I can walk into the beginner’s classes at the Sri Chinmoy Centre and get as much out of them as I did when I first attended, though I have been meditating as a student of Sri Chinmoy for more than five years.

There are no ‘advanced’ topics of meditation. The basics are absolutely eternal; the principles of life, the experiences we have. We just grow more and more into them.

Sri Chinmoy has a really sweet expression: “Simplicity is an advanced course.” I’m learning this more and more as I go along – that the basics are everything. And the more I learn this I think the further I will go in my spiritual life.

Just the basic technique of controlling and stilling the breath. It’s infallible. It’s reassuring to me that it doesn’t get any trickier than this, that I have something that can last me for all eternity[i].

Meeting the people who come along to our classes reminds me we are all together on the same road. Sri Chinmoy liked to refer to himself as “the eternal beginner,” and I like to think this way about myself with meditation. 

The wise say, “The truth is right in front of you.” It lies as much in everything we have and are as in everything that will surely come to us. Not ahead of you, but here and now, in the very beginnings, is all you need to know.