"When it came to finding pathways to spiritual enlightenment, the guru Sri Chinmoy had few equals. Chinmoy, who has died aged 76, spread his message of world peace through a mixture of meditative art, performance and extreme sport. … Chinmoy's teachings were a mixture of Hindu meditation, Vedantic yoga and Vaishnavism, which stresses belief in "the Supreme" the one transcendent force in the universe. He was unusual in giving equal importance to extreme physical activity, first long-distance running, and later heavy lifting, as a means of opening oneself to spiritual enlightenment. He also possessed a remarkable ability to win over doubters, particularly people of prominence, who inevitably succumbed to his message of peace. It gave him a Zelig-like ability to attach their celebrity to his work, particularly when he was lifting them off the ground. During the past 20 years, he elevated everyone from Nelson Mandela to Muhammad Ali, figures as light as Yoko Ono or as heavy as sumo wrestlers, and, perhaps most amazingly, two New York congressman from opposing parties."

"To be rich is to give a smile with no expectation of return."

"To be true to oneself is the hardest test of life."

"The human mind is utterly stupid when it carries, quite willingly, the heavy burden of resentment."

"Those who run after happiness will never be happy. Happiness is something that has to come to the fore from within."

"It is better to make mistakes than to lie idle."

"Popular mythology tends to imagine a guru – in the word's original and proper Hindu sense of spiritual adviser or teacher – as a placid and mostly sedentary figure. Not so Sri Chinmoy, who wove vigorous exercise into a meditational system that preached peace and inner harmony and gained him thousands of disciples worldwide, as well as admirers ranging from the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, to the Olympic champion Carl Lewis and the soul and jazz singer Roberta Flack. … Some derided his activities as gimmickry. Others claimed he ran a sinister cult. More fundamentally, his success reflected a paradox of the modern age, where official religion has manifestly failed to provide answers to the world's problems, leading man's unquenched spiritual thirst to seek less conventional outlets."

"Instead of creating a reason why you cannot love the world, try to create a reason why you should and must love the world."

"Hope knows no fear. Hope dares to blossom even inside the abysmal abyss. Hope secretly feeds and strengthens promise."

"Man is by nature a lover. Only he has yet to discover the real thing to love. This quest awakens him to the fulfillment of his real Self."

"Lack of harmony comes when I feel that I know how to do something better than you. Lack of harmony is the song and dance of superiority. Because everybody feels superior, disharmony at every moment is entering into our lives."

"Life is nothing but the expansion of love. We can cultivate divine love by entering into the Source. The Source is God, who is all Love."

"Unless and until you have developed a heart inundated with compassion, do not sit on the seat of judgement."

"Fear is bound to disappear when you realize that failure is not something shameful, damaging, destructive, or painful, but something natural."

"Hatred is a disguised form of love. You can only hate someone whom you really wish to love, because if you were totally indifferent to that person, you could not even get up enough energy to hate him."

"Is the world so unbearable? No! What we need is only a little more love for the world."

"If you really want to love humanity, then you have to love humanity as it is now."

"In my philosophy everyone, including the poor, sick and aged, belongs to one family — God’s Family. God is at once poor and rich, sick and healthy, young and old, for He exists inside each and every individual. Here on earth we are all God’s children."

"I feel it is through prayer, meditation, and dedicated service that world peace can take place. Each individual has to try to make others happy, for it is only through happiness that we can have peace."

"What we need is a life of balance — neither to wallow in the pleasures of wealth nor to lead a life of asceticism, but to embrace a life of simplicity and a heart of purity."

"A true spiritual seeker will have the deepest respect and utmost reverence for all religions. We can treasure all religions and claim them as our very own."

"The very acceptance of the spiritual life demands enormous courage. This courage is not the courage of a haughty, rough person who will strike others to assert his superiority; it is totally different. This courage is our constant awareness of what we are entering into, of what we are going to become, of what we are going to reveal."

"Love is something that never cared to learn how to judge anybody."

"Chinmoy's athleticism underlined a deeper point: that physical activity played a vital part in the search for enlightenment. "His life was all about challenging yourself and being the best you can be," Carl Lewis said."

"To deliberately criticise another individual may cause an indelible stain on the critic."

"Be kind, be all sympathy, for each and every human being is forced to fight against himself."

"I do not give up, I never give up, for there is nothing in this entire world that is irrevocably unchangeable."

"Alas, why does my mind have to walk through the dust of the past every day?"

"The very nature of kindness is to spread. If you are kind to others, today they will be kind to you, and tomorrow to somebody else."

"The world's oldest wisdom: each evil thought infuses the mind, sooner or later, with an unholy fear."

"There is no human being on earth who does not have the capacity to offer the message of peace to the world at large. But what is needed now is the soulful willingness."

"The waves of hatred-night can easily be dissolved in the sea of oneness-love."

"If you do the right thing, eventually you will inspire others to do the right thing."

"Love the world. Otherwise, you will be forced to carry the heaviest load: your own bitter self."

"Don't suffer! O my body, O my vital, O my mind, O my heart, do not suffer. Do not cherish suffering. Don't act like a fool. Don't think that your suffering is going to accelerate your spiritual progress."

"Since life is but a continuous series of experiences, everything ultimately helps me towards my final enlightenment."

"Nothing can be greater than love. God is great only because He has infinite Love. If we want to define God, we can define Him in millions of ways, but I wish to say that no definition of God can be as adequate as the definition of God as all Love. When we say "God", if fear comes into our mind, then we are millions and billions of miles away from Him. When we repeat the name of God, if love comes to the fore, then our prayer, our concentration, our meditation, our contemplation are genuine."

"Not the power to conquer others but the power to become one with others is the ultimate power."

"If you do not find peace inside your own heart, then you will not find it anywhere else on earth."

"Spirituality tells the seeker not to live in the hoary past, not to live in the remote future, but to live in the immediacy of today, in the eternal Now."

"No mind, no form, I only exist; now ceased all will and thought; the final end of [Nature]]'s dance, I am it whom I have sought."

"Barren of events, rich in pretensions my earthly life. Obscurity my real name. Wholly unto myself I exist. I wrap no soul in my embrace. No mentor worthy of my calibre have I. I am all alone between failure and frustration. I am the red thread between nothingness and Eternity."

"The Buddha appeared on earth to dispel by the illumination of knowledge the ignorance that had enveloped the human mass, to release the human soul from the prison-cell of desire into the wideness of the silence and peace of Nirvana."

"No more my heart shall sob or grieve. My days and nights dissolve in God's own Light. Above the toil of life, my soul is a Bird of Fire winging the Infinite."

"Death is not the end. Death can never be the end. Death is the road. Life is the traveller. The soul is the guide."

"What is love? From the spiritual and inner point of view, love is self-expansion. Human love binds and is bound. Divine Love expands, enlarges itself."

"First of all, let us try to know what love is. If love means to possess someone or something, then that is not real love, not pure love. If loves means to give oneself, to become one with everything and everyone, then that is real love. Real love is total oneness with the object loved and with the Possessor of love."