Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada ( Calcutta , 1 of September of 1896 – Uttar Pradesh , 14 of November of 1977 ) was a religious and translator bengal , founder of the Hare Krishna movement. ^[2] Throughout his life he was known by various names such as

• Abhay Charan De (his last name was De)
• Bhaktivedanta Swami
• Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda
• Śrīla Prabhupāda
• His Divine Grace AC Bhaktivedanta Swami
• His Divine Grace Abhay Charanaravinda Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda
• Om Visnupada Paramajamsa Parivrayaka-acharia Astottara-sata (108) His Divine Grace Abhay Charanaravinda Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda

He worked his entire life as a pharmacy salesman, and at age 70 he traveled to the United States and created the Hare Krishna movement.

Summary

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• 1 Biographical data
  • 1 Abandonment of your family
  • 2 Travel to the United States
  • 3 Expansion of the Hare Krishna movement
  • 4 Death
  • 5 Legacy
• 2 Fundamental works
• 3 Famous phrases and quotes
• 4 Sources

Biographical data

He was born in Calcutta (in British India), on September 1 , 1896 ; in a very religious family the day after Krishna Yanmastami (traditional date of the birth of the god Krishna ) of the year 1896. His parents – who used the surname De – were Vaishnavas (worshipers of Krishna) and they named him Abhay Charan De.

In 1920 he completed his secondary studies at Scottish Church College, an institution that taught in the English language – India had been invaded by the British since the 18th century. He married in 1918 and worked for the next forty years as a salesman at Bengal Chemical Pharmacy. At that time he was a sympathizer of the revolutionary movement of Majatma Gandhi (whom he would later despise).

In 1922 he met who would be his guru (spiritual teacher), Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Prabhupada (1874-1937), who had founded the religious group Gaudiya Mat. At that first meeting, Bhaktisiddhanta told him that he should preach in English-speaking countries and encouraged him to write articles in English for his magazine The Harmonist (‘the harmonizer’). Ten years later, Bhaktisiddhanta gave Abhay Charan (35 years old) “spiritual initiation” and – according to Hindu tradition – gave him a “spiritual name”: Abhay Charanaravinda Das.

However, Abhay Charan stayed away from the intrigues and conspiracies of the Gaudiya Mat group. After the death of Bhaktisiddhanta – possibly poisoned by several of his leading disciples – Abhay Charan continued to help only one of the branches into which the sect had been divided. He collaborated financially with his companion Bhakti Prajñana Késhava Swami, who supported himself through the formation and training of disciples. In 1944, without any help, Abhay Charan began publishing a fortnightly magazine in English, called Back to Godhead (which at the end of the 20th century his disciples would continue and publish in many languages; in Spanish it is called Back to the Supreme). Abhay Charan wrote and typed the manuscripts, reviewed the galley proofs, and even distributed copies of it free of charge, and went to great lengths to maintain the publication with what he earned at the pharmacy.

Abandonment of your family

In 1950, 53-year-old Abhay Charan abandoned his wife and children, in accordance with a rarely observed Indian religious custom. ^[3] He went to live as a religious beggar in the city of Mathura (about 180 km southeast of New Delhi , in central India), in the temple created by his friend Bhakti Prajñana Késhava Swami. On September 19, 1959 – when Abhay Charan was 63 years old – Bhakti Prajñana Késhava Swami conferred on him the status of ‘saniás’ (‘renouncer’ and religious preacher), and – in accordance with Hindu tradition – he changed his “Spiritual name” (Abhay Charanaravinda Das) for another: Bhaktivedanta Swami.

As a sanniasi he moved to the holy village of Vrindavan (20 km north of Mathura), and lived in the Radha Damodara temple, in the dilapidated room where the writer and guru Rupa Goswami (1493-1564) had lived.

Over the next six years, Bhaktivedanta Swami wrote Easy Journey to Other Planets (A Worldly Explanation of Reincarnation , in English), and began the masterpiece of his life: translating the Bengali ^[4] commentaries that his teacher had written Bhaktisiddhanta Prabhupada and other Bengali commentators of the past three centuries on the Sanskrit text Srimad-bhágavatam (11th century). He managed to publish (thanks to donations from Hindu religious entrepreneurs) the first three volumes (out of a total of 20 volumes).

Trip to the united states

In 1965, at the age of 68, Bhaktivedanta Swami decided to travel to the United States to preach his religion. He obtained a passage aboard the cargo ship Jaladhuta and left with a crate full of his books. During the crossing he suffered two major breakdowns (which he would claim in the future to have been two acute myocardial infarctions ).

On September 26, 1965, he arrived in Boston (United States) and stayed in the home of a well-known Hindu family. Months later he moved to New York and lived in a poor rental room. He spent the whole day sitting in Tompkins Square Park, selling his books and singing religious songs in Bengali. Thus he managed to reunite several hippies (young people of the American pacifist counterculture). With the help of these boys he rented a premises where he founded ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness: International Society for Krishna Consciousness). ^[2]

Expansion of the Hare Krishna movement

Srila Prabhupada accompanied by his disciples in Spain.

His movement quickly expanded, his preaching generated thousands of disciples who made a drastic change in their way of life, abandoned their families and their studies and entered a community way of life, living between 20 and 50 young men in the same house.

In the next eleven years, despite his advanced age, Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada traveled around the world fourteen times, on speaking tours that took him to five continents. During his last years of life, his disciples established more than a hundred temples.

Bhaktivedanta Swami began to call himself Prabhupada, which had been the honor name of his own teacher, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Prabhupada (and the name by which his disciples referred to him). That detail did not go unnoticed by the other disciples of Bhaktisiddhanta, who never forgave him for this affront.

Bhaktivedanta translated daily (from Bengali into English ) the three most important works of the Visnuist religion of Bengal (Krishnaism), and also translated the extensive commentaries produced by the most important religious writers in India: ^[4]

• the Bhagavad-guita(3rd century BC),
• the Srimad-bhágavatam(11th century) and
• the Cheitania-charitamrita(16th century).

His detractors criticize that Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada never credited (never mentioned) the original authors of these lengthy comments – including Viswanatha Chakravarti Thakur and Baladeva Vidiabhushan – but claimed that he was the author of the comments (which he entitled ” Meanings Bhaktivedanta »).

In just a decade, Bhaktivedanta Swami had created an empire. In 1976 he won a lawsuit against his biological children, who wanted to inherit the millions of dollars that Bhaktivedanta had earned by selling his books – every day, by order of Bhaktivedanta, his almost 5,000 disciples went out 10 or 12 hours a day to sell their books. books in all major airports and cities in the world. In those years his movement went from being a religious group seeking a life of renunciation and finding God, to a destructive sect that – just Bhaktivedanta passed away – separated into subgroups, each one with a wren (guru).

Death

Bhaktivedanta suffered from diabetes , which only dealt with healers and shamans (believers in aiurveda , the medicine that for centuries kept India with an infant mortality rate of over 300 ‰). ^[5] After an illness of several months, he died on November 14 , 1977 in his room in the luxurious temple that his disciples built in Vrindavan. He was later buried in salt, and an opulent marble mausoleum was built over his grave. Arsenic and cadmium concentrations 500% higher than normal were found in hair samples taken by some disciples .^[1]

Legacy

Letter from Narendra Modi on the occasion of 50 years since the creation of the ISKCON association. ^[2]

Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada left as an instruction to continue with his work: járinam (chanting of Krishna’s names) and sankirtan (sale of his more than eighty books) “in every town and village.”

Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada left ISKCON’s GBC (Government Body Commission) tasked with preserving his legacy. ^[2] The GBC is made up of spiritual teachers and temple leaders from around the world, who meet each year in Maiápur (West Bengal, India) to shape policies common to all temples around the world.

After Prabhupada’s death, the vast majority of his 4,965 disciples ^[6] ―discouraged by the direction the institution took― remained devotees but switched to the institutions of other gurus, such as Sridhar Goswami (1895-1988), Naráian Majarash (1921-2010) or others, of those who accepted the “reinitiation”, or directly left the institution.

In 2016, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote a letter on the occasion of ISKCON’s 50th anniversary ^[2] conveying his best wishes and saying that over the past five decades ISKCON’s journey has been one of selfless service to society and that the efforts of the ISKCON family in sectors such as education, publishing and disaster relief are commendable.

Fundamental works

Among his most outstanding works are the translations of three Hindu books:

• Bhagavad-guita(3rd century BC),
• Srimad-bhágavatam(11th century) and
• Chaitania-charitamrita(16th century).

Famous quotes and phrases

• “Recite Hare Krishna and be happy!” ^[7]
• “Religion without philosophy is sentimentality or fanaticism, and philosophy without religion is only mental speculation.” ^[7]
• “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind” (Prabhupada attributed this phrase to himself, but it was published by Albert Einstein in 1956. ^[8]
• «It is said that the woman is like fire and the man like butter. By associating with fire, butter tends to melt. Consequently, they should only be brought together when necessary. (Prabhupada’s Commentary on Srimad-bhagavatam1, 10, 16). ^[9]
• “As soon as a woman reaches the age of puberty, she is immediately agitated by sexual desire. Therefore, it is the father’s duty to get his daughter married before she reaches puberty, otherwise she will be very mortified at not having a husband. Anyone who satisfies her sexual desire at that age will become a great object of satisfaction for her. It is a psychological factthat when a woman of puberty age meets a man and that man satisfies her sexually, she will love him for the rest of her life, no matter who he is. (Prabhupada’s Commentary on Srimad-bhagavatam 4, 25, 42). ^[9]
• «Women are normally very lustful, more lustful than men, and they are the weaker sex. It is difficult for them to have spiritual advancement without the help of a husband. For all these reasons, our women must have husbands. (Letter from Prabhupada to his disciple Madhukara, January 4, 1973). ^[9]
• “For women, ‘independence’ means that they become like prostitutes, fighting to capture a man to take care of them. The supposedly independent woman has to work very hard to make herself attractive by artificially wearing cosmetics, miniskirts and so many other things. In times past, a girl used to be married to a suitable boy at a very young age, say, six years of age. ‘ (Letter from Prabhupada to his disciple Naiskarmi, July 27, 1973). ^[9]
• «Women in general are very sexually inclined. In fact, a woman’s sex drive is said to be nine times stronger than a man’s. Therefore, it is the man’s duty to keep the woman under his control by satisfying her, giving her ornaments, good food, and clothing, and engaging her in religious activities; in this way, it does not cause disturbance in man. (Prabhupada’s Commentary on Srimad-bhagavatam4, 27, 1). ^[9]
• «When the passion of the woman is greater, there is the possibility that a girl will be born; when man’s passion is greater, then there is the possibility of having a child. (Prabhupada’s Commentary on Srimad-bhagavatam3, 23, 11). ^[9] However, if women have 9 times more sexual passion than men, we should see in the real world that there are 9 times more women than men. However, in India there are 8.18% more men than women. Instead according to Prabhupada there should be 900% more women than men. ^[10]
• “The divorce law is encouraging prostitution, and it must be abolished.” (Prabhupada’s Commentary on Srimad-bhagavatam7, 17, 38). ^[9]
• «The woman must be trained to become submissive to the will of her husband. Westerners think that this constitutes a slave mentality for the wife, but in reality it is not: it is the tactic by which a woman can win her husband’s heart, however irritable or cruel he may be. (Prabhupada’s Commentary on Srimad-bhagavatam9, 3, 10). ^[9]
• “Due to the physical constitution, the man always wants to be superior to his wife, and the woman, by the constitution of the body, is naturally inferior to the husband.” (Prabhupada’s Commentary on Srimad-bhagavatam3, 23, 2). ^[9]
• “As stated in the Bhagavad-gita(9.32), ” striyo vaisyas tatha sudras te’pi yanti param gati “: women are not considered very powerful in following spiritual principles. But if a woman is fortunate enough to get a suitable husband who is spiritually advanced, and if she is always engaged in his service, she will also get the same benefit as her husband. (Prabhupada’s Commentary on Srimad-bhagavatam 9, 6, 55)