They spilled out of the bus on the Grand Central Service road.  They saw a sign for the off ramp of the Utopia parkway but knew they were not anywhere near paradise.  It was quite clear that the bus that had picked them up in lower Manhattan had now taken the group only as far as an inconspicuous Queens neighborhood.  The group was taking part in a ‘Flux Factory Mystery Bus tour,”  and only the guides,   Jason Eppink and Matt Green had any idea what was happening on this block in which the same dozen runners kept passing them by.  The only thing the group knew for sure was that the subject of the tour was, ‘The Quest for Immortality.”

The group has been told to stay out of the way of the runners as they kept going round and round past them.  They were respectful but it was clear none could understand what was happening here.  I ask one girl what she thought was happening and she replies, “are they training for a marathon?”  Another, who says he is an artist in residence, tells me he has no idea what is happening, but says, “it is an adventure, a great adventure.”  The tour group moves in the opposite direction of the runners and eventually they walk into the open area in front of Thomas Edison High school.  Matt reads from an article on the race that was published several years ago in Harpers magazine.

Matt then tells them that since the race started in June no matter what any of them  have done the runners have only been just here running around this course.  No matter the weather, no matter any other circumstance, they have been living their lives here around this block, in which the Flux Factor group have only just meandered around about half of.  He suggests that they try and walk around the full block themselves and picture what it might be like to see it thousands and thousands of times.  He says, “try and get inside the head of the runners and think what it might be like for them.  How intimately they would become acquainted with this block.” Matt Green talk

I speak with Matt as his mystery tour group starts to investigate more of the course.  He doesn’t remember when he first heard about the 3100 but says that when he read the article in Harpers, “I was floored when I read it. I couldn’t believe this was humanly possible to do.”  This is for Jason and himself the first stop on their first tour.

When they get to the counting area Rupantar starts to tell them more.  He describes self-transcendence as being eternal.   That what you achieve today simply becomes the starting point for tomorrow’s next challenge.  “There is no end to it. You have to draw upon all your capacity and use it during the race.  Everything is accelerated here.  It is like the Everest of running.”Rupantar talking

Eventually some, but not all, will take a slow and leisurely circuit of the loop.  I ask one mystery tour person when they return, what their experience has been like so far. It immediately becomes clear that they are still enmeshed in a cloud of incredulity.  They had noticed the flowers and bits of garbage more than they had noticed the runners.  They saw tidy homes and signs on the parkway that led to other places but had not read any message on the faces of those that passed.  The quest for immortality of course takes more than just one life and more than one loop of a block in Queens.

Oneness, oneness, oneness! Oneness with the temptation-life I do not want, precisely because temptation is frustration. Oneness with the earth-bound life I do not want; for earth-bound life is nothing short of limitation. Oneness with the Heaven-free life I want, for the Heaven-free life is Eternity’s Peace, Infinity’s Bliss and Immortality’s Life.

Excerpt from The Vision-Sky Of California by Sri Chinmoy.

Continue reading “July 19 The Quest for Immortality”

Tomorrow evening when Suprabha retires for the day she will have completed more than 2000 miles.  It is almost impossible to fully understand the miracle of this 53 year old woman from DC and what she has done here and what she seems to be able to continue to do.  Not only is she 14 years older than any other runner here, she is, and has been since the beginning, the only woman to do the 3100 mile race.

A few days ago I saw her running with Agnikana, a young woman from the Czech Republic who is a very talented runner in her own right.  She tells me, “I count Suprabha as my hero.  I think she is on a different level of runners.”

Agnikana is very fast over 2 miles and is in awe of what Suprabha does here.  She says, “I could never do what she does.  I admire her like anything, but you have to be somewhere else to do this thing.  It is not in the legs.  Of course it is about running but you need here something more than running.  Running is just one part, but I think there is a bigger part behind it.”

She adds, “what I admire about Suprabha is that she is surrendered to everything.  If it is raining, it is great that it is raining.   If it is sunny, it is great that it is sunny.  She is positive about everything.  This is something I really love about her.”

Do not run with the mind. Even if today you fool the mind, tomorrow the mind will come back with redoubled trickeries to make your life miserable. You should say to the mind, “You stay with your trickeries. I want to play with my heart-toy, not with you. You consider your toys as beautiful, but I don’t agree. In those days I was a fool; I enjoyed you. But now I am wise. I want to enjoy my heart-toy. The heart-toy always brings me happiness and newness, newness and happiness.”

When you run, if you can make yourself feel that inside your heart Somebody is running or your heart is running or you are running with your heart, then tiredness disappears, the power of distance disappears. Only the power of oneness, oneness, oneness with God’s Will appears.

Excerpt from Run And Smile, Smile And Run by Sri Chinmoy.

Continue reading “July 18 A Bigger Part Behind It”

There is another endurance sport going on now that regularly captures a world wide audience of millions.  There are 20 teams of 9 members each in the Tour de France this year and since 1903 millions have lined the scenic highways of France to watch. (photo courtesy of Zehnfinger)

Most seem to like the vantage of viewing the race on the steep uphills so that they can observe the riders for just a fraction of a second more, as they make their often painful ascent up a mountain pass.  Scott Martin wrote,”To be a cyclist is to be a student of pain…at cycling’s core lies pain, hard and bitter as the pit inside a juicy peach.  It doesn’t matter if your’re sprinting for an Olympic medal, a town sign, a trailhead, or the rest stop with home made brownies.  If you never confront pain you are missing the essence of the sport.  Without pain there is no adversity.  Without adversity, no challenge.  Without challenge, no improvement.  No improvement, no sense of accomplishment and no deep-down joy.”

Professional bike racing is of course nothing like the 3100 mile race.  The 12 who run here will never receive a yellow jersey, a large endorsement check, or outer acclaim of any kind.  They will have pain, they will have adversity, and they will have a joy experience that will resonate within themselves and in their lives for lifetimes to come.  All who strive for self-transcendence at first believe it is all their own effort that allows them to proceed.  Ultimately they realize that the doer is not themselves at all.  It is only with their heart’s surrender that they will succeed.

Tirtha is here this morning after arriving in New York last night from Germany.  She says, “I had to come out.”  When she arrived last night she says, “I just dropped my bags and came.”  She has come for the weekend just to be part of the race first hand.  She is now an experienced multi day runner herself and knows something about what it is like to be out running for days and days.  She also knows that the 3100 is a much different experience than the 10 day race she has now run twice.

She often used to be in New York at Fathers day and so on many occasions was here when the race had just started.   She points to a spot on the sidewalk where she says she used to stand.

It is never a good idea to be complacent.  There is no upside to it really unless you enjoy being surprised and shocked and perhaps even worse, find yourself wandering down familiar dark corridors.  The 3100 mile race has a way of inspiring and refreshing you sometimes that you never dreamed was possible.  All the runners have turned the corner well past the half way point and for most it is just now a final 1000 mile sprint for home.  I was talking with Ananda-Lahari this morning and he was telling me about an experience he had with Dr.Pradhan just the day before.

He was testing his muscles when at one point he says to him that he has detected that he does not have enough gratitude.  When I heard Ananda-Lahari say this my mouth just dropped.  It is one of those little jewels of wisdom that carries profound weight and is also one, that not just 3100 mile runners need to have in their hearts and lives.

He tells me that when he heard it his reaction was, “this is really cool.  It was kind of shocking in the first moment.  You don’t expect from a Doctor that he is going to speak about that.”  He realized with that diagnosis that he had not been working on that quality enough and the prescription will in the end, profoundly change his day and perhaps even the rest of his race.

The outer running is a burning desire to achieve everything that we see here on earth. The inner running is a climbing aspiration to receive from Above a vast compassion-sky and to give from below a tiny gratitude-flame.

The outer running is an extraordinary success on the mountain-summit. The inner running is an exemplary progress along Eternity’s sunlit Road. Success is the ready and immediate acceptance of the challenges from difficulties untold. Progress is the soulful and grateful acceptance of the blessingful joy from prosperities unfathomed.

Excerpt from The Outer Running And The Inner Running by Sri Chinmoy.

Picture by Bhashwar December 1979

Continue reading “July 16 Try to Value Everything”

For several weeks we have been playing a little game between the two of us.  He has been counting down the days until the new Harry Potter movie was to come out.  He tells me the number of days to go and I say simply, We will go at midnight when you are finished.  This morning he greets me with a very enthusiastic, “Today.”  My answer, “let’s go now.”

The Half Blood Prince will be the 6th movie in the saga of Harry Potter and his magical friends at Hogwarts school of magic.  For Diganta Adhikari this will be his fourth installment of the Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race.  He is a big Harry Potter fan but most certainly he will not be going to the movie tonight or any time soon.  There is the little matter of completing 1,213 more miles.

He has been listening to all 7 of the Harry Potter books on his MP3 player over the last 2 years and is no longer certain if he has heard them all 2 or 3 times.  It is also not clear how much he really listens to the books as he runs or instead just lets the words flow through his mind to help keep his thoughts calm.  The very real journey he is taking with his physical is so difficult there can be no fault in finding some momentary simple pleasure in a world of innocent fantasy.

Image from WikipediaIf perchance he might lose track of reality then some of the words spoken by the Master of the Hogwarts school can from time to time bring his world back into perspective.  Dumbledore once said, “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”  Diganta of course is living his life very large at the moment.  He is 93 miles ahead of last years pace.  Dumbledore also said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart also be.”  To see him run here this morning on a day when millions are clamoring to go to the movies and he is instead really only thinking of putting one foot in front of the other.  When you see how lightly and patiently he runs each new lap it is clear that here at the 3100 it is unmistakable where his treasure and his heart both can be found.  They are in each new step he makes along the way.

Continue reading “July 15 How to Look Beyond”

The day begins with the course bathed with soft golden light.   The air is sweet, light and cool, in other words it is a perfect day for running long and far.   Shortly after the race starts I will spend time with Push tookar who is running here for his second year.  At one point he will recount what it was like 10 days earlier when America was celebrating its Independence day on July 4th.  He will admit that in the beginning of his trips to the U.S, that he had very little understanding or real appreciation of America, which is so much more different than the tranquil ordered world of his home in Switzerland.

There is only one American running the race and that is Suprabha.  All of the 11 others come from distant places across Europe and also Australia.  Pushkar will tell me of a special moment when he came to feel in his heart a real appreciation for America that had taken a long time to develop.  For these runners who have traveled so far the only glimpse of America that they are able to have or even have time to appreciate is this hard half mile block in Queens.  They do not get to see the purple mountains majesty, the fruited plains, or the amber waves of grain.  For almost two months this is their world, and other than a microscopic commute to and from from the course, they see nothing else of this vast country.

There is a daily flood of cars sweeping to and fro nearby and many come to the nearby fields for sports, and school, and all kinds of other recreation.  None of these runners could be enticed from this block no matter how grand and scenic the vistas they might be offered.  Some individuals might claim that there are countless better locations for the race to take place but still it happens here.   The truth is probably that it could not ever take place in any other location because in some mysterious way this is the home of the 3100 and there can be no other.  Sri Chinmoy created it and placed it here and here it shall remain.

In the early 19th century there was a visitor to America named Alexis de Tocqueville.  He came at a time when there was no motel 6, JFK airport, or really very many visitors of any kind at all.  He was considered a great observer of the young nation and wrote two significant books on the American experience.  He would say of America many deep and insightful things.  “America is great because she is good.”   He also wrote, “Life is to be entered upon with courage.”  If there are more courageous individuals than those who run here I do not know who they might be.

There is a unique and deep inner experience that is to be found here.  The runners all have their roots so far away and yet for a short but significant part of their lives they live it here on four inter-twined American streets. Their hearts may be traversing the inner worlds but their feet are not.  Sri Chinmoy once wrote:

Charles Dickens once wrote in his story, A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way -“

There are moments at the 3100 when if you examine what is taking place here from a purely mental point of view you will never ever comprehend the significance of the events taking place on this little block and in the lives of those who have come here to run.

Yesterday Asprihanal had his worst day in 9 years and perhaps set a new all time low for race mileage when he ran just 14 miles for the day.  He was sick with numerous complaints and had to eventually leave the course and see a Doctor.  Today he has returned, and though weak, he has decided to forge ahead.  All are sympathetic to his situation but know that much bigger forces are at play when it comes to the runners and all the myriad of experiences they must endure.  No matter how close we watch we cannot ever understand.  We can however realize that what takes place here is incredibly significant in the lives of those who have taken it upon themselves to do it.  They endure and push on when most might think it is impossible.  Our thoughts can not go very far.  Only our hearts can ever hope to trace briefly their steps and journey where we have never been before.

Early this morning a runner asked me to take a picture of the moon.  I take pride at trying to see and take in as much as possible when I am here but I had failed to notice it.  When I looked up I was surprised.  It is not often one can enjoy the moon when the sun shines so bright.

There are some great adventure challenges in this world that everyone can appreciate.  There is probably no corner of the globe in which the climbing of Mt.Everest is not still recognized as one of the greatest of human achievements.  It is has been 56 years since it was first climbed and yet the list is long of those who still want to do it. Courtesy of féileacán

In describing why he wanted to climb it George Leigh Mallory said, “If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go.  What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy.  And joy is after all, the end of life.  We do not live to eat and make money.  We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life.  That is what life means and what life is for.”  photo courtesy of 06eng

Mallory of course will attempt to climb Everest on 3 occasions, and on his 3rd attempt in 1924 he will disappear on his final push to reach the summit.  There is no life and death struggle going on for the 12 runners of the 3100 mile race.  They will not make headlines or receive glories to complete the event no matter how many times they run.  They run simply for the inner joy of doing it.  Sri Chinmoy once said of the race,

“Never think of sixty miles or 3,100 miles. Never take the distance in that way—never! Only run for the joy of it. When you run for the joy, even while you are running, sometimes you are thinking of me or of something very divine and sweet. Then by the time you would have normally come to nineteen miles, you will have covered twenty-three miles. You will ask, “How did I run so fast?” It is because your heart was enjoying some divinity when you were thinking of me or thinking of your soul. When the heart starts operating in and through the legs or the body, then the distance will always become much more. Otherwise, you will run five miles and then give up. When the heart runs, you will have already run twenty miles, and then you will say, “How could I have come so far?” The answer is because at that time you were in another world. The divinity of that other world was constantly helping you and supporting you.”

Excerpt from Run And Smile, Smile And Run by Sri Chinmoy.

Continue reading “July 12 How Could I Have Come So Far”

The orbit of my little world took something of a seismic shift in orientation over the past week.  Instead of finding myself perched rapturously on the sidelines of the 3100 mile race I was relocated to quite a different universe altogether.  I had driven just 920km north of this hard little Queens sidewalk to a place in which there were hardly any sidewalks at all.  Family commitments had drawn me away and I confess, that I surrendered to them with little opposition. [image source: Jim Leistman, flikr]

I will not bore you with the delights and the despair of family encounters but I would say this,  I did not have to travel far before the miracle that is the Self-Transcendence race drifted free of my mind almost entirely.  When one is surrounded by nature that is full and lush it is easy to be distracted from that, which so recently had absorbed almost every fibre of my being.  Instead, Goderich Ontario is a tiny Canadian town with all the usual pastoral enchantments that can soothe ones being with their sweetness, simplicity, and charm.  There are no great struggles here, at least none worth noting.  When you are tired you go to bed.  Nobody is in a rush to do anything at all.  In fact life here is just like it is in most places in this wonderful world of ours.

What is missing here of course is the absolute expression of divine transcendence taking place repeatedly on a tiny fragment of a Queens neighborhood.  You could of course stand face to face with the runners as they shuffle past you and still not see it, but once you have glimpsed even an iota of the miracle of the 3100 you can never ever really forget it.

I will try at one point to describe it to my 91 year old Mother.  For her now a great distance is to travel down the long hall of her apartment.  My words at first do not seem to find any purchase, as I try and describe for her what the runners are doing.  I repeat again how many years it has happened.  How many hours they run, how many days they will be here, and how far they have already travelled.  My description seems to be just drifting away out of her reach when suddenly her eyes light up.  “My that is such a long way,”and Mom smiles in recognition.

Continue reading “July 11 Such a Long Way”

Today there is a holiday in America.  It is not quite the proper July 4th celebration, but because the 4th is on a Saturday, the day off has been scheduled for today.  America will have its parades, concerts, and fireworks tomorrow for sure, so today the country gets to sleep in and take it easy.

For the runners a holiday means only that the streets are quieter and there is little, or no roar, rising up from the Grand Central nearby.  More importantly the day is warm, sunny, and dry.  The great thunderstorms that rolled in yesterday and lit up the sky and flooded the course are just an unpleasant memory.  Though one that’s devastation still lingers  in musty shoes piled up trying to dry, and numbers on the board, that were diminished due to hours of slogging through sloppy streets.

On this the eve of America’s independence it somehow seems fitting to find this country is hosting the longest distance race in the world.  It is after all a place in which big, grand, and powerful have been synonymous for much of what this Country has created.  But those words fall inadequately short in describing the Self-Transcendence 3100 mile race.  Long yes, but its greatness is beneath and beyond what we the public can see standing on a sidewalk.  There is an inner wonder here that is off the charts when it comes to luminosity and intensity.

Sri Chinmoy whose distance running life took place here once said of this country.

“America is a young nation. It does not want to walk; it wants to run as fast as possible in order to breast the tape first.

I appreciate America for its dynamism. If you are dynamic, you run towards your goal. If you do not know where the goal is, then you may run from this side to that side. But it is better than to remain static. Americans are running. They may not be sure of the goal, but they are constantly on the move. They go to one side and run into a wall and get hurt. Then they go to another side and the goal is not there, so they get another blow. But at least they go.

The best quality in th e spiritual life is not to hesitate once you know your goal. But even if you do not know your goal, it is good to run. God’s Compassion will dawn just because you are running, because you are on the move. Once you feel that your goal is not where you are, that your goal is somewhere ahead of you, then you have to run. And if you run, eventually you are bound to reach your goal.”

Continue reading “July 3 There is a Perfect Atmosphere Here”