The Journey Home Book - By Radhanath Swami

 

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.

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Ratha Yatra Lecture New York By Radhanath Swami

Sri Chaitanya Charitamrita, the meaning of Rath Yatra is elaborately explained by Sri Krishnadas Kaviraj Goswami. We were describing, when Lord Chaitanya was living Shantipur to go to Jagannath puri, as he was living for Shantipur all the devotees were following him, in the outskirts of the town, Lord Chaitanya told them, you should all return to your homes and always chant the Holy names of Krsna, that is your first and foremost responsibility of your life, to chant the Holy names of Krsna. The devotees could not disobey the Lord’s orders, when he left their hearts were broken in separation. They experienced the exact same feelings as the gopis of Vrundavan felt, when Krsna left Vrundavan for Mathura. There was the same type of scene, as he was walking away, they could stop him, devotees were weeping & falling to the ground, unconscious and getting up, weeping and falling to the ground unconscious. It was the re-enactment of Krsna leaving from Vrundavan for Mathura. After many years, of being away from Vrundavan, Krsna invited the Brijvasis to Kurukshetra to honour the Solar eclipse. There Nanda, Yashoda and gopas and the gopis saw Krsna, again after long time. At this time, he did not have a peacock feather, in his beautiful clustered hair, but he had a the crown of a prince, he was not decorated with the Gunjamala or the wild forest flower garland, but he had the armour of the great Kshatriya, he was not surrounded by cowherd boys and cows but there was chariots and elephants, the armies of soldiers.
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