Amusing Stories about Running
by Sri Chinmoy
I was running in the afternoon at a seven and a half or eight-minute pace. An old man with a pronounced moustache was watching me. He said, "Don't run so fast! You will get tired."
On one street, three or four boys and two or three girls are real monkeys. Each time they see me running, they stand up. They don't cheer me; they boo: "Boo, Guru!" That kind of thing they do! They are bad people, bad people. I pray to God, when I come back, that I don't see them, and God listens to my prayer. When I come back, I don't see them.
When I was running a few months ago, three or four girls who were standing near the street started barking. Human beings started barking at me! Very bad! There are so many nice people in this area, but God's creation is so vast. Always He has to have a mixture of good and bad. Four or five girls and boys are so unkind to me. Each time they see me they have to make fun of me. Again, most of the others are very nice.
This morning I was running on the left side of the street. On the right side a car passed me. It was in the other lane, but just because I heard it coming, I stopped. A stout black man was driving. He gave me a smile and said, "You are right. Always you should stop and watch."
I have been asking the boys to find me a two-mile course to run — flat, without sidewalks and side streets and no more than ten minutes away by car. Nobody has been successful; perhaps nobody ever will be successful. Vinaya last week told me he had found a place. I believed him, and he took me there. God! It was a useless road! He wasted my time, but I forgave him.
Then, three days ago, he said he had found Heaven on earth. Those were his words. I said, "To find Heaven on earth is really something!" So I went to see his Heaven. It was Heaven, according to Vinaya — our old course at my seven-mile mark. His course was full of small pebbles and stones, and it was not even clean. It was very bad, very bad! The other day Lorne took me to a place that he said was extremely beautiful. He said that Kanan was the witness, that Kanan had taken him there. So I went to see the place. O God! It was almost like a highway, with a tiny path for cyclists on the side. Thousands of cars were going by very fast. So how could I run? That was Lorne's place. Like that, many people tempt me to go and see their discoveries, but their discoveries always frustrate me.
Published in Run and Become, Become and Run, part 4
