Question: When I meditate with you I feel I want to give up outer things, that all I want to do is meditate.

Sri Chinmoy: Meditation does not mean that twenty-four hours you have to be closeted. It also means soulful dedication. You have to do some outer work so that you can maintain a balance. If you don't get a decent salary, how will you support yourself? But when you do work or do something in the outer world, you have to feel that you are doing it for God. Unlike what your friends or colleagues are doing, unlike what you did in your previous life, please feel that everything you do is dedicated service. In that way, you will not feel that you are wasting your time. Otherwise, when you are meditating in one corner of your room, you will feel that you are doing the right thing and the rest of the time you will feel miserable. No, dedication is also a true form of meditation. So do not separate action from meditation. That is wrong. During your meditation if your mind moves, then that is action; but it is negative action. Again, if you are throwing the shotput or discus while you are in a good consciousness, then that is meditation. Meditation is both silence and dynamic action. Meditation does not mean that you will always be sitting with your eyes closed. Meditation is silence, but silence itself is action. When you throw yourself into dedicated service, that is also meditation.

Our motto is "Love and Serve." If you really love a person, you will serve him. And if you serve a person, it is because you really love him. If you do service or work devotedly, it is meditation. That is why in India we have Karma Yoga, the path of action, because we know that action is meditation. So in the morning you can meditate; you will enter into the heart and offer your love and devotion to the Supreme. Then you will go to your office and do your dedicated service.

You have to be like a boat. A boat is in the water but it is not of the water. With the boat you can row and go from this place to that place. The boat is there in the water, but whatever you do, you do inside the boat. Similarly, you will be in this world, but you will not be affected by the dirt and filth of the world. You will have your own inner independence. First you have to accept the world and then you have to transform it. If you are afraid of the world, then you will have to leave the world; and if you leave the world, then you cannot do anything for God or for yourself. You have to fulfil God here on earth, and you can do it only when you live in the inner world and bring forward the wealth of the inner world. It is not from the outside that you have to go inside. No, it is from the inside that you have to come forward and grow. So if you can change the world, you will be able to fulfil and accomplish everything here on earth.

From:Sri Chinmoy,The mind and the heart in meditation, Agni Press, 1977
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