Criteria for pages to appear on global home page

The global front page is no longer manually updated - this means that country editors now have the responsibility of marking their event or news item so that it will appear on the front page.

Upcoming events

To appear on the global front page, events must have the following

  • Pages must be marked as an 'upcoming event'
  • The start date must be specified, and also the end date if applicable.
  • The city must be specified.
  • For non-English countries, there is an 'English title' field to fill in for the event, it will appear in the front page listings instead of the title. There is also an 'English city' field you can use if the name of your city is different in your native language.

As you can see, there is one item at the top of the list which has an an image and a short description For an item to be considered for this top spot, there must be in addition:

  • an image uploaded
  • a 'teaser' in English (if you are from another country, you can uncheck the 'Show summary in full view' box so the teaser doesn't display on the event page)

Read more on creating events: http://www.srichinmoycentre.org/marking-page-upcoming-event-races-site

Latest news

For latest news, the pages must be marked as 'latest news', otherwise the same criteria apply as for events.

Important note: very often you will need to create more than one page for a recent event (e.g a seperate results page and race report). In that case, just mark one of them as a news item - the one you want your visitors to see first.

More on news items: http://www.srichinmoycentre.org/marking-page-news-item-races-site

Thank you....

Thank you for taking the time to adjust to this new system - we feel it will really help site visitors to see the global nature of Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team events :) 

Meditation in Sydney

Over the past few months, the Sydney Sri Chinmoy Centre have been offering a series of meditation courses in different parts of Sydney. These free meditation classes offer an introduction to the basic techniques of meditation and also how meditation can be incorporated into our daily life.

Sydney Meditation

Jogyata Dallas giving a meditation class

Jogyata, from Auckland, New Zealand, recently came over to give a series of lectures and classes in Sydney. The courses have been well attended with many local Sydney residents  gaining an insight into meditation.

Sri Chinmoy's path emphasises the role of meditating on the spiritual heart. Sri Chinmoy feels that this approach is the simplest and most effective way for a seeker to contact his own soul and experience the peace and joy of inner silence.

"When we go deep within, into the deepest recesses of our hearts, we commune with God through meditation. It is through meditation that we can know that God is both with form and without form, with attributes and without attributes."

- Sri Chinmoy

To find out more about Sri Chinmoy's path of meditation and meditation classes in Sydney, visit Sydney Meditation

Some of the Benefits of Meditation

From Bali to New York - Sri Chinmoy's Birth Anniversary Observed

In locations as far apart as Bali and New York City, Sri Chinmoy's students observed the 2009 anniversary of his August 27th birthday through prayer, meditation, singing and athletics.

Bali - Ceremony at Statue of Sri Chinmoy

The Bali Sri Chinmoy Centre and ARMA staff observed Sri Chinmoy's birth anniversary on the afternoon of August 27th in Ubud on the island of Bali. They gathered for meditation at the foot of a statue of Sri Chinmoy first dedicated there in February 2009. The life-size bronze sculpture of the late spiritual leader was sculpted by British artist Kaivalya Torpy.

Ceremony Observing Sri Chinmoy's Birth Anniversary

Ceremony at Sri Chinmoy statue in Bali

The statue was adorned with a flower garland and orchids for the ceremony. Each person also prayerfully placed a flower in front of the statue.

Participants meditated and sang some English songs composed by Sri Chinmoy. The words to one of the songs:


"Affection, Love, Sweetness, Fondness, God has for me. Every day I live and grow under His protection tree."
-Sri Chinmoy

Tumpeng Yellow Rice

Tumpeng Yellow Rice

Afterwards, the Tumpeng was cut (traditional Indonesian yellow rice shaped in a cone)  and traditional Balinese cakes were also offered as prasad.

New York - August Celebrations

In Jamaica Queens, New York, Sri Chinmoy Centre members from over 50 countries gathered to observe the August 27th birthday of Sri Chinmoy. This year more than 1,500 visitors from countries across the globe shared meditation, musical performances, plays, and athletic activities over a two-week period.

For the first time during August Celebrations,  a poetry festival was held paying tribute to the tremendous legacy of devotional poetry written by Sri Chinmoy. Professors lectured on his literary contributions and his work was recited in both English and Bengali, his native tongue.

SaudaminiPoetry

Other activities traditionally shared during August Celebrations in New York included a public marathon hosted by the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team in Rockland State Park, New York; a public Songs of the Soul Concert at the New York University Skirball Center in Greenwich Village and the setting of a Guinness World Record on August 27th, Sri Chinmoy's birthday,  by Ashrita Furman and an international team of helpers. This year's record was the creation of the world's largest lollipop.

Importing results from Excel/CSV into page

Using a special filter format (very akin to the one used in the old Restructured Text) you can now very quickly embed race results from an Excel file into your page.

From Excel, save the file as a Comma Separated Variable file (CSV), which will look a little bit like this:

      "Position","Name","Result"
      1,"Samalya", 9.58
      2,"Abhinabha", 10.01
      3,"Alexey", 10.02

To convert this to a table, just add [CSV][/CSV] tags at either end as shown below:

[CSV]
      "Position","Name","Result"
      1,"Samalya", 9.58
      2,"Abhinabha", 10.01
      3,"Alexey", 10.02
[/CSV]

This creates a table with no border (see first table on right). To add border and padding, use

[CSV border=1 padding=10]
      "Position","Name","Result"
      1,"Samalya", 9.58
      2,"Abhinabha", 10.01
      3,"Alexey", 10.02
[/CSV]

This gives you the second table on the right. Sometimes people use tabs, slashes to separate variables instead of commas.

      [CSV border=1 padding=10 sep=/ ]
      "Position"/"Name"/"Result"
      1/"Samalya"/9.58
      2/"Abhinabha"/10.01
      3/"Alexey"/10.02[/CSV]

This gives you the same result as the second table.

One of the nice things about these CSV tables is the user can sort by column entries by clicking on the header - For example if you clicked on the "Result" header the entries will sort themselves out in order of increasing/decreasing time.

  

Uploading and linking to files

There is no longer an 'add file' option - instead files can be uploaded whilest editing a page in the exact same way that images can.

You can access your filesystem in 2 ways:

  • press the 'Link' button (the globe and chain) and press 'Browse Server' to go to your filesystem
  • press the 'Image' button (the picture) - this will take you directly to your filesystem

Navigate to the folder where you want to put your file, press 'Upload' and upload your file.

Uploading and Linking

You can upload and link to files simultaneously:

  • First type the text of the download link (eg 'Race Results of 24 hr Race text (pdf))
  • Alternatively, you can add a image (for example, if you have a 'pdf' button you want people to press to download results)
  • Then highlight the text/image and press the 'Link' button.
  • Press 'Browse Server' and navigate to the folder where you want to place the pdf.
  • Press 'Upload', select the file from your desktop, and upload it. At the moment, only PDF filetypes are supported.
  • Finally, press 'Add to CKEditor', followed by 'OK' to link your text/image.

Note: if you are adding race results to the Races site, you can paste the link to your newly uploaded file into the Results field to create a nice 'Results' button

Featured Gallery - Sharani

The Sri Chinmoy Centre galleries have many interesting sections. These are a few selected photos from Sharani who is a frequent visitor to New York from Rhode Island.

roses

Beautiful Roses in New York.

panorama

A visit to local cafe - Panorama owned by Ketan Goldman.

Visit Sharani's complete gallery albums.

Interviews With Centre Members

In these recent editions of Life Voices, members of the Sri Chinmoy Centre talk about some of the activities and ideas that inspire them.

Gunthita
  • Gunthita talks about her experience in a 12 hour walk and singing with her music group Mountain Silence. Gunthita on Life Voices
  • Mandu Trummer a great musician from Linz discusses his outlook on life. Mandu on Life Voices

Life Voices is produced by Kedar Misani from Zurich Switzerland. A new episode is published on the 13th of every month. Life Voices at Sri Chinmoy TV

Europe

Americas

Oceania