View: Poems by Sri Chinmoy
About Sri Chinmoy
Sri Chinmoy was born in 1931 in East Bengal, India – today’s Bangladesh – Sri Chinmoy spent more than 20 years of his early life in a spiritual community in southern India. There he absorbed the teachings and tutelage of India’s great wisdom and fostered his deep aspiration to be of service to humanity. In 1964 he voyaged to New York, where he has lived since that time.
Sri Chinmoy began writing poetry at an early age, his early efforts being in his native Bengali tongue. However Sri Chinmoy learnt English metre and rhyme and most of his poems have since been written in English. His first English poem was written in 1954 and was entitled ‘The Golden Flute‘.
In his poetry, Sri Chinmoy is attempting to express the inexpressible, to articulate what is beyond the scope of words. Sri Chinmoy is above all a poet of the inner landscape, and he never forgets that the poem is ‘a finger pointing at the moon’, an invitation to the silence beyond the words.
‘The Absolute‘ is a good example of this. This poem encapsulates a profound spiritual experience; He does not have to argue his case, he just expresses a spiritual consciousness. This inner confidence is reminiscent of the great mystic poets such as Kabir, Mirabai and Rumi. With this kind of poetry we feel it is coming from an inner source of spontaneity and creativity.
This is an example of Sri Chinmoy’s Poetry from one of his first Poetry books “My First friendship with the Muse”
My Secret and Sacred Bird
My secret and sacred bird now flies
To meet the Spirit’s vacancy.
All chaos of life today dissolved;
In me a surge of ecstasy.
Gold flames within my longing heart
Invoke the cosmos’ Parent-Sun.
A tapestry of Truth unseen
Bursts forth within; the Play is begun.
Excerpt from My First Friendship With The Muse by Sri Chinmoy.
Recently Sri Chinmoy’s poetry has focused on short mantric sutras or aphorisms. They display a haiku-like compactness, a tremendous density and compression of language. Many of Sri Chinmoy’s short poems are also instructional, their apparent simplicity revealing more and more profound depth on each re-reading.
Resources on Sri Chinmoy
- Sri Chinmoy – The official homepage of Sri Chinmoy. This beautiful site contains selections from his writings and information about Sri Chinmoy’s activities
- My Flute by Sri Chinmoy