A heart of unity

This year marks the 80th birth anniversary of the Mahatma Gandhi Prize and UNESCO Peace Prize Winner Sri Chinmoy (1937-2007). An exhibit of paintings of this master de-dicated to this event has been launched in Kyiv’s Mystets Gallery and will be open till November 20.

Born in a small village in East Bengal and schooled in a famous spiritual community Sri Aurobindo in Southern India. Since 1964 Sri Chinmoy lived in the West, in New York, generously granting to the humanity the light of his soul via music, poetry and painting. Sri Chinmoy writes: “I try to inspire all people, no matter how old they are, to seek to bring their goals to life. The notion ‘impossible’ exists only in our mind, not in our hearts.”

Sri Chinmoy’s creative life was versatile and fruitful. He painted thousands of canvases in the Jharna Kala style, which is Bengali for “Fountain-Art” and over 15 million of pictures of birds. A bird is a symbol of the soul, it has to remind us that everyone has a soul which seeks to implement itself in ourselves and bring human mind to the highest summits through us. For our nature is divine, what we need is to recall this.

As a composer and musician, Sri Chinmoy authored over 19,000 songs. He gave several hundreds of free concerts in various concert halls, specifically the famous Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert and Nippon Budokan. The famous musicians Pablo Casals, Leonard Bernstein, Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar highly praised Sri Chinmoy’s music.

During his life Sri Chinmoy achieved good results in sprint and marathon races. And the fact that he lifted incredible weights prove that no matter the age, the person’s possibilities are unlimited, if s/he lives a spiritual life and seeks perfection. He said: “If I can do it, you can do it as well.” The core of Sri Chinmoy’s philosophy is that people should not compete with other people, but try to overmatch themselves, through all-round and harmonious development. Only such approach will bring real joy and satisfaction in life.

The World Harmony Run founded by Sri Chinmoy offers people from different countries an opportunity to feel that they are all one big family and can live in peace and harmony with each other. This movement annually embraces more and more countries and new territories in the countries where it is already a tradition. Each time more and more people of various ages join the relay on its course, in order to run with the Torch of Peace as long as they can, maybe several steps, passing the torch from hand to hand and putting in it the whole power of their hearts. Kyivites have many times seen the torch relay race, which took place in the city’s streets and ended under the Arch of Friendship near Khreshchatyk. Famous artists, sportsmen, public persons and representatives of the government and capital’s authorities took part in it.

Kyivites and guests of the city already know Sri Chinmoy’s creative work, because the exhibits of his paintings and drawings in the series “My birds: Dreams about the World” were held at the Ukrainian Culture Foundation and even within the walls of Ver-khovna Rada. Music bands from different countries which perform his music that brings calmness and harmony and is able to bring the divine things in people to the foreground have visited our capital. The magnificent oeuvre of Sri Chinmoy, embodied in his paintings, music, poetry, plays, short stories and essays, makes us plunge into the most secret depths of high spiritual philosophy of the East which reveals the true sense of human life and inspires thousands of people to a spiritual and creative life.

Sri Chinmoy dedicated his whole life to his dream about the world full of calmness, harmony, and unity. He was convinced that owing to decisiveness and persistence we would for sure achieve this cherished dream, by “us” meaning the sisters and brothers of one humankind family. Artist, composer, poet, and philosopher Sri Chinmoy was sure that every person has an unlimited creative potential of kindness, happiness, and serving others.