Question: Which is better: being peaceful on your birthday or killing yourself making prasad and so forth?

Sri Chinmoy: Being peaceful is infinitely more important than buying prasad or going out to a restaurant with your friends. These things are not important. If you can get peace, joy and inner aspiration while you are eating Chinese food with your friends, that is all right. But if your inner poise, inner height and intense inner cry all disappear inside your Chinese food, then that is not good. If you only give yourself to outer, social activities and pay no attention to your spirituality, then you will lose all your inner wealth. Again, you have to know that the inner and the outer both must go together. If you pray and meditate in the morning most soulfully and powerfully, definitely you will receive inner poise and other inner wealth. Then you have to maintain this inner poise while you are making prasad or doing other things during the day.

From:Sri Chinmoy,The soul's special promise, part 1, Agni Press, 1994
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