With a remarkably soulful voice that touches the deepest chord in even the most casual listener, Krishna Das has taken the call-and-response chanting out of yoga centres and into concert halls, becoming a worldwide icon and the best-selling western chant artist of all time. He has released 14 well received albums, Grammy nominated Live Ananda (2012). In February 2013, Krishna Das performed at the Grammy awards in Los Angeles
On August 27 Krishna Das offered a special concert in New York at the Aspiration-Ground. He performed with two members of the Sri Chinmoy Centre: Sadanand Magee (Ireland) and Nelson Myers (New Zeland).
Boris Grebenshikov (Purushottama) offered a special concert in New York dedicated to Sri Chinmoy. Purushottama performed with a selection of international guests, including several members of the Sri Chinmoy Centre.
Ashrita Furman holder of the most Guinness Records at the same time (currently over 200) and a team of friends created the world’s largest tennis ball logo within 7 days. The ball composition shows the logo of the Sri Chinmoy Oneness-Home Peace Run, the world’s longest and largest relay run for peace and has a width of 10.08 meter and a height of 5.30 meter. The sixty-three-year-old health food store manager of New York set this Guinness World Record to honour the 87th birth anniversary of Sri Chinmoy an Indian spiritual master, founder of the Peace Run and an avid tennis player. The 53.42 square meter ball logo consists of 12,393 tennis balls in the colours white, blue, green, orange and red.
The content is a factually accurate rendering of what it depicts and has not been modified or augmented except for standard cropping and toning.
The tennis balls were fixed on boards and the other day carried from a backyard down the hill to the birthday anniversary function, where over 900 guests from all over the world celebrated.
Ashrita Furman states: “This tennis ball logo expresses our sincere wish for world peace and is our modest offering of joy to the world. With thousands of tennis balls, we want to honour the memory of Sri Chinmoy, who was the founder of the Peace Run and an avid tennis player. After the record, we will give the tennis balls to people in the neighborhood.”
Ashrita Furman has been breaking Guinness World Records since 1979. His first entry in the Guinness Book he achieved by completing 27,000 jumping jacks. Since then he has broken more than 700 records on all seven continents, including building the world’s largest tennis racket, balancing a pool cue on finger for the longest continuous distance (7 miles 220 feet) in front of the pyramids in Egypt, racing against a Yak in Mongolia to set the one-mile sack-racing record and underwater Aqua Pogo for 3 hours 40 minutes in the Amazon River in Peru.As a teenager, Furman became inspired by Sri Chinmoy’s philosophy of self-transcendence. Indian born Sri Chinmoy also set many records, such as writing 1,301 poems in 24 hours and composing 22,000 songs during his lifetime. Furman attributes his success at breaking records to meditation, which he has practiced daily for over 40 years. Meditation helps him to keep his childlike spirit and the mental and physical power which is needed to continuously set new world records. Ashrita Furman started setting Guinness World Records 39 years ago and hasn’t stopped yet. “Going beyond your everyday capacity is such a fulfilling feeling. The day I break a record I’m just happy the whole day,” he says. “I’m trying to show others that our human capacity is unlimited if we can truly believe in ourselves.” After every record Furman wants to express his gratitude to Sri Chinmoy.
Songs of the Soul is a musical journey which takes the depth, power and sheer vastness of Sri Chinmoy’s musical compositions and weaves an experience dedicated to the journey of the human spirit.
Sri Chinmoy’s heart-warming, soul-stirring music has been acclaimed and celebrated by musical giants including Ravi Shankar, Leonard Bernstein and Quincy Jones. Over his lifetime, Sri Chinmoy offered almost 800 concerts around the world, all of them free of charge, in the belief that the inner peace and happiness he sought to convey through his music was everyone’s birthright.
Songs of the Soul is proud to continue that self-giving tradition by offering all their concerts free of charge.
The Brazil Songs of the Soul tour video captures life on the road preparing for concerts and enjoying local experiences.
Ukranian Samunnati Nataliya Lehonkova is a student of Sri Chinmoy, an Olympic marathon runner won the LA Marathon 2016 in 2:30:39 h. (KTLA5 TV broadcast excerpt).
Samunnati Lehonkova is an Olympic marathon runner who took up running at an early age after becoming a disciple of Sri Chinmoy. In this short video, Samunnati talks about how she started meditation and running at the same time, and how she attempts to practice self-transcendence through her running and other aspects of life. Samunnati is an accomplished marathon runner, having represented Ukraine at the 2016 Olympics and has won the Dublin Marathon (twice) Belfast Marathon and Los Angeles.
In the depths of winter, Shamita Achenbach-Konig set out to run from her home in Vienna all the way to her birthplace of Bregenz, in the very west of Austria. This 640km journey took her a total of 7 days which involved being out on the road for up to 16 hours of the day.
Shamita had to contend with 4,000m of ascent and descent, plus the harsh weather of an Austrian winter.
Shamita is a professional cellist by profession, but has been running ultra-distance races with the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team for over 25 years.
