Time

Many are the comments and analyses that can be made about the concept of ‘time’. Perhaps there is not even enough time to talk about the endless thoughts on the topic of ‘time’.  As a matter of fact, I have run out of time to even attempt to write about it, as this essay was due yesterday. But if you are now reading this it means I was lucky, this time, in getting it printed here.

I would hate to say anything redundant or trite about ‘time’. Any timely comments on ‘time’ can come from many better sources at any time, so I will not attempt to comment on it any further. What I do wish to offer here though are some poems and comments about ‘time’ that Sri Chinmoy has offered over the years. His experience of time, his approach to time, and his unique expression of time through poetry mostly, can give us a better understanding of time and how to use it wisely.

The following are just a few of the many illumining and inspiring expressions of time that Sri Chinmoy has offered during the precious time that he had spent on earth with us.

TIME

Don't laugh at time!
Time will devour you.
Smile at time!
Time will bless you.
Cry for time!
Time will reward you.
Stay with time!
Time will treasure you.
Go beyond time!
Time will fulfil you.

Excerpt from Immortality's Dance by Sri Chinmoy

March 20

"Time wants to push me into the future. I want to pull time into the past. When time pushes me, I say to time that I am not ready. When I pull time, I get no response from time. It is long dead. Let me not allow myself to be pushed by time. Let me not pull time either. Let me just place my earthly existence in the Lap of Universal Time."

Excerpt from Meditations: Food For The Soul by Sri Chinmoy

Time

Who has time? God. God has time to love me.

Who has time? I. I have time to perfect myself.

Time is the colleague of happiness and the fever of laziness.

The laziness in man usually hates the promptness of time. The divine in man sleeplessly loves the readiness, steadiness and promptness of time.

My failure-life is not the fault of my lack of time. My failure-life is the fault of my mind's lack of awareness, my heart's lack of wakefulness and my life's lack of soulfulness.

Excerpt from Four Hundred Gratitude-Flower-Hearts by Sri Chinmoy

Question: How can I best utilise the physical earthbound time that I am living in?

Sri Chinmoy:There are two kinds of time. One is earthbound time and the other is eternal Time. The earthbound time is what we have created, but eternal Time cannot be created. It is within us and without us. When we live in eternal Time, we cannot separate one second from another second. When we live in earthbound time, we know that it is one o’clock and then it is one minute past one. They are two separate minutes. But in eternal Time, we cannot separate the minutes or hours. In eternal Time one o’clock, two o’clock, three and four o’clock are all together. This is the difference between eternal Time and earthbound time. We can see the present, past and future perfectly housed in eternal Time, and this eternal Time we can easily possess when we are Self-realised....

Excerpt from Transformation-Night, Immortality-Dawn by Sri Chinmoy

Having given the burden of explaining the concept of time to my own timeless Guru, Sri Chinmoy, I now offer gratitude to him and to those who were able to take the time to read this and appreciate the spiritual nature of time. Knowing that we are approaching what Sri Chinmoy calls the time of ‘God’s Hour’, it is comforting as we deal with all the challenges of our relatively short time on earth. In this way we can be more patient with time as our days, months and years seem to pass quickly before our very eyes and we try to age gracefully with time.