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At the age of only nineteen, Radhanath Swami left his home in America seeking adventure and spiritual knowledge. After trekking across Europe for months, Radhanath Swami reached his long hoped for destination: India. After living there for many years as a sadhu or wandering monk, Radhanath Swami 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 Radhanath Swami 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 - Autobiography of an American Swami. Reviewers have called Radhanath Swami'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. Radhanath Swami's 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 Bengali Vaishnava Saint, 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.
RadhanathMaharaj.net gives us a complete collection of the teaching of Radhanath Swami. Teachings consists of Transcriptions of lectures delivered by Radhanath Swami at various places. This website is to inspire the followers of Radhanath Swami to practice the philosophy of Vaishanavism.
PURPORT by his divine grace a.c. bhaktivedanta swami prabhupad
Kardama muni was anxious about his good wife devahuti while leaving home and so the worthy son promised that not only would kardama muni be freed from the material entanglement but devahuti would also be freed by receiving instruction from her son; a very good example is set here. The husband goes away taking the sannyas order for self-realization; but his representative son who is equally educated remains at home to deliver the mother; a sannyasi is not supposed to take his wife with him. at the vanaprasatha stage of retired wife, or the stage midway stage between householder life and renounced life, one may keep his wife as assistant without sex relations; But in the sannyas order of life, one cannot keep his wife with him; otherwise, a person like kardama muni could have kept his wife with him and there would have been no hindrance through the prosecution of self-realization; kardama muni followed the Vedic injunctions that no one in sannyas cannot have any kind of relationship with women; but what is the position of a woman who is left by her husband ? she is entrusted to the son ; and the son promises that he will deliver his mother from entanglement; if woman is not supposed to take sannyas, so all spiritual societies concocted in modern times gives sannyas even to women; although there is no sanction in the Vedic literature for women accepting sannyas; otherwise, if it were sanctioned , kardama muni could have taken his wife and given her sannyas; the woman must remain at home ; she has only 3 stages of life; dependency on the father in childhood; dependency in the husband in youth and in the old age, dependency on the grown-up son, such as kapila; in old age, the progress of women depends on the grown-up son. The ideal son kapila muni is assuring the father about the deliverance of his mother so that his father may go peacefully without anxiety for his good wife.
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