Bhakta raj maharaj biography of william

After Thirteen Years With a "Yoga Cheater"

The path from the hatha-yoga ashram to the Radha-Krsna temple is a well-worn one. Many people who are now ISKCON devotees had in the past performed various stretchings, contortions, breathing exercises, headstands, and silent meditations before they learned of the higher yoga of Krsna consciousness. But Amala-bhakta's case is extraordinary: not only was he an expert hatha-yogi when he came to the Los Angeles temple in February of , but he was also in the most respected order of spiritual life sannyasa), and he had been running a major yoga center in New York for almost thirteen years. Here is his account of why he took up hatha-yoga and then left it and his teacher for Krsna consciousness.

In my life was pretty much up in the air. I had dropped out of New York University at twenty-five and had gone to Los Angeles to "find myself." I was working at odd jobs and reading a lot of philosophy when, in July of that year, I began to read a book on yoga. This book set off a volcanic eruption in my life. I suddenly realized very starkly, very pointedly that all of us fear death. We may not know we fear death, but our every step, our every glance, our every gesture, our every word betrays this fear. And I realized that I certainly feared death. I also saw that no one, myself included, was really happy, and that I could achieve happiness only by giving myself to God and His work in other words, by realizing Him. I felt that since God is eternal and transcendental to the world's miseries, I could conquer fear and gain happiness by becoming God conscious.

With this idea burning in my mind, I hitchhiked back to my parents' country home in New Jersey and started practicing hatha-yoga and meditation. But soon it became clear that I needed some personal instruction. One day, after some searching, I

In a simultaneous mood of great sadness and great inspiration, the Bhaktivedanta Manor community remembers, glorifies and honours the passing of one of our finest Brahmacharis, His Grace Janakinath Das Brahmachari (or ‘Janakinath’ as he was affectionately called).

Known for his quick mind and boundless energy, Janakinath was many things to many people. He was an intrepid risk taker who constantly raised the bar in how to communicate spiritual teachings to people. He helped to conceptualise and start some of our most famous courses at the Manor. He had an uncanny knack for negotiation, resolving disputes and was a warm, loving mentor, confidante, and friend to many.

Born on 11th May to a Gujarati family in West London, Janakinath was always a dynamic and idealistic individual from the word go. From a young age he was interested in environmentalism and wanted to see the world.

After graduating from King’s College in with a first in Telecommunications, Janakinath joined up with the Hare Krishna festival team and took a year out to go backpacking and spread spiritual knowledge in Zanzibar, Congo, Kenya and Rwanda. In his travels he got arrested in the Congo, mediated between various opposing groups and came across war-torn areas where he got involved in volunteering work, providing street kids with food, shelter and education.

Janakinath dabbled a little in the professional world when he got involved in managing various marketing projects for the Cannes Film Festival and the Harley Hamburg Festival. But it wasn’t enough, providence was guiding him to go to India, much to the consternation of his family and loved ones. In India, he got involved with a Hare Krishna organic farm for 6 months and learnt about self-sustainability. He loved it so much that he extended his stay and spent a further 18 months in one of India’s leading Hare Krishna temples learning about Krishna consciousness.

This eventually inspired him to come back to England and become

Introduction

Whenever an effort is made to explore and understand the unfathomable depth and profundity of the life of Swami Vivekananda, the spiritual luminary of many facets, a new perspective reveals itself, and then one realizes how little one can comprehend about his great life. But this much can be said that his life was perfectly and impeccably a synthesis of the four yogas that he advocated—Jnana, Bhakti, Karma and Raja.

Swami Vivekananda had razor-sharp knowledge, experienced many soaring visions, was a champion of selfless action, possessed a majestic and graceful form, exhibited boundless courage and was virtuously peerless right from childhood. Yet, what appeals most when one ponders through his complete works is the personification of divinity in his personality that issued forth from his spontaneous inclination towards God.

An effort is made in this article to focus on the Bhakti aspect of Swami Vivekananda, the ‘tender devotion’ that was inherent in him, about which Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa Himself once remarked after minutely observing the physical features of his foremost disciple, thus: ‘Your eyes show that you are not a dry Jnani. In you tender devotion and deep knowledge are blended.’ Indeed, as one explores Swami Vivekananda’s life meticulously, one is bound to realize his expression of ardent devotion, explicit or implicit though it might be.

Devotion from childhood

The first education on bhakti that Narendra received was from his pious mother. It was a routine practice every noon for her or another member of the family to read tales from the epics Ramayana and the Mahabharata in their home. In the small congregation that gathered in the household, the usually turbulent Naren would be found sitting quietly throughout the reading and listening with rapt attention. On other occasions, his maternal grandmother used to narrate many anecdotes from the Bhagavatam. Certainly, the stories from the epics

14th century Vaishnava Bhakti poet-saint from India

JagadguruSwamiRamananda (IAST: Rāmānanda) or Ramanandacharya was an Indian 14th-century Hindu Vaishnava devotional poet saint, who lived in the Gangetic basin of northern India. The Hindu tradition recognizes him as the founder of the Ramanandi Sampradaya, the largest monastic Hindu renunciant community in modern times.

Born in a Kanyakubja Brahmin family, Ramananda for the most part of his life lived in the holy city of Varanasi. His date of birth is December 30, while his date of death is uncertain, but historical evidence suggests he was one of the earliest saints and a pioneering figure of the Bhakti movement as it rapidly grew in North India, sometime between the 14th and midth century during its Islamic rule period. Tradition asserts that Ramananda developed his philosophy and devotional themes inspired by the south Indian Vedanta philosopher Ramanuja, however, evidence also suggests that Ramananda was influenced by Nathpanthi ascetics of the Yoga school of Hindu philosophy.

An early social reformer, Ramananda accepted disciples without discriminating against anyone by gender , class or caste. Traditional scholarship holds that his disciples included later Bhakti movement poet-sants such as Kabir, Ravidas, Bhagat Pipa and others,