A new cafe opened in the Jamaica, Queens, NY neighborhood that I frequent for weekend meditation activities with the Sri Chinmoy Centre. Called Panorama, it offers coffee, tea, lattes, frappes, sandwiches, etc.

When I visited there for the first time, I had both iced blueberry roiboos tea and a hazelnut flavored frappe topped with homemade whipped cream.

They serve panini sandwiches, bagels and baked goods. The walls are adorned with photographs and in one area Prabakhar's photographs from Mongolia are on display. Shardul offered live music with his flute playing and someone also played the piano in the back of the cafe as well. I surfed the Web on my laptop with free wifi and was quite reluctant to leave.

Ketan, a meditation student of Sri Chinmoy, is the proprietor of this new cafe joining the worldwide family of "Divine Enterprises." T-shirts with the store's name are already available for purchase. What you will really acquire however is an atmosphere reflecting the Sri Chinmoy Centre simultaneous with a dash of coolness and vibrant colour.

Meditation is an important part of my life. I meditate for about 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the evening. I sometimes meditate for longer but often there are outward pressures which make this difficult.  However no matter how busy I am I always find time to meditate.

I am still pretty much a beginner but I have had many good experiences through meditation. When I meditate well and can quiten the mind, I experience a happiness that is difficult to get from outer activities. In fact they are a different kind of happiness. Inner Peace is also a quality I can feel, but it was not how I imagined it would be. The peace from meditation is actually quite a dynamic feeling and you feel it is a peace that you need to offer to others. When I meditate well I feel an unexpected oneness with the rest of the world. I feel meditation also affects the rest of your day as well. Meditation gives you a greater detachment from external circumstances. For example you get less frustrated by small things.

However having said all that its difficult to describe meditation because by nature meditation goes beyond the mind and cannot be described in words. Sri Chinmoy wrote a poem called "The Absolute" which attempts to express the ultimate transcendental consciousness, which is a goal of meditation.

I am grateful to have a living Meditation Teacher Sri Chinmoy. Sri Chinmoy  began meditation at the age of 12 when he moved to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Here he had many profound spiritual experiences, often meditating for several hours at a time. He lived in the ashram for 20 years, before coming to New York, US.

It is a great inspiration to see Sri Chinmoy meditate in person, I feel he is able to go to a very high state of meditation and this tangibly effects your own meditation.

- By Tejvan Pettinger

- Free Meditation Classes in the UK

- Articles on Meditation at WriteSpirit.net