A disciple's responsibilities
Question: After someone is accepted as a disciple, is there anything he is supposed to do?Sri Chinmoy: When a seeker becomes a disciple, I make one or two requests. My inner request is aspiration, that he aspire. Then, he has to come faithfully, devotedly to our meetings. We are proud of him, and we want him to feel our pride at every moment. At the same time we expect him to be worthy of our pride. If, owing to unavoidable circumstances, a disciple has to miss a meeting, we cannot blame him. But there should be no casual reason whatsoever that will prevent him from coming to the Centre. He will not miss meetings because he is tired from work or because he has shopping or laundry to do or because he has to clean up his house. The one or two evenings a week when his Centre meets, a disciple will not make appointments to have dinner with his relatives or go out with his old friends. Only on very rare occasions, when it is absolutely unavoidable, will he miss a meeting for any reason other than illness.
Each disciple has to feel that this is his spiritual home, and that it is his divine duty and opportunity to live inside this home, inside this spiritual temple. With all our joy, all our love, all our blessings, all our concern, we wish to say that this kind of disciple is ours and he also has every right to claim us as his very own.
