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In 1970, at the age of only nineteen, Radhanath Swami left his home in America seeking adventure and spiritual knowledge. After trekking across Europe for months, he reached his long hoped for destination: India. After living there for many years as a sadhu or wandering monk, he returned to America in order to share the sacred knowledge and wisdom he had learned from the many holy men and women he had met there. It was an extraordinary choice, given what he had survived to get there: a journey filled with bizarre characters, mystical experiences, and dangerous adventures. The story is recounted in his recently published memoir The Journey Home (San Rafael, CA: Mandala Publishing, 2009). Reviewers have called Radhanath's saga "at once an engaging yarn, a love story, and the evocation of a transcendent paradise in all its savagery, solitude, and splendor.
Radhanath Swami emerged from his years of travel wanting to explain for others the beauty and rewards of a life devoted to God, and therein lay a dilemma. His many followers and friends describe him as completely selfless and consequently unwilling to take credit for his work and restless when a spotlight is focused on him. By choosing A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami (1896-1977), a spiritual activist, as his guru (after declining offers of initiation from several tyagis or renunciants in the Himalayas), Radhanath Swami cast his fate to the wind, cut his matted locks, and entered back into the society.
Sunday Feast
What is Real Greatness Sunday Feast New Vrindavan
I sincerely thank all of the assembled devotees for so sincerely coming to Sri Radha Vrindavan Candra’s Sunday festival. Today I would like to speak on the subject of a particular sentence spoken by Srila Prabhupada because I feel that this subject although not often discussed is one of the most frequent and essential themes within all the spiritual literatures of the world, especially Srimad Bhagavatam and the Purana’s. Prabhupada gives his definition of greatness, “One’s greatness has to be estimated by one’s ability to tolerate provoking situations.” Please repeat after me.
“One’s greatness has to be estimated by one’s ability to tolerate provoking situations,”
(Krishna Book Volume Two 1970-2-34 / The Superexcellent Power of Krishna)
Sunday Feast Mumbai
Lecture by Bhakti Caru Swami at Sunday Feast Chowpatty Mumbai
HH Radhanath Swami: I am so happy to be once again amongst all of you. I sincerely thank you for kindly coming and offering your precious time in these very precious human lives to attend our auspicious Sunday festival at Radha-Gopinath temple. It is a very great privilege for us to have the chance to serve you in whatever small way we can. We should never take service to the devotees to be a job or a chore. It is a privilege. It is a blessing coming from Krishna. And how we appreciate that blessing with a grateful heart is how Krishna will reciprocate with us. It is only after millions and millions of birth, by inconceivable good fortune that we are allowed to personally serve the servants of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Let us treasure this blessing as the highest ideal of our lives. We should be very grateful if any devotee is wiling to accept service from us, whatever that service may be. In Krishna consciousness there is no high and low as in material life. High and low is based on one’s sincerity, one’s integrity, one’s dedication, one’s gratitude and one’s love. Those who live by these holy principles are high in the eyes of God, and in the eyes of those who love God. Today we have very special guests amongst us.