Mount Apo — A Sri Chinmoy Peace Mountain⁴

I am deeply grateful to the Mayor of Davao for bestowing upon me this signal honour and most graciously blessing me with the key to the City. This key has come from his heart and has entered into my heart of aspiration and my life of dedication. My heart-door shall always remain wide open to serve the City of Davao with utmost love and humility.

Out of his tremendous kindness, the Mayor has also dedicated Mount Apo as a Sri Chinmoy Peace Mountain. A mountain signifies peace, tranquillity and inner depth. When we are at the foot of a mountain, it reminds us of our own highest aspiration-heights. When we are on the top of a mountain, we feel that we have climbed high, higher, highest to our own divinity’s celestial heights. The silent profundity of the mountain reminds us of our own origin: peace in infinite measure.

I am extremely happy and proud to be so closely associated with the aspiration and dedication of the City of Davao. Our Peace-Blossoms are part of our oneness-heart. This oneness-heart we try to offer wherever we go. We have been here in the Philippines for about three weeks. Each day we have been in this country, whether it is in Manila, Cebu City or Davao, we have felt very special blessings, love, concern and a feeling of oneness from the people that we have met. Also, Mother Nature has been most significantly blessing us. My students and I are extremely fortunate to have been able to bask in the atmosphere of the Philippines — the air, the water, the sunshine. In so many ways the country of the Philippines has bestowed its kindness, affection and compassion upon me and my students.

In a week’s time we shall leave for America and other countries. But we shall carry with us in the inmost recesses of our hearts your boundless love, concern and affection. My special gratitude to the heart and soul and life of each citizen of Davao I am offering now.

Tonight I shall be offering a Peace Concert here, and I invite you with all my heart. This peace concert will make you feel that we all belong to one family. When we see the world with our affection and love, the farthest corner of the globe becomes nearer than the nearest. When we use the heart, the entire world we can unmistakably claim as our own, very own. It is the mind that divides us, but our heart constantly sings the song of oneness. And inside oneness alone abides peace.

Let us fervently pray to the Almighty Lord to blessingfully bestow upon us the genuine feeling of oneness and oneness and oneness. When we see and feel oneness in our day-to-day activities, this world of ours will definitely be transformed into a cherished paradise.

Once more to the Mayor of this beloved city I am offering my heart of gratitude for his extreme kindness to my students and myself and for being a true lover of peace and oneness. In him we feel a real oneness-home and we offer our heart of love to the Mayor and his oneness-home.