For thousands of years, great luminaries and spiritual figures have mapped out the inner pathways to happiness. The practice of meditation runs through all of their teachings as a beautiful river conferring inner peace, a desireless contentment, a deeper sense of life’s true purpose and a blossoming of our spiritual nature.

Sri Chinmoy describes meditation as follows:

“Meditation is like going to the bottom of the sea, where everything is calm and tranquil.  On the surface, there may be a multitude of waves, but the sea is not affected below.  In its deepest depths, the sea is all silence.  When we start meditating first we try to reach our own inner existence – that is to say, the bottom of the sea.  Then, when the waves come from the outside world, we are not affected.  Fear, doubt, worry and all the earthly turmoils will just wash away, because inside us is solid peace.  Thoughts cannot touch us, because our mind is all peace, all silence, all oneness.  Like fish in the sea, they jump and swim but leave no mark.  So when we are in our highest meditation we feel that we are the sea, and the animals in the sea cannot affect us.  We feel that we are the sky, and all the birds flying past cannot affect us.  Our mind is the sky and our heart is the infinite sea.  This is meditation.

“Meditation means the recognition or discovery of one’s own true self.
It is through meditation that we transcend limitations, imperfections and bondage.  When we meditate, what we actually do is enter into the deeper part of our being. At that time, we are able to bring to the fore the wealth that we have deep within us. If we practise meditation daily, then we can rest assured that the problems of our life, inner and outer, are solved.”