Durjaya Thomas Pliske is a university professor and co-leader of the Sri Chinmoy Centre in Miami with his wife, Drishti. He has been a nature-lover since childhood, and last year he published a book called Light, Truth and Nature which attempts to integrate the spiritual, artistic and scientific perspectives of Nature. 

Recently, the 2018 edition of the Sri Chinmoy Ten and Six Day race finished in Flushing Meadows, New York. For this testing multiday event, there were over 80 entrants who braved the cold, wind and rain in an unusually cold edition. The winner of the men's Ten Day Race was - the accomplished multiday runner and World Record holder for 3,100 miles - Ashprihanal Aalto from Finland. Despite health issues, he managed a daily average of 82.6 miles. In the women's Ten Day event Ilvaka Nemcova from the Czech Republic completed 621 miles.

This year's other winners included.

Ten Day Race

• Men: Ashprihanal Aalto - 826 miles
• Women Ilvaka Nemcova - 621 miles

Six Day Race

• Men - John Geesler (USA) - 403 miles
• Women - Petra Kasperova, Czech Republic - 370 miles

The Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team have been organising multiday events in Flushing Meadows, New York since 1985 and the inaugural 1,000 mile race. Over the years this has evolved into the present format of a six and ten-day race. The race was founded by Sri Chinmoy who saw running as an opportunity to enable physical fitness but also spiritual self-transcendence. To put on the race, a team of volunteers work around the clock to set up the race, count runners, cook food and provide medical support.

A multi-day event requires the runner to dig deep and use all aspects of his being to overcome the physical and mental challenges of the event.

“We compete not for the sake of defeating others, but in order to bring forward our own capacity. Our best capacity comes forward only when there are other people around us. They inspire us to bring forward our utmost capacity, and we inspire them to bring forward their utmost capacity”

– Sri Chinmoy 1

Other photos of the race

Petra Kasperova

Asprihanal Aalto

Runners on the course

Smiling runner

The race goes on through the night.

The final runner to cross the line

Related

• Six and Ten Day Race at Sri Chinmoy Races

Photographers

• Jowan (photo album)
• Utpal (Perfection Journey)
• Prabhakar (photo album)

• 1. Sri Chinmoy, The body: humanity's fortress, Agni Press, 1974

In 2012, the United Nations General Assembly designated 20 March as the International Day of Happiness, and Sri Chinmoy Centres around the world have been marking this day with workshops, poetry readings and cultural events every year since. Dublin and New York were just two of the Sri Chinmoy Centres that organised events to celebrate this day.

Dublin

Workshop and poetry reading

This years' programme was an hour and a half long, interspersing meditation exercises and songs with poems on the theme of happiness. The audience was welcomed by Mangala Keenan from the Dublin Centre, who introduced the event with some background history of International Happiness Day, noting that the first year's events organised at the United Nations incorporated readings from the book Jewels of Happiness by Sri Chinmoy. Mangala spoke about Sri Chinmoy’s service to the United Nations for over 35 years and how, as his students, we continue to offer such events to the public.

Some of the poetry readings were by members of the Dublin Centre, including Cathy Torres (right), who read Sri Chinmoy's poetry along with her own composition Happiness in Silver, Gold and Diamond, which by the end had the entire audience smiling.

New York

Panorama Cafe, in Queens, an enterprise owned by Sri Chinmoy's students, hosts regular poetry readings, music performances and other cultural events - including one to celebrate this year's Day of Happiness.

Sri Chinmoy wrote many poems and gave several talks about the importance of cultivating happiness.

Sri Chinmoy’s book The Jewels of Happiness was released on 20 March 2013 to honour the International Day of Happiness and includes writings on how we can cultivate real happiness in our daily life. It was later released in audiobook form, read out by such luminaries as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Roberta Flack and Carl Lewis.

You can listen to a selection of recitations from the book at Radio Sri Chinmoy.

“If you are happy, it will help you to a great extent. If you are unhappy, you won’t make any progress at all. On the contrary, you will be marching backwards. Real outer happiness is not self-deception. It does not come from wasting time and indulging in pleasure-life. Real outer happiness is something totally different. It comes from inner joy and inner satisfaction.”

Sri Chinmoy 1

Sri Chinmoy suggested an integral approach to happiness. Both prayer and meditation are important, but he also encouraged a dynamic approach to life - he felt happiness could be cultivated through sport and serving the world.

Related pages

• A Quest for happiness by Abhinabha
• Jewels of Happiness website
• Poems on Happiness at Sri Chinmoy Poetry

• 1. Sri Chinmoy, The giver and the receiver, Agni Press, 1987

In many ways the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team was an early pioneer of distance running and helped to organise some of the first ultra distance races in American and around the world. Until the late 1970s, distance running was very much a minority sport with only a small number of events.