Professor Reynolds: We appreciate you coming at this time. The whole peace process is so important.

Sri Chinmoy: Everything in life has failed us or will eventually fail us if we do not achieve peace. We are running after success-life. But success can never give us joy because there is always somebody who is more successful than we are. If I become great in something, immediately I will see somebody who is greater.

When we live in the success-world, we are always competing with others; so we are always at the mercy of others. But when we care only for progress, we are not at anyone's mercy. We are only climbing up our own life-tree; we only want to transcend our own capacities. We have an inner urge to become a better person and a better citizen of the world, not by hook or by crook, but by sincere diligence.

So if we really want abiding satisfaction in our individual life and in our collective life, then we have to give paramount importance not to success but to progress, inner and outer. It is not that we are being self-centred. Only we feel that if we do not find inner peace and inner happiness, then everything else will have been in vain.

From:Sri Chinmoy,My heart shall give a oneness-feast, Agni Press, 1993
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