Jagat

On January 25, 2017 I visited Hit Kinkar Sewak Sharanji at his ashram. Unfortunately the accounts of my many visits to Sewak Sharan have been pretty much lost since the Vrindavan Today archive was lost. Though I could probably find them on the wayback machine archive. Maybe later.

The procession around Radha Kund and Shyam Kund At 7.30 yesterday morning, when most of us at the Jiva Institute were still engaged in our morning bhajan, Manjari came to my neighbor Pradeep Das’s door and in a trembling voice announced that their Guru, Ananta Das Babaji, the Mahant of Radha Kund, had left his body a few minutes before. There are three initiated disciples of Mahanta Maharaj living at Jiva. They immediately made arrangements to go to Radha Kund. I joined them. We traveled in silence, each preoccupied by our own memories of Pandit Baba By some turn of events, Babaji had left his body in Vrindavan and was being transported by ambulance to the Gopinath temple in Radha Kund, where he lay in state for a few hours near the samadhi temple of Srila Raghunath Das Goswami, whose throne he had adorned for the past three decades. There I sat with the kirtaniyas, thinking that I am only a distant admirer of Babaji Maharaj and I should not get in the way of his disciples and ...

The origins of the śikṣā-sampradāya idea ISKCON's disciplic line, which we have here called a śikṣā-sampradāya , (30) is traced through Bhaktivedanta Swami to Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati, then to Gaura Kishor Das Babaji and then to Bhaktivinoda Thakur. Bhaktivinoda (which is the title given to Kedarnath Datta, d. 1914) was the natural father of Bhaktisiddhanta, whose original name was Bimala Prasad Datt. In the disciplic line which was proned by Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati, Bhaktivinoda Thakur's spiritual master was Jagannath Das Babaji. It is known from Bhaktivinoda's own writings,(31) however, that he was initiated by Bipin Bihari Goswami, a descendant of Ramacandra, the adopted son of Jahnava and founder of a dynasty of initiating gurus based in Baghna Para, a village about 20 kilometers southwest of Nabadwip.(32) One of Bhaktivinoda's eight sons, Lalita Prasad, took initiation from him and preserved the disciplic line which Bipin Bihari Goswami passed on to Bhaktivi...

This article was written in 1993 and was published in more or less this form in the Journal of Vaishnava Studies. It only recently came to my attention that it had not been published on this blog, which is an ovrsight that I am remedying now. No doubt there are things that should be corrected. For the time beings the links do not work. My apologies. I have not made any revisions, though I have not the slightest doubt that they are needed. I will do so as soon as I get the time to do so.. Great philosophers could not reach the end of your glories, oh Lord, even if they should think on them with increasing joy for æonchars. For, in the form of the intelligence within and the teacher without, you destroy all inauspiciousness and reveal the way to attain you. (1) Contents (Part I): Introduction ISKCON after the departure of Bhaktivedanta  Schismatic tendencies in post-Prabhupada ISKCON  The first ISKCON heresy: ṛtvik-vāda or the doctrine of the monitor guru...