Since 1999, the Dublin Sri Chinmoy Centre has been offering free meditation classes, concerts and cultural events to the general public.

The Centre is comprised of Dublin-based students of meditation teacher Sri Chinmoy. There have been Sri Chinmoy Centres in existence in America since the late 1960’s, and in Ireland a centre has existed on and off since the early 1970’s. Indeed, Sri Chinmoy visited Ireland on a number of occasions in the 1970’s, giving lectures in Trinity College and travelling to Áras an Uachtaráin for meetings with Presidents Éamon de Valera and Erskine Childers.

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Since 1999, we have been giving meditation classes on a continuous basis, and since then over 3,000 people have benefited from our classes. (Incidentally, those first classes back in 1999 were given by Jogyata Dallas, who traveled all the way from New Zealand with his Irish-born wife Subarata – the video on the right shows Jogyata giving a very entertaining account of his own meditation journey)

Originally our meditation centre was located in Churchtown, but we moved to our new city-centre location in 2006, which includes a spacious classroom where we could accommodate up to 80 people.

Among the events we organize are:

• Free meditation classes: every 2 months or so we hold a series of free courses designed to give beginners to meditation a grounding in the basics. Our courses are primarily held in the evenings, although occasionally we also offer courses at weekends, early mornings and lunchtimes. Usually, our course consists of 4 classes (twice a week for 2 weeks), but sometimes we vary that schedule.
• Concerts of meditative music: we have given quite a few concerts performing arrangements of Sri Chinmoy’s music with vocals flute, harmonium and table. We also invite other meditation music groups such as Ananda and Temple Song Hearts to play in Dublin. In November 2010, we hosted the Songs of the Soul concert in the R.D.S. – in which over 1000 people came to see musicians and groups from all over the world play Sri Chinmoy’s music. We followed that up with another Songs of the Soul concert in July 2011.
• Festival of Meditation: In 2009, we began our first Festival of Meditation, with eleven different courses, workshops and concerts spread out over a week. The enthusiastic response we received from that has encouraged us to make it an annual event, and we have held three of them so far.

We often get asked why we offer our events at no charge – the simple reason is that we consider the inner peace and joy that meditation brings to be every person’s birthright, and not something that can be charged for. This is a tradition that goes back thousands of years in the East, and it is in this tradition that our teacher Sri Chinmoy requested that we hold the classes free of charge. We also consider the chance to serve our community in this way to be an extremely valuable meditation practice in itself, and one that gives us a lot of joy.

Sport is quite an integral part of our own meditation practise – it clears stressful energy out of the system, and gives us an opportunity to push the boundaries of what we are capable of, just like meditation! Most Saturdays, we meet together for a 2 mile fun run (and a spot of breakfast after) – anyone who wants to join us is most welcome!

In addition, the Dublin Sri Chinmoy Centre assists with core logistical support for the Irish leg of the World Harmony Run, a torch relay run passing through over 100 countries which brings in a shared wish for a better world. In February 2010, Dublin hosted the opening ceremony of European leg of the Run in City Hall, setting the runners off on a 7-month journey through 47 European countries.

We also have put on a number of cultural events with the aim of elevating the human spirit, such as displays of meditative art at galleries and cafes. In 2009, members of the Dublin Sri Chinmoy Centre let by Dayavir Gary Foran designed and built a silver-medal-winning garden for the Bloom garden show entitled Harmonium: A Garden for a Oneness-World. Our garden, which was visited by over 70,000 people, used the meditative music, art and poetry of Sri Chinmoy to create an atmosphere of inner peace and poise.