Monthly Archives: April 2010

Apr 19

The Sri Chinmoy Tulip

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Sri Chinmoy Tulip

Did you know that some tulip flowers are officially named after someone or something? Examples include presidents, royalty or famous people.

There are currently over 3,000 varieties of tulips and the Royal General Bulbgrowers Association in the Netherlands keeps careful track of all the new hybrids with the International Cultivar Register of Tulip Names.

Sometimes an unnamed tulip receives the name of a person, place or thing recognizable to many.

Some of these tulips with famous and recognizable names can be found in Keukenhof, an amazing huge garden located southwest of Amsterdam in Holland (or the Netherlands), the modern-day tulip capital of the world. If you love tulips, this is a must see place to go. It is the biggest bulb flower garden in the world with 4.5 million tulips.

Over 44 million people have visited it and it is the most photographed spot on the planet. New to Keukenhof in 2009 is the “Walk of Fame” which features tulips named after people and things. There you can find tulips named after the band Pink Floyd, the Disney character Donald Duck, the famous Indian actress Aishwarya Ray, 4-time Olympic medalist Inge de Bruin, Ferrari, Prince Willem-Alexander and more.

My meditation teacher Sri Chinmoy is one of these notable people with a tulip named after him. The tulip is is an orange/red colour with a yellow edge on the petals. It was cultivated by Jan Ligthart and was officially inaugurated as the Sri Chinmoy Tulip on April 30, 2005 in Keukenhof in conjunction with the World Harmony Run arriving in Holland. The tulip is “permanently listed in the International Cultivar Register of Tulip Names” according to the official certificate received during the tulip’s inauguration.

I was lucky enough to purchase some of these Sri Chinmoy Tulip bulbs in order to plant them in the yard of my home and I have flowers blooming right now this April.

It took two years for me to succeed (squirrels are a big problem in my yard) but it was worth the wait. In 2008, I planted my first Sri Chinmoy tulip bulbs brought all the way from Holland by some of Sri Chinmoy’s Dutch students. I tried my technique that worked like a charm in previous years where I waited to plant the bulbs in early December to thwart the squirrels from eating them. No charm this time – not a single tulip bloomed the following Spring.

So last Fall (2009) I switched it up and tried a different technique to protect the tulip bulbs from getting devoured by the squirrels. I put Shake Away granules to deter squirrels from coming around the area where they were planted. This time it worked! I have my first Sri Chinmoy Tulips blooming in my yard in Rhode Island. I would happily do a commercial for Shake Away, having used it to get rid of a mystery critter living under my shed and to get mice to move out of my house. But back to the tulip…

The tulip is quite stunning. I particularly like the way it looks like light is emanating from it when the sun hits it. For a tulip to look like it is giving off light is rather symbolic given that it is named after a spiritual teacher who dedicated more than 40 years of his life to helping seekers find divine light, truth and peace.

Here are some photos of the tulip:

Apr 04

Fairy Dust and Bioluminescence

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Fairies give joy: inner joy, outer joy. They give joy to sweet, innocent people through dreams. Sometimes, during meditation, they dance around. On a limited scale, they can fulfil wishes. They are always happy.
Excerpt from Conversations With The Master by Sri Chinmoy

We had arrived. First we came by ferry from the port of Fajardo on the east coast of Puerto Rico. Then in order to witness this hidden wonder of the Caribbean we stayed overnight in a guest house in Esperanza, Vieques. We were picked up in front of the guest house where we stayed in a rickety old school bus and our Island Adventures Biobay Tour was underway. We bumped along on the bus through the woods and pulled up at the edge of Mosquito Bay – reputed to be one of the best bioluminescent bays in the world.

We boarded a large pontoon boat and luckily the moon was nearly invisible in its cycle. The stars above shone brightly and the tour guides used a laser flashlight to tell us about the constellations as we rode out into the middle of the bay. They also explained about the fragile ecosystem with the mangroves and the highly salty water in the bay that contributes to the large concentration of micro-organisms that light up when motion stirs the waters.

It wasn’t until the final moment when they said that we could climb down the stairs on the end of the boat that I pondered the issue of my glasses. I cannot see well at all without them and if I wanted to swim in the bio bay and see the lights I would need them to stay on. I am so glad that I decided to take my chances and figured that the flotation vest that we donned would keep me buoyed high enough above the water to keep my glasses safely on my head.

The words magical and delightful cannot begin to convey how awesome it was to  move about in the water and watch the lights sparkle in the darkness around you. It was an experience unlike any other. Laughter and squeals of wonder were everywhere and we got ideas of how to move within the water to create the magic from watching each other. One of my favorites was to pretend you were playing the piano on the top of the water – fingers dancing on the bay and emitting sparks of light. Or if you dipped your arm into the water and lifted it out, the lights would sparkle in a trail wherever the water trickled down your arm. Old memories of water ballet suddenly resurfaced and I made dainty kicks and sweeping twirls in the water which caused the area around you to light up like a flashlight.

Now I know how Tinkerbell gets her fairy dust.  For sure it is bottled and exported from the Bioluminescent Bay in Vieques. If you want to see what it feels like to be a fairy, all you have to do is swim in a bioluminescent bay.

And if you want to imagine what the inner light of spirituality might look like in an outward manifestation, all you have to do is swim in a bioluminescent bay. For days afterward, whenever I meditated I thought of that magical night swim full of fairy dust light. The charm, delicacy and beauty of dancing sparkling light surely serves as a stellar representative of the effect of meditation and spiritual devotion in the midst of an otherwise ordinary day.

It is nearly impossible to catch the luminescence on camera or film. You can see photos of it at Biobay.com. Also you can watch this YouTube slideshow/video of Puerto Rico and Vieques Island Beaches and fall in love with PR just like I did: