--> Skip to main content


Sri Chinmoy Quotes - A Collection of Thoughts and Teachings of Chinmoy

Chinmoy Kumar Ghose, better known as Sri Chinmoy (27 August 1931 – 11 October 2007), was an Indian spiritual leader who taught meditation. This is a collection of Sri Chinmoy Quotes on various topics including love, desire, gratitude…

To reach your goal the fastest, every day make a new attempt; every day feel that you are a fresh flower.

For a genuine seeker, the inner world is infinitely more real than the outer world.

When we have a childlike state of mind, it becomes extremely easy to find God. Here, there and everywhere.

The most beautiful thing on earth is our gratitude to divinity. Children always see more beauty than grown-ups do; because of their tremendous inner purity they see beauty in everything. Therefore we have to appreciate and admire them because they are still in the world of the soul.

When the mind is "developed", it also goes through conditioning and so begins to find fault. We love to see ugliness and impurity even in things that are really beautiful and good. If an artist has created something, we look for anomalies. The child, however, regards everything as his very own, so he sees beauty in everyone and in everything. He feels that there is nothing in comparison with other things. In the inner world everything is beautiful.

A Collection of Thoughts and Teachings of Chinmoy


Cancel as soon as possible all your mind appointments with ignorance, anxiety, insecurity and jealousy.

Each morning is God’s blessingful beginning to transform humanity’s face into divinity’s heart.

This morning a visit from my long-forgotten friend, Faith, has given me a new wave of inspiration and a new sea of aspiration.

When we don’t aspire, time creates us. But when we aspire, we create time. How do I do hundreds of thousands of things? Because I create time. When you follow the spiritual life and go deep within, you can create time.

If we know the divine art of concentration, if we know the divine art of meditation, if we know the divine art of contemplation, easily and consciously we can unite the inner world and the outer world.

There comes a time in the seeker’s life when he discovers that he is at once the lover and the beloved. The aspiring soul which he embodies is the lover in him. And the transcendental Self which he reveals from within is his Beloved.

Divine time means timeless time. When you are consciously thinking of something divine, immediately eternal time comes and shakes hands with you.

The mind is not bad; it is only that desire is entering into your mind and agitating it. The mind is not torturing you; it is you who are torturing the mind. Desire comes and wants to play with the mind or strike the mind to get some sound from it. Therefore, the mind starts defending itself. So do not blame mind for meanness, jealously, hypocrisy and lower vital thoughts.

Desire has to be replaced and this is possible only through aspiration. Empty the vessel of desire and fill it with aspiration. It is like emptying a vessel of dirty, filthy water and filling it with clean, pure water.

You can do it only by seeing what happens to those who have not emptied their vessels. They suffer unbearably, beyond their imagination. And those who empty desire and ignorance from their inner vessel and fill the vessel with aspiration and wisdom make themselves happy. Not only are they fulfilled but God Himself is fulfilled in and through them.

We are truly unlimited, if only we dare to try.

When we transcend any aspect of ourselves, our spiritual qualities grow and expand.

Try to be a runner and try all the time to surpass and go beyond all that is bothering you and standing in your way. Be a real runner so that ignorance, limitations, and imperfections will all drop far behind you in the race.

Before the race starts, meditate most soulfully for five minutes. Try to feel that you are not the runner, but that somebody else is running in and through you. While you are running, sometimes it is very difficult to enjoy the race. Either the competitive spirit or frustration is killing you, or your body is not abiding by your mental will. But before you start, if you can convince yourself that you are a divine observer and that somebody else is running in you, through you and for you, then fear, doubt, worry, anxiety and other negative forces will not be able to assail your mind. From the very beginning be spiritually wise; then throughout the race there will no self-doubt, no frustration, nothing.

Who is the winner? Not he who wins the race, but he who love to run sleeplessly and breathlessly with God, the Supreme runner.

We are altogether pursuers, and our objective is the same: to attain internal tranquility, light and delight, to come to be inseparably one with our source, and to head lives complete of genuine contentment.

Our goal is within us. To reach that goal we have to enter into the spiritual life. In the spiritual life, the thing that is most needed is consciousness. Without this, everything is a barren desert. When we enter into a dark place, we take a flashlight or some other light in order to know where we are going. If we want to know about our unit life, we have to take the help of consciousness.

Man, in his outer life or his outer achievements, is very limited. But the same man, when he enters into the inmost recesses of his heart feels that there is something which is constantly trying to expand itself. This is consciousness. This consciousness links him with the highest Absolute.

If you think of yourself as the body and do not aspire, then in the spiritual life you are already dead.

What you need is inner guidance and outer assurance; you need somebody to guide you and constantly give you encouragement, inspiration, and aspiration so that you can march along according to y our soul’s highest inner cry.

Whoever gives you inner joy and satisfaction is your teacher.

The Guru who gives you boundless joy is your Master.

If you immediately get an inner response from a Master’s soul, then you can rest assured that you are meant for his path. If you get the utmost thrill in your inner being when you see him then he is the right person.

No matter who your teacher is, I want you to realize God. That will give me the greatest joy. It is not who takes you, but where you go that is important.

On How To Know One’s Special Mission – Sri Chinmoy

To know what your special mission is, you have to go deep within. Hope and courage must accompany you on your tireless journey. Hope will awaken you inner divinity. Courage will make your inner divinity flower. Hope will inspire you to dream of the Transcendental. Courage will inspire you to manifest the Transcendental here on earth.

To feel what your special mission, is you have always to create. This creation of yours is something which you ultimately become. Finally, you come to realize that your creation is nothing other than your self-revelation.

True, there are as many missions as there are souls. But all missions fulfill themselves only after the souls have achieved some degree of perfection. The world is a divine play. Each participant plays a part in its success. The role of the servant is as important as that of the Master. In the perfection of each individual part is the collective fulfillment. At the same time, the individual fulfillment becomes perfect only when the individual has established his inseparable connection and realized his oneness with all human beings of the world.

How to overcome fear of spiritual failure? – Sri Chinmoy

You have to know that failure is and what failure can do. Fear is bound to go when you know that failure is not something shameful, damaging, destructive, or painful. Feel that failure is something natural. When a child starts to walk, he often stumbles and falls down. But he does not feel that stumbling is a failure. He thinks that it is a natural process to stand up for a moment and then fall again.

If you think of failure in that light, not as something that is against or totally distant from reality but as something that is forming, shaping, molding and becoming reality, then there cannot be any fear.

We take failure as something contrary to our expectation and our God-realization. But failure is not contrary to our realization. Failure is something that is urging us towards our realization. What we call failure, in God’s Eye, is only an experience.

Sri Chinmoy Thoughts on Karma

When one realizes God, one has the capacity to stand above one’s own fate or karma.

The law of karma applies to everyone and at the same time one can transcend it by one’s meditation. The law of karma exists and at the same time it can be transcended by realization, oneness with God and by the power of spirituality.

The best way to get rid of bad karma is to enter into the field of aspiration, concentration and meditation.

Sri Chinmoy Quotes on Love

One has to use love, not to bind or possess the world, but to free and widen one's own consciousness and the consciousness of the world.

Where there is oneness, it is all pure love.

He who does not love life, to him life is a taut and rigid grasp. He who loves life, to him life is a beautiful and powerful clasp.

You can easily tell whether your love is vital or pure. When your love is vital, there is a conscious demand, or at least an unconscious expectation from the love you offer to others. When your love is pure or spiritual, there is no demand, no expectation. There is only the sweetest feeling of spontaneous oneness with the human being or beings concerned.

When the power of love replaces the love of power Man will have a new name: God

Do not depend on earthly applause. Depend only on God's Compassion – Smile.

Encouragement is of constant need. Both in the inner world of progress And in the outer world of success.

Sri Chinmoy Quotes on Ingratitude and Gratitude


Ingratitude is not our inability to acknowledge the gifts we receive from others. Ingratitude is our deliberate unwillingness to acknowledge the gifts we receive from others. Gratitude is receptivity, the receptivity that acknowledges others' gifts, others' love and concern. Each time we express gratitude, we expand our hearts.

When we cultivate our gratitude-heart, we get the opportunity to sow our pure love there. This pure love grows into true concern, and true concern eventually becomes inseparable oneness.

Ingratitude is nothing but a sense of inferiority, an inferiority complex. The gifts we get from others we do not want to acknowledge. We are afraid to expose ourselves to others.

Ingratitude, impurity and the doubting mind go together. It is impurity that divides and separates us and does not allow us to have the feeling of oneness or gratitude. And this impurity unconsciously or consciously is treasured by the doubtful mind.

Gratitude, purity and the loving heart always go together. The gratitude flower grows in our purity heart. Purity expands our heart. Purity awakens our entire being within to the highest level of consciousness. The heart is self giving. And what is self-giving today becomes tomorrow God-Delight and God Perfection. (Source: excerpts from a speech titled Ingratitude And Gratitude June 17th, 1976 University of Edinburgh – You can read the entire article here at the official website of Sri Chinmoy)

Sri Chinmoy Quotes on Desire and Aspiration

Desire is a wildfire that burns and burns and finally consumes us. Aspiration is a glowing flame that secretly and sacredly uplifts our consciousness and finally liberates us.

Thirst for the Highest is aspiration. Thirst of the lowest is annihilation. Desire is expectation. No expectation, no frustration. With desire killed, true happiness is built. Aspiration is surrender. Surrender is man’s conscious oneness with God’s Will.

Desire means anxiety. This anxiety finds satisfaction only when it is able to fulfill itself through solid attachment. Aspiration means calmness. This calmness finds satisfaction only when it is able to express itself as all-seeing and all-loving detachment.

A Collection of Thoughts and Teachings of Chinmoy

Sri Chinmoy Thoughts on the message of the Upanishads

The message of the Upanishads is the life divine, the life of transformed humanity and the life of an illumined earth-consciousness. The Upanishads tell us that the renunciation of desire-life is the fulfilling enjoyment of world-existence. This renunciation is neither self-denial nor self-rejection. This renunciation demands the transcendence of ego, to breathe in freely the life-energy of the soul and yet to live a dynamic and active life in the world, where one can achieve Infinity's Height, Eternity's Delight and Immortality's Light.

In the silent recesses of the Upanishadic heart, we see and feel a splendid combination of the soul's spirituality and life's practicality. Its understanding embraces all the foibles of weak humanity. Its universal love is the song of self-offering.

Each major Upanishad is a pathfinder in the forest of experience that comprises human life. Each major Upanishad offers us the intuitive knowledge and the inner courage to find our way through the labyrinth of curves and dead ends, doubts and subterfuges.

Source – the book titled Commentaries on the Vedas, the Upanishads & the Bhagavad Gita by Sri Chinmoy

Sri Chinmoy on the Difference between Prayer and Meditation

When we pray, we speak and God listens. When we meditate, we listen and God talks. When we pray, we feel that we are going up to God. When we meditate, we try to become calm and quiet and allow peace, light and bliss to descend.

When we pray, often there is a subtle desire for something. We may call it aspiration because we are praying to become good or to have something divine. But there is always a feeling of being a ‘divine beggar’.

In meditation we do not ask God for anything. We just enter into the sea of His Reality. At that time God gives us more than we could ever imagine.

In prayer we feel that we have nothing and God has everything. In meditation we know that whatever God has, either we also have or we will someday have. We feel that whatever God is, we also are, even though we have not yet brought our divinity forward.

When we pray, we ask God for what we want. But when we meditate, God showers on us everything that we need. We see and feel that the whole universe is at our disposal. Heaven and earth do not belong to someone else; they are our own reality.

Hinduism and its Spiritual Significance - Sri Chinmoy

The ideal of Hinduism is to see all in the Self and the Self in all. A Hindu believes that each individual is a conscious manifestation of God. The spirit of selfless service is his supreme secret.

The breath of Hinduism is spirituality. Whatever a Hindu does, he does as a means to this end. It is true, as with any other individual, that he wants to accomplish all that he can here on earth. But the important thing is that he does not and cannot do anything at the expense of his spiritual life. To him, the spiritual life is the only life that can eventually garland him with the victory of perfect Perfection.

In the spiritual life, people very often use the word ‘sin.’ Here I must say that a Hindu has nothing to do with sin. He takes into consideration only two things: Ignorance and Light. With his soul's light, he wants to swim across the sea of ignorance and transform his lower self into his higher Self.
Tena tyaktena bhunjita. ‘Enjoy through renunciation.’ This is the life-giving message of the Hindu seers. What is to be renounced is the train of our desires, nothing more and nothing less.

The vision of Hinduism is unity in diversity. First, Hinduism lovingly embraces all alien elements; second, it tries to assimilate them; third, it tries to expand itself as a whole, with a view to serving humanity and nature. Indeed, this is the sign of its life's meaningful, dynamic aspiration.
Sri Chinmoy
(Source: Excerpts from an article titled Hinduism: Its Spiritual Significance by Sri Chinmoy)