During lectures and meetings of the Peace Meditation Group at UN Headquarters in New York, Sri Chinmoy was asked many questions about meditation, spirituality and the inner and outer role of the United Nations. Below are many of his interesting and illumining answers pertaining specifically to prayer and meditation, as excerpted from My Meditation-Service at the United Nations for 25 Years, Chapter 7, “Prayer and Meditation.”
Chapter 7: Prayer and Meditation
- Question: When I pray and meditate, I feel a flood of love and joy. But then I find that all the suffering of the world seems to well up inside me and I feel guilty for feeling joyful when so many other people are unhappy.
- Question: There is concern by some people that meditation rejects the world. What is your response to that?
- Question: Do you believe that activity and meditation contradict one another or do you feel they go hand in hand?
- Question: I would like to know the difference between prayer and meditation.
- Question: What is the best way to pray for others?
- Question How can we make our prayer most intense?
- Question: For achieving inner peace, are there other techniques besides meditation that might be more suitable or more effective for certain types of people?
- Question: Is there a place for prayer and meditation in equal measure?
- Question: Could you explain what contemplation is and how it differs from meditation?
- Question: Could you please tell us the difference between concentration, meditation and contemplation?
- Question: What is the purpose of meditation?
- Question: Is meditation for everybody regardless of whether a person is consciously seeking God?
- Question: What kind of knowledge can we achieve through meditation?
- Question: Can this illumination be shared among people — for example, between a person who has meditated for a long time and a person who has not?
- Question: When you speak of the outer silence, do you mean inaction?
- Question: So outer silence or dynamic silence is really divine action — doing the Will of God by serving man?
- Question: Is inner silence equated with prayer and meditation?
- Question: Does each person have a different way of meditating?
- Question: Because there are many schools of meditation, it becomes hard for a person to select one. How can we find the best one for us?
- Question: Should we meditate on various subjects?
- Question: What do you recommend for beginners?
- Question: Can meditation help cure physical ailments such as high blood pressure?
- Question: I have just started coming to your meetings and I would like to know exactly what is meant by meditation. Is it good to read books on the subject? Is meditation a form of thinking?
- Question: How can we learn to meditate? I believe in God, but it is very hard for me to meditate.
- Question: I would very much like to learn what the spiritual heart is like.
- Question: How can we keep our awareness?
- Question: How can I go deep within?
- Question: How can I have deeper meditations?
- Question: Once we reach a certain level in our meditation, how then can we go higher and deeper?
- Question: How can we know whether we are meditating well or not?
- Question: I read something about the control of breath in meditation. Could you elaborate on that?
- Question: Is it better to meditate in the lotus position than in other positions?
- Question: During a meditation, if something external to the meditation occurs — such as noise or something unforeseen — is it better to include it in the meditation or to try to shut it out and pursue the meditation?
- Question: Should meditation be done in silence or can we mentally chant some slokas or holy verses?
- Question: What exactly is a mantra?
- Question: Is it essential to have a mantra?
- Question: Sometimes when I meditate, I feel that I am about to go through some experience, but nothing happens. What is the cause of that?
- Question: What is the difference between going high and going deep in meditation?
- Question: Which is better: morning meditation or evening meditation?
- Question: How can we avoid falling asleep during meditation?
- Question: When I was meditating I had a tense feeling. My head was hurting and I felt I was pulling my meditation.
- Question: What concrete or practical things can I do, either during meditation or apart from it, in order to see light? I am not afraid of seeing light but I do not know how to do it.
- Question: When we meditate, how should we deal with thoughts that come from our imagination? Do these thoughts have any kind of reality to them?
- Question: How do we know if a thought is progressive or not?
- Question: Why does the mind resist so much when one tries to meditate and how can one overcome this?
