet as I sit near his feet, on a hot afternoon in Thailand, his audience of one. I cannot see that great lineage that stretches out behind him. All I can only hear is what is pouring out from his heart right now. What is undeniably clear, even to my own untrained ears, is that I am listening to a master musician. One who is sitting upon the ground in front of me while simultaneously reaching out to the celestial realms beyond. This, the very essence of who Vijay Shankar Mishra is.

Vijay Interview

I have listened to and admired Vijay’s music for years. As a musician, when he plays you instantly realize what a master he is over his instrument and as well as a singer. As a friend he is something else. His humility, warmth, and charm do not instantly reveal all and what there is about this 58 year old man from Delhi, who now finds himself living in Nepal with his wife and 2 children and also working for a travel and tour company. Both his daughter Shivani and his son Abhishek have continued in their own way the great musical family tradition. So one afternoon in February I asked him to tell me more about his life and his music, and how all the bits and pieces fit together to make up his most interesting world.

On Being a Musician

“It is a tradition. It is pretty natural, you are in a family where the music is happening all the time. Every weekend we used to go to classical music in different places. Music was a part of our life. At home my father used to play at all hours. Learning started right from the beginning.” In fact he was also exposed regularly to a wide group of other talented musical artists as well. “I was never aware of the fact that it was going to be my destiny. It was just going along. It happened. It came so naturally it was in my family it was easy. It becomes destiny itself.”

Vijay Interview 2

“Our family instrument was the sitar. My father was a sitarist and my brother is also a professor of sitar in the Delhi institute. It is quite obvious then that the sitar would be my first instrument.” But eventually he found himself being drawn to the Sarod and his father agreed to it. “So one day when I was very young he came to me with a Sarod.” He points to the instrument in his arms now. “This was a gift from my father. It is my father’s love gift. He said okay here it is, it is all yours. So then I started practicing and I hope I become one with this.” Laughs

He tells me his father was his teacher and though the fingering is different from the sitar he instilled in him the very core and essence of Indian music, the raga. “It was pretty natural, I had been seeing my father play, I went to the conservatory and my brother was playing. It was traditional kind of thing happening.”

He describes that even in performing you are not aware of the audience. “You see them as a part of you and you become one with that. I have never been scared of people because they are a part of me. I watched my father play comfortably and my brother playing so comfortably on stage with thousands of people around so I inherited that thing.”

He remembers that his first performance being a very natural experience. He was around 19 and how then, just as he does now, he simply closed his eyes and got into it.

He tells me that he never set a goal for himself as a musician. “For music we cannot set a goal. Especially in terms of classical music. It is a transcending factor. Every time you play you are transcending. It is always a new thing for me. A new test, a new exam. Every time I play it is never ending process.” He also continues to teach classical music in Katmandu.

He describes his move from Delhi to Nepal as an interesting process. It all began at about the same time that Sri Chinmoy was visiting Katmandu for the first time in December of 1994, though he didn’t actually meet him at that time. “It was a kind of destiny.” They actually never met until 5 years later in 1999. “I was fascinated.” He says that it is only now as he looks back that he can see the grand picture unfolding of his life. He certainly had no plans originally to move there. “When you come from Delhi, Nepal is so much smaller.” Yet it didn’t take very long before it became obvious to him that his spiritual life as well as everything else now needed to be transplanted to another city and in a different country. “This is how things work. It is basically destiny.”

He said that his entrance into a spiritual life and having a teacher was a new thing. “I didn’t know much about it. I wasn’t looking for a Guru, but once I saw Sri Chinmoy, I felt this big energy. It was like a magnet. It attracted me. So then I tried to learn step by step. It is like a baby learning to walk. It was the same way that happened with me. I didn’t even know the A B C’s about spirituality. I had heard about it and read about it, but this was different. Spirituality is a complete yoga. It has to be learned. It has to be felt. It has to be inherited from the master. It is not easy.” He describes that for him his spiritual life could not have even begun without his encounter and then his relationship to Sri Chinmoy.

Vijay interview 3

“It is a journey. It is pacing me and helping me in my music as well. To make the music more divine, more Godly, more beyond words. I play for him. That is how the music goes on.”

Vijay performs on Sarod:

Performance Sarod

“It does not mean that I play, or your heart doesn’t play. It is all within us playing. The listener is also playing. It is a give and take. Who is giving and who is taking? Nobody knows. Only the Supreme knows. There is an amazing exchange. It is beautiful.”

” Music is initially a self motivated art. The more I please myself the more I please you, and the more deeply I go. The more deep I go and also the more deeply the listener goes. Music is a universal language of
God.”

“It can transport you to a higher consciousness, in silence. Silence itself is a soundless sound, and that transports us very easily. Then we reach a state of silence. We are from the sound world and we go through to the silence world. For that we need a vehicle. It is music that we use as that vehicle. As transportation to the silence sound of God.”

It was at a concert in 99 that he met his Guru for the first time. “I really liked his presence. He was beaming with energy. He played so many instruments and that really affected me. He had so many dimensions. I had never seen anyone like that. That really attracted me. So I became close to him and I really liked him.”

At the time he said that both he and his family became disciples that very evening. “There was something happening within me. He meditated on us, it was very moving. A very special moment for me. To become part of his spiritual family.”

Vijay Interview 4

“Guru’s music is a written and composed for the Divine. The consciousness in Guru’s songs and music is very high. That transports you to the very highest very easily.” He is amazed that Sri Chinmoy composed so much music, more than 23,000 songs. “Even if you sing just a few songs a day it gives you such upliftment in terms of consciousness.”

He remembers how he played for Sri Chinmoy in New York for the first time. He told me, “very well done. Very good Vijay, you have played so well, and he gave me a medal.”

“Oneness love is his message. The whole world is one in peace. The divine love amongst us is a message. Even if he is not in the physical, I don’t feel like he is not there. You may not see him but he is always there to guide us.”

Vijay Sings:

Singing

“My dream is to be always a seeker and always a divine lover of each and every human being through my music. I love the transcending goal. I am a seeker of music, I am a student of Sri Chinmoy and I always want to be a student and learn and transcend. That is my goal.”

Final Performance

WHAT MUSIC TELLS ME

The sound-music tells me
God is Power.
The silence-music tells me
God is Bliss.
The God-music tells me
God is Experience.

Sri Chinmoy, The Wings Of Light, Part 15, Agni Press, 1974

Sharing Happiness

It is a quality that we all cherish and ironically it is perhaps one we yearn and strive for most when it is absent or tenuous in our lives. Yet when our lives are bountiful with happiness, we simply take it for granted, believing perhaps that this is a the most natural state of being that all humanity was meant to exist at all times in this way.

From time to time Governments have actively sought to enshrine the concept of happiness as a fundamental part of life. Recognizing that the society we all live within should be able to exist whereby all people can attain and have access to happiness. Though most certainly most of us have our own unique concept of happiness, there certainly exists some fundamental truths about happiness. That on a pure and in a fundamental way happiness is never exclusive to the rights of others. Rather when one person seeks out true happiness we also enable and make it possible for others to have access and find happiness more easily. That when one person benefits than so do we all.

This quality has been deemed so important and so necessary and fundamental to life, that on June 28, 2012, The United Nations General Assembly declared March 20th of each year as the International Day of Happiness. Bhikshuni Weisbrot, a staff member of the United Nations Development Programme, and is President of the UNSRC Society of Writers, was inspired to create a unique exhibit at the Queens Museum of Art this past March. It was a display that was up for several weeks dedicated solely to Happiness. On the 17th of March a diverse panel of speakers were invited to come and speak about this most significant subject. She was helped by many others in creating this truly wonderful exhibit which she called, ‘Happiness: A Visual Poem.’

At one point Bhikshuni mentions that it was 50 years ago that she was first at this spot, when the World’s Fair was held here in Flushing Meadow. I ask her how it feels to be back in this same location after such a long time. Experiencing perhaps in a more direct way what the World’s Fair had set out to do back then. “It’s funny, but I think it has always been my theme. I think it has just come to fruition now.” She recounts a conversation she once had with her mom in which she told her Mom, “I just want to be happy.”

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A Precious Gift

Can I Help You?

While I was running 47 miles, one person came up to me and said, “You do such nice things for people. Sir, can I be of any help to you?”

I said, “Thank you, I do not need any help right now.”

-27 August 1982

Sri Chinmoy, Run And Become, Become And Run, Part 11, Agni Press, 1983

This little story was first printed 30 years ago in a collection of running stories. While Sri Chinmoy was still actively running he wrote dozens of stories about many of the experiences that would take place while he practiced his distance running. Today there are hardly any recorded comments that he made about his own participation in the 47 mile race.

Yet we know, that not just for him, but for all of us who have participated in this most unique and challenging distance, that running those long hilly 47 miles was a golden opportunity. That here on this dusty track and broken road one could experience and find something within that no other race could offer or compare.

How is it even possible to describe the sweet secrets that are to be experienced when you commit and offer all that you have, to the dark tranquil beauty of running throughout the night on August 27th, Sri Chinmoy’s birthday.

For all those who have done so and now continue on this brave grand path, running the 47 mile race is the most precious of gifts. One that is offered from within the subtle silent realm of the runner’s own heart. Based not on time or place but simply on the gratitude the runner has for their Spiritual teacher, who even now continues to shape and guide us on our marvelous and mystifying divine journeys. An offering that cannot be packed or wrapped or explained beyond the simple understanding, that gratitude knows no measure and cannot be explained fully by either thoughts or words. But if perceived simply as a selfless offering of oneself, then only can it be grasped and appreciated instantly and fully.

This act of running, this gift of body and heart is not without some pain, some of the discomfort of asking more of ourselves than we are used to giving. But the greatest moments are those with a joy you can only experience when you discover that your gift of offering 47 miles to your teacher is in fact instantly returned to you. Returned in only the way that Spiritual Masters are able to do for those who have taken their guidance and strength as we forge ahead into the twinkling realm of our own self transcendence.

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World’s Largest Incense Stick

If your life is swimming
In the river of sorrow,
Then burn the incense of your heart
And inundate your entire being
With Eternity’s Light and Infinity’s Delight.

Sri Chinmoy, Ten Thousand Flower-Flames, Part 81, Agni Press, 1983

Trying to harness inspiration in our lives is one of those most illusive of things. For most of us it’s appearance is fleeting and ephemeral. Then when it is confronted by our own stubborn reluctance and lethargy it quite often slips away, before we can grasp it and allow our beings to be surcharged and renewed. Ashrita Furman seems unique in that he has for more than 30 years now found himself with inspiration as an almost constant companion.

Yet when you are like him, seemingly imbued with an almost continual enthusiasm for self transcendence it is not difficult to see why inspiration calls upon him so often. It is his unfailing appreciation for new opportunities to challenge himself, along with a deep inner aspiration for spirituality that has shaped and molded his life in ways, that this once upon a time skinny teenager from Queens never probably dreamed was possible. Yet even when he was young there were unmistakable hints that his future would eventually lead him towards some pretty spectacular achievements.

“As a kid I was always interested in the Guinness book of records. I never thought I would get in them because I wasn’t very athletic, and I was not even interested in sports. Then I started meditating with Sri Chinmoy, and his philosophy is that we have to use every aspect of our being to try and get closer to God. So I stated doing sports and I found, that using different meditation techniques that I could actually break records. As I broke more and more it became more exciting for me. I found greater and greater challenges, and I found that really there are no limits. That if we go deep within and find that inner strength, calm our minds, feel our hearts, then we can do anything.” Currently Ashrita is closing in on 500 world records since he started in 1979.

He has for more than 3 decades now been continually exploring all the eclectic realms of possibility within the Guinness record book. Achievements that all are as diverse as they are difficult to better. At the same time his unfettered imagination allows him to create totally original records that Guinness seems happy to accept in order to continually widen the realm of possibility for other wannabe record holders.

He says that it is we who set barriers for ourselves, usually within our own minds. Over the past few Augusts, in honor of his Spiritual teacher, Sri Chinmoy’s birthday on the 27th of month, he has attempted much different kinds of records. Usually the building of incredibly large things. Last year he and a team created the world’s largest tennis racket. But all these big things require the assistance of quite often a large and diverse group utilizing many different skills and talents to order to make it all come together.

This year he is attempting to build the world’s largest incense stick. One that he says, “is more for joy, for fun. It is really fun working with a team. Because usually when you find these obstacles, and we had many obstacles building this incense stick.”

Continue reading “World’s Largest Incense Stick”

August 6: Straight To My Heart

“Thank you everybody for being here. This race wasn’t easy at all for me. I had some really difficult times. The Doctors didn’t know what to do with me and they were deciding at one time if I could even continue the race or not. But then Aparajita appears and he started to sing Sri Chinmoy’s songs to me. And they went straight into my heart. And from there a feeling of devotion, joy, and happiness started to come from within me, and it flooded my entire being completely. It was then that I understood that everything in my life was going to be really good.”

Now here I am happy and joyful. Standing right in front of you. Thank you Sri Chinmoy, thank you Supreme.”

Play speech:

yuri speech

51 days and a few hours ago, Yuri Trostenyuk started off on a long difficult quest to reach this little spot of concrete upon which he now stands. The fact that it is exactly the same spot he started from long ago is one of life’s great cosmic ironies. That you endure and suffer through so much to end up right back where you started from.

Yet for Yuri and also for Nidhruvi, who will arrive here in just a few hours more, there is no sense of futility or meaninglessness. It is true that nothing outwardly has changed around them at all. But all who do this race do not come here for what they see but only for what they will become. For their true goal exists only in heartfelt depths of their own beings. This is why they have taken their lives on the 3100 mile, great and impossible journey.

It is an epic trek, one that has changed and transformed them in ways they have yet to completely to be aware of and understand. Their self transcendence will gradually reveal itself, to both of these first time runners, just as it has for all who have been here also this and year and all those who have made this race the center of their lives for the past 17 summers.

For these chosen few, have not only taken part in what has to be the most difficult sport of all time, but as well been simultaneously part of a divine inner pilgrimage. One in which there is never failure. The accurate measurements of time and distance are not ultimately at all what this race is all about. The suffering, the pain, the fatigue, the mental conflicts, and all the other foibles and failures of humanity are all here but are also irrelevant. Self Transcendence is to reveal only who and what we are within. To bring us back the unmeasurable distance to our own glowing divinity within.

“In his first finish I would have to say that this man smiled more times and waved more hands of joy than any runner in the history of this race. He is a quiet and unassuming man. He is a plumber with 2 kids and a wife back in Vinnitsa Ukraine. But this was his dream to be here.” Sahishnu

Dedication to Stutisheel

Play finish:

yuri finish

My Lord Supreme wants me
To run
Straight towards Him.

August 5: Something Good

“I also don’t know what happened. I had no wings. I was not flying. It was running, really running.” On her last full day on the course yesterday Surasa ran an incredible 120 laps. An amount she has not done since way back on the 2nd day of the race. “I realized it when I heard 92 laps and I was looking at the clock and I thought, O My God. I am one hour ahead. It was so easy. It didn’t kill me. The only thing I did differently was I didn’t take so long of breaks. I took shorter breaks. 2 breaks of 25 minutes.”

On her most recent big day, when she ran 117 laps, she took 2 long breaks. Yesterday when she ran 120, “I thought, I am not tired. So I can make shorter ones. This is such a difference. Most of the time I realized I took too long of breaks.”

When asked if for some reason the race distance was extended, could she just keep going? “The feeling yesterday was yes. I could keep on going on.” She has a problem with blisters she says, but otherwise her energy and her body could easily continue. “I am looking forward to just to sit down, and observe the race. It has been such a long time since I sat down.” For the past 50 days she has never also been able to eat at a table, or all of the dozens of little conveniences and habits that we have all taken for granted over the past 50 days. Something her, and all the other runner’s hyper mobile lives simply cannot allow.

In just a few hours from now she will finish her final 20 miles. A distance that for most runners is still a pretty serious task. Yet when you look at her smooth rhythmic style she makes the this extreme sport somehow look effortless. As if she were somehow specially designed from the inside out just to do this. True she got into multi day running almost by accident and yet in her lengthy career she has managed to accomplish a record of achievements that is just a little bit beyond extraordinary.

This humble soft spoken lady from Vienna has world records in distances from 1000km up to 1300 miles. What also should be noted as well about this is perhaps even more amazing. She has never once been beaten in any multi day race she has run. A fact that she would not likely tell you, but you don’t have to search too hard to uncover her long list of achievements. Then to add to all this incredible catalog of facts, is that she is also 55 years old. In a few hours she will not only set her own personal best here she will also be the oldest runner to ever finish the race.

In our world where athletes dance across the playing field when ever they score, Surasa is a reminder to us all that greatness does not have to be demonstrated by fist pumps and loud screams in front of the goal. Quietly doing your best and focusing on the true goal within is also something to celebrate and admire. To understand why she does this so so difficult thing she says, “Sri Chinmoy inspires me most to do it. I see it as an opportunity to finally do something good. This is satisfying, and makes you happy when you know you are doing the right thing.”

Speaking about her friend Nidhruvi who will cross the line tomorrow. “It is so great that we are both finishing.”

surasa prayer

At every moment
God is expecting something good,
And not great,
From you.

Sri Chinmoy, Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, Part 35, Agni Press, 2004

Continue reading “August 5: Something Good”

August 4: Great Finnish

On Saturday morning when Ashprihanal arrived at the race he stepped up on the edge of the curb and stretched his calves, just as he has done every day here. He was directly in front of the numbers board as he did this. I could see that he was looking at the mileage he still had left to do. Speaking to no one in particular, he said, “the old Ashprihanal could do that”.

What it showed was that he had 65 miles or 119 more laps to go. A number he had not met in more than 3 weeks. In my mind, the person I was looking at was just a slightly diminished version, of one of the greatest multi day runners of all time, Ashprihanal. One who was incredibly talented, certainly still capable of majestic flying around the course, and probably the guy who would not finish until sometime the next day. I was wrong.

Being by nature a little cautious I called the race late in the afternoon to see how he was doing. It was then that I learned the shocking news that Ashprihanal was flying once again as he has always done here before. That on this his 12th incredible race he was going to pull off one of those little miracles that seem to rise up out of nowhere. One of those moments that show you that impossibility can be put aside when you find the strength from within to make it possible.

The caliber of this miracle is not quite like what happened to Lasse Viren at the 1972 Olympic games when he fell while running in the 10,000 meter race. For what happened there is perhaps one of the greatest moments in all of sports. The Finnish runner Viren got up off the track and then sprinted as fast as he could. He not only caught up with the pack, but he also won the race. Setting a world record in the process.

“I have been having a problem with back, my hip, and my knee. And I have not been able to do 60 miles on only a few days. That is not my normal self. Because normally 60 is very easy for me. My standard is more like 70. Today the problem is totally gone. So today I could do 70. I am definitely going to finish, no problem. I would have been moving if my body had worked.” I ask him then why is his body now working. “Just Guru’s grace. That is what happened.”

“I didn’t go to any Doctors or anything like that. A lot of joy yesterday. 2 great finishers. Today was very nice running with Suprabha.” Someone he has shared the course with many times with over the years. He says that Vasu who won the race the day before was very impressive. “He was always in a good consciousness, always listening to Sri Chinmoy’s music, always inspired by asking stories about Sri Chinmoy. Just a great guy.” He says he told Vasu several stories from his own life.

Ashprihanal has been carrying a small bell now for almost a lap. Sometime earlier in the evening Surasa had completed 3000 miles and he had wanted to honor her. He rings it now over on the other side of the course. She says, “O so nice.” She also says that when she came by the counters she had no idea that she had reached that great number.

A few jokes are made about the old Ashprihanal vs. the new Ashprihanal. He says, “let’s say the healthy one. I definitely think I am going to run again. That is my plan, but maybe I take a year off. This race has been mentally good for me. I have been happy.”

2 years ago after the race I was physically and mentally exhausted. I really needed a year off. This year I am not. I am even physically okay. Yesterday I would have said that physically I am not okay. I am very happy that whatever the problem was it went away. Everything is good now.”

Ashprihanal interview

Your business is to begin. God’s business is to finish.

Sri Chinmoy, Flame-Goal, Agni Press, 1973

Continue reading “August 4: Great Finnish”

August 3: Our Tasks

“Somewhere in the middle of the race I felt as though I had fulfilled my task here. I am not coming back next year, but maybe in the future. I am very grateful because I love you all here.” 35 year Atmavir Spacil said this last night after completing the Self Transcendence race for the 7th year in a row. His has been a long and incredible journey that very few have ever accomplished before. Taken back to back his total mileage on the course adds up to 21,700 miles. An accumulated distance that would nearly allow him to circle the globe.

His battles with the elements over all those summers and all the other of the countless difficulties has shown just how courageous and determined Atmavir really is. Just to enter this incomprehensible event is astonishing, to finish 7 times is miraculous.

As he approaches the finish line his face reveals all the joy and gratitude he has for being so fortunate to be able to accomplish this really unbelievable feat. But those few minutes of brief glory here now on this warm still night are such an infinitesimal fragment of the whole great journey.

What goes on in his body, mind, and heart over the many months is the real story. Finding strength when your body says it has no more to give. Not listening to the relentless torment of pain, heat, and fatigue. Managing to find calm and peace when by times the world around you seems to be nothing but turbulent chaos. He has said many times that nobody but the runners themselves really understand this remarkable transcendence adventure. It is an elusive reality that I have chased for a long time and know he is right. I will never capture it all or even more than a small part of it.

No picture, no sound bite, no string of words can encapsulate something so immense and impossible as this thing that they do, and what he has done now for each of the past 7 summers. At best we see a watery mirage floating enticingly in the sky above the vast hot desert. We see it and imagine quenching our thirst with its elixir but we can’t. The 12 runners are the ones who are traversing across this boundless landscape towards the impossible. It is they alone who are arriving at a destination we ourselves can only dream of.

After his finish he is asked by a reporter from a network station a few questions about this great thing that he has accomplished here. He is grateful to share what he can, but there isn’t much he can say in a few words. Something that has taken him 7 years to accomplish. He says that if there is anything he hopes could come out of his experience is that others be inspired to transcend their own lives. He suggests simply, if you can just get people to run that would be a great thing.

“Finishing in 2nd place in the 3100 mile race for 2013, in a time of 47 days, 16 hours, 24 minutes. Which is an average of 65.015 or 104.6 km a day. This is his 7th finish in a row. From the marathon team and all the helpers congratulations Atmavir on a job well done

Atmavir finish

My responsibility is
The preparation of my heart.
God’s Responsibility is
The Satisfaction of His Heart in my life.
Can we not fulfil our respective tasks?

Sri Chinmoy, Ten Thousand Flower-Flames, Part 50, Agni Press, 1982

Continue reading “August 3: Our Tasks”

August 2: Our Victory

“I would like to offer my gratitude to Sri Chinmoy and to everybody. Everybody who organizes the race. Who serves the race. I would like to also offer gratitude to all those who not just do something here physically, but also those who even think about it and want to become better people.”

Vasu in about 4 hours time will complete his long journey. It will be his second finish in the event, but to see him on the course this year was like seeing an almost completely different person. He was not just stronger and faster he was also simply delightful to watch and occasionally run with.

His attitude was always positive, cheerful, and incredibly humble. Never for a moment was it about him, but rather everything to Vasu was always about how to please his Guru, Sri Chinmoy. Who he felt was solely responsible for everything that he did and also the kind of person he also wants eventually to become. Someone for whom Transcendence is not just 3100 mile race but for an entire lifetime.

I cannot tell just how many have been following his extraordinary achievement here this year. Certainly on websites across the Ukraine, Russia, and parts of the former Soviet Union there are many who are identifying with his incredible achievement of winning the race this year.

I notice that the time difference between here and his home in St Petersburg is 8 hours. Yet at his finish later this morning his friends there will gather and actually be able to watch his finish in real time on skype. Many others in the Ukraine and in other parts of Oneness Dream Boat shore will be anxious to also see and learn what wonders have happened here this day. None will be disappointed.

To show some perspective of his distance run here. Leaving St Petersburg Vasu would have run to just past the Mongolian border to Ulaangom.

The event by its sheer scope and nature compels the runner’s inner self to emerge and blossom. It may be possible to finish it on pure brute force and determination but I don’t think so. Something else has to happen. A divine miracle has to take place where the outer being has to listen and become in sync with the inner self, or at least make some pact or even grudging compromise When it all works in harmony than a beautiful soulful experience is expressed here at the race, again and again mile after mile. Vasu was just one of those cherished beings who always seemed in harmony with his heart’s cry and his outer smile.

“I tried to do my best last year and I tried to do my best this year. Last year I needed more patience and this year I had more happiness. It helped me so much. Last year and this year both very good for me. ”

I ask him about his helper Nicolay. “He was the big difference between last year and this year. He helped me so much. He did many things for me from the morning until the evening.” Nicolay would even go home with Vasu and give him a massage every night and then would leave and go on to his own place. “I am very grateful to Nicolay for his help. I do not think that this is my victory but our victory. This is our victory and Guru’s victory.”

Vasu

It was God’s Plan
Right from the beginning of time
To give our soulful faith
A splendid victory.

Sri Chinmoy, Ten Thousand Flower-Flames, Part 33, Agni Press, 1982

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