New Guinness Record for Sri Chinmoy's birthday

In honour of Sri Chinmoy's 87th Birthday on August 27th,  a team of volunteers led by Ashrita Furman created a new Guinness World Record for the largest logo created using tennis balls.

The composition of tennis balls shows the logo of the Sri Chinmoy Oneness-Home Peace Run, which was founded by Sri Chinmoy in 1987 and has since grown to become the world's longest relay run for peace - traversing 146 nations and passing through a route of over 600,000 km.

The project was co-ordinated by Ashrita Furman, who for over two decades has been the holder of the most Guinness World records, with over 200 to his credit.

“This tennis ball logo expresses our sincere wish for world peace and is our modest offering of joy to the world. With thousands of tennis balls we want to honour the memory of Sri Chinmoy, who was the founder of the Peace Run and an avid tennis player.”

Ashrita Furman

Ashrita also talked about how the driving force behind these kinds of projects is Sri Chinmoy's philosophy of self-transcendence - the goal of achieving more and bettering our previous efforts.

“We are constantly striving to push ourselves to a higher and higher level. Like to not listen to our mind and doubts that tells us: We can't do things. And try to go within our spiritual heart and draw on that power, that strength that we all have and constantly pushing higher and higher and further and further. And so it is in the spirit of self-transcendence that I break records personally, that many of my friends swim the English Channel or run ultra marathons, run the 3100 Mile Race. This is the same principle. We try to, you know, as a team to do something greater than we did before.”

To complete the record took seven days of hard work. It also required ingenuity and a considerable degree of trial and error to make a logo from large tennis balls. Artist Papaha Gosline, who oversaw the design, said:

“When you are tacking tennis balls to represent a piece of art, it is a very low resolution. And so you have to kind of figure out how do you make an “e” with only 70 or 200 balls.”

The design spreads over a distance of 53.41 square meters and is made up of 12,393 tennis balls in five different colours.

Sri Chinmoy passed away in 2007, but his students from around the world still come to New York to celebrate his birthday with meditations and other events, just as they did when Sri Chinmoy was with us. Some of the other events included Songs of the Soul concerts, running races, music performances and a Poetry Festival.