Welcome to the 21-Day Meditation Discovery! In the spirit of many self-improvement programmes that recognize 21 days as a time period to establish new habits, we offer inspirational poems, meditation techniques, and suggestions for positive actions from the writings of Sri Chinmoy. We hope this can serve as a guide to exploring or re-energizing your daily meditation practice.
~ All quotations throughout are from the writings of Sri Chinmoy ~
Day 1
Inspiration for the Day
“I meditate
So that I can inundate
My entire being
With the omnipotent power of peace.”
Meditation Technique to Try
“When you sit down to meditate, try to breathe in as slowly and quietly as possible, so that if somebody placed a tiny thread in front of your nose it would not move at all….Each time you breathe in, try to feel that you are bringing infinite peace into your body … When you breathe out, try to feel that you are expelling the restlessness within you and also the restlessness that you see all around you.”
Positive Action: Motivating yourself
“Why do we meditate? We meditate because this world of ours has not been able to fulfil us. The so-called peace that we feel in our day-to-day life is five minutes of peace after ten hours of anxiety, worry and frustration. We are constantly as the mercy of the negative forces that are all around us: jealousy, fear, doubt, worry, anxiety and despair. These forces are like monkeys. When they get tired of biting us and take rest for a few minutes, then we say we are enjoying peace. But this is not real peace at all, and the next moment they will attack us again.”
“It is only through meditation that we can get lasting peace, divine peace. If we meditate soulfully in the morning and receive peace for only one minute, that one minute of peace will permeate our whole day. And when we have a meditation of the highest order, then we get really abiding peace, light and delight. We need meditation because we want to grow in light and fulfil ourselves in light. If this is our aspiration, if this is our thirst, then meditation is the only way.”
“If we feel that we are satisfied with what we have and what we are, then there is no need for us to enter into the field of meditation. The reason we enter into meditation is because we have an inner hunger. We feel that within us there is something luminous, something vast, something divine. We feel that we need this thing very badly; only right now we do not have access to it. Our inner hunger comes from our spiritual need.”
Day 2
Inspiration for the Day
“Every day there is only one thing to learn:
How to be honestly happy.”
Meditation Technique to Try
After practicing the exercise from Day 1 a few times, then with each breath “try to feel that you are breathing in infinite joy and breathing out sorrow, suffering and melancholy.”
Positive Action: Creating your Personal Meditation Space
Create a beautiful space where you will practise your meditation. Arrange flowers and candles there. Place some images of nature, something vast and beautiful, or a spiritual teacher. Keep some inspiring books there. Set up a sound system where you can play spiritual music. Make it a sanctuary where you will want to spend time. Only use this space for your meditation, spiritual reading and reflection. This will help provide an environment that is conducive to a more fulfilling inner experience.
“When you meditate at home, you should have a corner of your room that is absolutely pure and sanctified – a sacred place which you use only for meditation. There you can make a shrine…. It will also help if you burn incense and keep some flowers on your shrine. Their colour, fragrance and pure consciousness will give you inspiration. From inspiration you get aspiration. It is the same with using candles during meditation.”
“When meditating, it is important to keep the spine straight and erect, and to keep the body relaxed… The lotus position is not at all necessary for proper meditation. Many people meditate very well while seated in a chair.”
Day 3
Inspiration for the Day
“Peace that comes
From the inner awakening
Is the peace everlasting.”
Meditation Technique to Try
“If you cannot enter into your deepest meditation because your mind is restless, this is an opportunity to utilise a mantra… Each mantra has a special significance and inner power…. The most powerful of all mantras is ‘Aum’; ‘Aum’ is the mother of all mantras.”
“It is best to chant ‘Aum’ out loud, so its sound can vibrate even in your physical ears and permeate your entire body. This will convince your outer mind and give you a greater sense of joy and achievement. When chanting out loud, the ‘M’ sound should last at least three times as long as the ‘AU’ sound. In the twinkling of an eye, the power of ‘Aum’ can transform darkness into light, ignorance into knowledge and death into Immortality.”
Positive Action: Setting a Time to Meditate Every Day
Choose a good time – first thing in the morning – when you can set aside 15 minutes to be calm and quiet. Be realistic; choose a time when you are actually going to be able to get up and give it your best effort – every day.
“If you are regular and punctual in your meditation, you will notice your own progress. If you can meditate sincerely and soulfully at a fixed hour every day, a time will come when you will become an expert. At that time, you will be able to meditate while doing anything, and you won’t need a fixed hour.”
Before you meditate in the morning, make sure you shower or at least wash your face to refresh yourself, and wear clean, light and loose fitting clothing.
Day 4
Inspiration for the Day
“Do you need happiness?
Then do just three things:
Meditate regularly.
Smile soulfully.
Love untiringly.”
Meditation Technique to Try
Concentrate on a candle flame, first on the whole flame and then on a single point. Whenever thoughts enter into your mind, gently bring your attention back to the flame. Feel that your concentration is coming from deep inside you, from your heart, not from your mind. Feel that nothing exists except you and the flame.
Positive Action: Starting with Concentration
“For a beginner it is better to start with concentration. Otherwise, the moment you try to make your mind calm and vacant, millions of uncomely thoughts will enter into you and you will not be able to meditate even for one second. If you concentrate, at that time you challenge the wrong thoughts that are trying to enter you. So in the beginning just practice concentration for a few minutes.”
Day 5
Inspiration for the Day
“Now is the time to make good use of time.
Today is the day to begin a perfect day.”
Meditation Technique to Try
Concentrate on a flower, first on the whole flower and then on a single petal. Whenever thoughts enter into your mind, gently bring your attention back to the flower. Feel that your concentration is coming from deep inside you, from your heart, not from your mind. Feel that nothing exists except you and the flower.
Positive Action: Developing Your Concentration
“When we concentrate, we are like a bullet entering into something, or we are like a magnet pulling the object of concentration towards us. At that time, we do not allow any thought to enter into our mind, whether it is good or bad. In concentration the entire mind has to be focused on a particular object or subject. If we are concentrating on the petal of a flower, we try to feel that nothing else exists in the entire world but us and the petal.”
Day 6
Inspiration for the Day
“Do you want to be always happy?
Then give up fighting
For negativity
And learn the beautiful art
Of self-encouragement.”
Meditation Technique to Try: The Vastness of the Sky
“Keep your eyes half open and imagine the vast sky. In the beginning, try to feel that the sky is in front of you; later try to feel that you are as vast as the sky, or that you are the vast sky itself.
“After a few minutes please close your eyes and try to see and feel the sky inside your heart. Please feel that you are the universal heart, and that inside you is the sky that you meditated upon and identified yourself with. Your spiritual heart is infinitely vaster than the sky, so you can easily house the sky within yourself.”
Positive Action: Do Not Be Discouraged
“Please do not be disturbed if you cannot meditate well in the beginning. Even in the ordinary life, God alone knows how many years one must practise in order to become very good at something. If an accomplished pianist thinks of what his standard was when he first began to play, he will laugh. It is through gradual progress that he has achieved his present musical height. In the spiritual life also, you may find it difficult to meditate in the beginning. But do not try to force yourself. Ten minutes early in the morning is enough. Gradually your capacity will increase. If you practise every day, you will make progress in your inner life.”
Day 7
Inspiration for the Day
“My own gratitude-heart is all that matters.”
Meditation Technique to Try
Choose the technique that worked best for you this week and practise it again, with a focus to go deeper within.
Positive Action: Focus on Gratitude
Concentrate for a few minutes on gratitude – on everything you have to be grateful for in your life. You can repeat the word ‘gratitude’ like a mantra, or repeat today’s aphorism.
“Gratitude means self-offering to one’s highest self. Your gratitude is not going to somebody else; it is going to your own highest self. Gratitude helps you identify and feel your oneness with your own highest reality.”
“Each breathing moment is a miracle.”
Day 8
Inspiration for the Day
“Remain always in the sunshine of your heart,
Until its illumining rays
Have also flooded your mind.”
Meditation Technique to Try: A Child Playing in a Garden
“You can have the most joy just by imagining a child infinitely more beautiful than any child that you have seen in this world. You have inside you a child who is infinitely more beautiful. Just imagine it. While imagining it, you will get utmost joy.”
“When you feel that you are a child, immediately feel that you are standing in a flower garden. This flower garden is your heart. A child can play in a garden for hours. He will go from this flower to that flower, but he will not leave the garden, because he will get joy from the beauty and fragrance of each flower. Inside you is the garden, and you can stay within it for as long as you want. In this way you can meditate on the heart.”
Positive Action: Finding Innocent Joy
Do something that gives you or others innocent joy and makes you feel like a child. Tell some innocent jokes, or play a game or read a book with a child or in a childlike spirit.
“For a beginner to meditate in the heart, he has to feel that he is a child, no matter how old he is in earthly age. A child’s mind is not developed. When he is twelve or thirteen, his mind starts functioning on an intellectual level, but before that he is all heart.”
Day 9
Inspiration for the Day
“Unhorizoned is our inner peace.
Like the boundless sky,
It encompasses all.”
Meditation Technique to Try: Bottom of the Sea, Vastness of the Sky
“Meditation is like going to the bottom of the sea, where everything is calm and tranquil. On the surface there may be a multitude of waves, but the sea is not affected below. In its deepest depths, the sea is all silence. When we start meditating, first we try to reach our own inner existence, our true existence – that is to say, the bottom of the sea. Then, when the waves come from the outside world, we are not affected. Fear, doubt, worry and all the earthly turmoils will just wash away, because inside us is solid peace.”
“Thoughts cannot touch us, because our mind is all peace, all silence, all oneness. Like fish in the sea, they jump and swim but leave no mark. Like birds flying in the sky, they leave no trace behind them. So when we are in our highest meditation, we feel that we are the sea, and the animals in the sea cannot affect us. We feel that we are the sky, and all the birds flying past cannot affect us. Our mind is the sky and our heart is the infinite sea. This is meditation.”
Positive Action: Do Not Criticize
For one day, try not to criticize others, but instead to identify with others’ positive qualities and to have oneness with the challenges they face.
“We own peace only after we have totally stopped finding fault with others. We have to feel the whole world as our very own. When we observe others’ mistakes, we enter into their imperfections. This does not help us in the least. Strangely enough, the deeper we plunge, the clearer it becomes to us that the imperfections of others are our own imperfections, but in different bodies and minds.”
“Do not blame the world.
Find a solution.”
Day 10
Inspiration for the Day
“Above the toil of life my soul
Is a bird of fire winging the Infinite.”
Meditation Technique to Try: Using Spiritual Music
Starting by focusing on your breath and chanting a mantra for a few minutes. Then play some spiritual music. Focus your awareness on the music, and allow the music to carry you and lift you. You can imagine as you breathe in that you are breathing in the peace and joy of the music, and as you breathe out, feel that you are entering into the music. Whenever thoughts come into your mind, gently bring your awareness back to the music.
“Let us not try to understand music with our mind. Let us not even try to feel it with our heart. Let us simply and spontaneously allow the music-bird to fly in our heart-sky.”
“Next to deep prayer or meditation, music is of paramount importance in our spiritual life. Meditation is like a direct route, or shortcut to the goal. If one can play soulful music or hear soulful music, the power of his own meditation increases.”
Positive Action: Exploring Soulful Music
Set up a simple sound system in your meditation area so that you can play music while you meditate. Find spiritual music that you can play, from iTunes or other sources, or on CDs. Choose music that is composed and played in a meditative state, so that it carries that consciousness. Recommended: Flute Music for Meditation by Sri Chinmoy, available on iTunes and CD. Try using this music in other settings to create a peaceful or uplifting atmosphere – while driving or commuting on public transport, or while exercising or relaxing at home.
“Music has tremendous power. With fire we can burn ourselves, or we can cook and do many other good things. It is the same with music. Divine music immediately elevates our consciousness, whereas undivine music immediately lowers our consciousness and tries to destroy our sincere cry for a better, spiritual life.”
Day 11
Inspiration for the Day
“You follow your heart’s love.
Your life’s happiness will follow you.”
“The world exists just because love still exists on earth. If this one divine quality left the world, then there could be no existence on earth. Let us love the One, the root of the tree. Then we shall see that the branches, the leaves and the foliage of the tree will also feel our love.”
“What is love? If love means possessing someone or something, then that is not real love; that is not pure love. If love means giving and becoming one with everything, with humanity and divinity, then that is real love.
Meditation Technique to Try: Seeing Yourself as a Flower
“If you feel that you do not know how to love yourself, only feel that you have entered into a garden with many, many flowers. Choose one flower that you like and go near it. Appreciate its beauty and fragrance. Then say to yourself a few times, “How I wish I could be as pure and as beautiful as this flower.”
“After five minutes, try to imagine that an infinitesimal amount of beauty from that flower has entered into you. Then gradually try to feel that all the good qualities you are seeing in the flower – its beauty, its purity, its fragrance and so on – have entered into you and are inside you.”
“Then try to feel that you do not have a body, you do not have a mind, you do not have anything. Think of yourself only as that most beautiful flower. Because you have become that beautiful flower, you are bound to appreciate yourself and love yourself the way you loved the flower.”
Positive Action: Loving Yourself More
Focus on having a positive feeling for yourself; do not indulge in self-criticism.
If you are feeling depressed about yourself, one exercise you can do, after your meditation, is to write down ten positive things you have done in your life. Put the list on your shrine, and think of additional positive actions you can take that day or week.
Day 12
Inspiration for the Day
“When I have inner joy,
I will always be blessed
With an abundance of spontaneity
And creativity.”
Meditation Technique to Try: Breathing in Cosmic Energy
“Feel that you are breathing in not air but cosmic energy. Feel that tremendous cosmic energy is entering into you with each breath… It is flowing like a river inside you, washing and purifying your entire being. Then when you breathe out, feel that you are breathing out all the rubbish inside you…anything that you do not want to claim as your own, feel that you are exhaling.”
Positive Action: Get Creative
Embark on a new creative activity or spend some time nurturing your creative self. Write some poetry or reflections in a journal. Try some drawing or painting, or play some music or sing. Try out some new recipes for cooking or baking. Anything that inspires you!
“Suppose you want to know which field of creativity is meant for you. While your creative self is revealing its capacity in various fields, try to observe which field gives you most joy and satisfaction. If the poet in you gives you immediate joy, then throw yourself into the poetry-world. If the artist in you gives you spontaneous joy, then throw yourself into the art-world. If the musician in you gives you spontaneous joy, then throw yourself into the world of music. Immediately accept whatever field gives you the most joy. Your very acceptance of this is the best way of serving the Highest.”
Day 13
Inspiration for the Day
“We must take
A happiness-walk,
Not inside the confusion-mind
But inside the illumination-heart.”
Meditation Technique to Try: The Beauty of Nature
Try meditating out in nature, or if that is not feasible, imagine a beautiful scene in nature – the vast sky or sea, a high mountain or quiet forest. Breathe in the energy of the fresh air, and feel your oneness with the vastness, beauty and purity of nature.
“The best way to appreciate nature’s beauty is to sit and meditate with nature. If you take a tree as nature, then sit at the foot of a tree and meditate. If you take the sun as an expression of nature, then look at the sun and meditate. If you feel the ocean or sea as nature, then sit in front of the water and meditate. While looking at the tree or the sun or the ocean, try to feel your oneness with it. Anything that you consider as nature or nature’s beauty, you should try to become one with.”
“Again, if you want a particular thing from nature, you have to go to that thing. If you want to have vastness, then just go out of the house and look at the sky and you will enter into vastness. If you want to have a very vast, pure consciousness, then stand in front of a river and meditate on the river. And if you want to get height in your life, then go to a mountain and meditate there.”
Positive Action: Oneness with Nature
Go for a walk or run out in nature, if possible. Consciously breathe in the energy and purity of the fresh air, and feel that you are energizing your inner self. Identify with the vastness of the sky or the beauty of nature.
Day 14
Inspiration for the Day
“Make healthy choices.
Perfection will be yours.”
Meditation Technique to Try: Overcoming Bad Habits
“Before you do anything, always meditate for a minute or at least for a few seconds. The power of that meditation will enter into your bad habits like an arrow. Meditation, the soldier, will use its divine arrows against bad habits. This is absolutely the best way.”
Positive Action: Change a Habit
Try for a day to break a habit that you want to change, such as smoking, drinking or unhealthy eating. The change can also be something like watching less TV or spending less time surfing the Internet. Or you can start building a positive new habit – an exercise program or a healthier diet. Try being vegetarian for one or two days a week, and see how it affects your consciousness.
Day 15
Inspiration for the Day
“Anything worth having is worth sharing as well.”
Meditation Technique to Try
“To develop compassion, meditate on a tree. Although the flowers, leaves and branches are above the ground, they are not looking downward with contempt or a feeling superiority. The trunk of the tree may be very tall; the flowers, fruits and leaves may all be above us. But when we pass below the tree, the leaves, flowers and fruits say, ‘Take us; we are ready to be utilized by you.’ Because of its oneness with us, everything that the tree has, it is begging us to take.”
Positive Action: Serving and Sharing
Consciously share a bit of peace, kindness and happiness with a friend, family member, colleague or anyone you meet. You can do this by bringing more awareness into the ways you serve every day – in your job, or by caring for your family. Or you can consciously try to add at least one “random act of kindness” to your day.
“How can we get satisfaction from life? Satisfaction we can get only when we give to somebody else, to our larger self, in humanity. We can get joy only by becoming one with humanity, by sharing our reality with others. If we are humble, if we become like a tree, which constantly bears fruit, then we will get satisfaction and we will be able to give satisfaction to mankind.”
Day 16
Inspiration for the Day
“Sometimes I must be silent,
For that is the only way
To know a little better,
To think a little wiser,
To become a little more perfect,
To claim God a little sooner.”
Meditation Technique to Try
“Meditation means
Conversation with silence.”
Try to invoke the quality of silence within your heart. If thoughts come, keep returning your awareness to a place of silence deep within.
“The reason that you are bothered by thoughts is because you are trying to meditate inside your mind. The very nature of the mind is to welcome thoughts…. If you want to control the mind with your human will, then it will be like asking a monkey or fly not to bother you…. The mind needs a superior power to keep it quiet. This superior power is the power of the soul. You have to bring to the fore the light of the soul from inside your heart.”
Positive Action: A Little More Silence
Make a little more time for silence in your daily routine. This can be part of your regular daily meditation time, or you can also try to add a few moments of silence while you are walking or commuting to work, exercising etc. Shut off the music, radio or TV. Listen to your breath, to the wind blowing in the trees – if you can find a quiet spot. Find peace in the silence.
“Slowly and steadily
You have to silence your mind
So that the peace-dove
Can nest in it.”
Day 17
Inspiration for the Day
“Be not afraid
Of destructive actions by others.
But be afraid
Of your own reaction to them.”
Meditation Technique to Try: Conquering Anger
“How to conquer anger? Feel the necessity of perfecting yourself. When anger wants to enter into you, say, “I am so sorry. I eat only one food. The name of my food is peace. I will not be able to digest you. If ever I eat you, I will be destroyed within and without. I do not want to be destroyed. I have to do much for the divinity in me and the humanity around me. O anger, you are knocking at the wrong door.”
“How to dissolve yesterday’s anger?
Just inundate it
With today’s peace of mind.”
Positive Action: Clearing Out Anger
If there is anger or frustration with some person or situation lingering inside you, try to illumine that emotion by consciously invoking peace and forgiveness.
“When we see imperfection, whether it is in ourselves or in others, it is always advisable to forgive. If we do not forgive, it is like placing a heavy load on our shoulders. If I have done something wrong and I do not try to forgive or illumine myself, my mistake will only gain added importance in my life. Each time I think of it, I will only add to my heavy load of guilt. Similarly, if others have done me an act of injustice, the more I think of it, the heavier becomes my load of anger and resentment. If I place something heavy on my shoulders, how am I going to run towards my goal? I will see that others are all running very fast while I can hardly walk!
The age-old discovery —
Forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness —
Is the only way
To real happiness.
Day 18
Inspiration for the Day
“Do you want to be happy?
Then make your life
As soulfully simple
As sleeplessly breathing.”
Meditation Technique to Try: Purifying our Inner Self
“If you want to achieve overall purification of your nature, then japa [repetition of a mantra] can be most effective if you do it in a systematic way, step by step. On the first day repeat Aum or ‘Supreme’ or [any mantra] five hundred times. The next day repeat it six hundred times; the day after that, seven hundred; and so on, until you reach twelve hundred at the end of one week. Then begin descending each day until you reach five hundred again. In this way you can climb up the tree and climb down the tree.
Please continue this exercise, week by week, for a month. Whether you want to change your name or not, the world will give you a new name: purity.”
Positive Action: Purifying our Immediate Environment
Bring more purity and simplicity into your immediate physical environment by taking some time to clean your room, house or car. Recycle or get rid of things you do not use, to reduce clutter.
“Physical purity is cleanliness, vital purity is an open heart and mental purity is the absence of undivine and unhealthy thoughts. Inner purity is our gratitude-heart. It is through gratitude, constant gratitude…, that we expand our consciousness and come to know our higher vision and reality.”
Day 19
Inspiration for the Day
“Long for anything divine
And it will immediately
Start to approach you.”
Meditation Technique to Try: Cry Like a Child
Feel inside yourself the longing for whatever you want most in your inner life – peace, joy, love or other positive quality. Imagine yourself as a child, crying for this quality, like a child cries for a piece of candy.
“When a child cries, immediately someone comes to help him. When a child cries even for a candy, he is very sincere. At that time his candy is the whole world for him. If you give him a hundred-dollar bill, he will not be satisfied; he will only care for his candy. When you feel you are crying like a child for peace, light and truth, and that only those things will satisfy you, then your cry will be fulfilled.”
Positive Action
Write down the three positive qualities that you feel you need most in your life.
When you sit down to meditate, consciously remind yourself what qualities you are seeking, and that you will be able to receive these qualities from your meditation, from your inner cry or aspiration.
“Successful meditation entirely depends on our inner cry. When a child is hungry, really hungry, he cries. He may be on the first floor and his mother may be on the third floor, but when the mother hears his cry, she comes down immediately to feed the child.”
Day 20
Inspiration for the Day
“To succeed in any field,
Our enthusiasm-eyes must sparkle
And our enthusiasm-hearts
Must dance.”
Meditation Technique to Try: The Rising Sun
“Every morning we can find new inspiration by meditating on the rising sun. Although it is the same sun that is rising, every day we can see a new beauty inside the sun. Our mind is telling us that it is the same sun that we saw yesterday and the day before yesterday. But when the heart sees this same sun, there is tremendous joy, tremendous thrill and tremendous ecstasy.”
“For the heart, everything is new, like the sun … The heart’s eagerness always sees newness in everything. If we use the heart, then everything is new. Every day, even though we are doing and seeing the same thing outwardly, the heart is constantly feeling new joy, new joy, new joy.”
Positive Action
Go for a walk or run and imagine yourself as a young child of seven years old.
“Physical fitness is of paramount importance, and that includes having enthusiasm, eagerness, dynamism and also alertness. What qualities do you need to bring forward from your inner life while you are running or taking exercise? The first one is enthusiasm. Who embodies enthusiasm? A little child. Who can be more enthusiastic than a child?
“At the age of six or seven, a child does not sit; he just runs here and there. A child does not know what tiredness is. He only knows enthusiasm and eagerness. So imagine the enthusiasm of a young child and identify yourself with the source of his enthusiasm.”
Day 21
Inspiration for the Day
“We are all truly unlimited,
If we only dare to try
And have faith.”
Meditation Technique to Try:
“To make faster progress, try to think of the sun and think of yourself as a pilgrim who is either running or flying towards the sun. Or you can imagine a sun inside you that is extremely, extremely beautiful – infinitely more beautiful and more powerful than the outer sun. Feel that as a pilgrim, you are running as fast as possible. The faster you are running, the more beauty, the more power, the more light, the more affection, the more love and the more fondness you are seeing in the inner sun. The faster you are running towards the sun, the more its divine qualities are increasing, and at the same time, they are beckoning you… If you can see yourself as a pilgrim running towards the sun, you will be able to make the fastest progress.”
Positive Action: Challenge Yourself — and Never Give Up!
Think of one new challenge you can try, to go beyond your present capacity and limitations – in fitness and sports, in your creative life, in building positive new habits, or in any field. Here is one approach from Sri Chinmoy:
“Write down three absolutely new things that you have never done, you have never thought of. Then those three things will give you inspiration or a kind of challenge. They will create a sensation in your mind or in your being to do them. Life is not boring to one who believes in adventure. Adventure does not mean that you have to climb up the tallest mountain. To allow new ideas, fresh ideas, healthy ideas to enter into your mind – that is adventure.”
“Not to give up under any circumstances should be the motto of our life: we shall try again and again, and we are bound to succeed. There will be obstacles, but we have to defy them. So do not give up, do not give up! Continue, continue! The goal is ahead of you. If you do not give up, you are bound to reach your destined goal.”