Student: What is the deeper significance of your weightlifting?

Sri Chinmoy: Anything that I do will be valued, if it has to be valued, because of my spiritual life. Otherwise, if my spiritual life goes away, then my weightlifting, my music, my art, my poetry — nothing will remain. Spirituality is the backbone, the spine, of all my outer activities. Or you can say it is the trunk of my life-tree. In my case, because of the trunk, the branches also will be valued. If there had been no trunk, then nothing would have been valued, no matter how many things I accomplished on the outer plane. Nobody would have cared for them.

People know me as a man of peace and that is why they are encouraging my weightlifting and other activities. They see that I am a man of peace who is doing something good on another plane. If others who are much stronger than I am did the same thing, they would not pay any attention because they know it is in their line. They know I am not supposed to be in the weightlifting line. They think of a man of peace on a different level. It is because of my spirituality, my inner background, that they are valuing me.