Vishnujana Swami (1948-1976)[1], born Mark Walsen, was a disciple of A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, and a sannyasi within the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (commonly known as the 'Hare Krishnas' or ISKCON). Even though he is presumed to have died in 1976 he has continued to be a well-known figure within ISKCON through recordings of his singing of the Hare Krishna mantra and his historical position as a preacher in the early days of the movement.
Vishnujana Swami took birth on June 2, 1948, in San Jose, California. At the age of seventeen he moved to San Francisco along with his long-term girlfriend, who he married in 1966. It was also in 1966 that Vishnujana first came into contact with the Hare Krishnas, and by 1968 he had received initiation from Srila Prabhupada and was a full-time member of the movement. By July 20, 1970, Srila Prabhupada had awarded Vishujana the order of Sannyasa.
Vishnujana was especially well known within ISKCON for his singing voice, and skill at playing instruments, such as the Mridangam (drum). Musical recordings of Vishunjana would later be released in 1995[2] and are still popularly sold within ISKCON today. Recordings of his lectures and singing are included in the official MP3 archive collection of A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.
Radha-Damodara traveling sankirtan party
In 1973, Vishnujana Swami and his close associate Tamal Krishna Goswami headed up a team of devotees traveling on a bus across the USA which became famous within ISKCON as one of its most successful preaching parties. The team were named after the deities which travelled with them in the bus, called Radha-Damodara. This bus, populated with ISKCON devotees, would travel from city to city, preforming sankirtan, and distributing Srila Prabhupada's books. Vishujana Swami continued travelling with the Sankirtan Party in this way until 1976.
Disappearance
In 1976, during the Mayapur festival, Vishnujana disappeared. It is commonly believed that he committed suicide, throwing himself from a bridge at the confluence of several sacred rivers including the Ganges. During a walk some days earlier it is believed he had mis-heard a general statement by Prabhupada concerning the duty of a sanyassi which could have led to him taking his own life, but as Vishnujana is not recorded to have disclosed his thoughts to anyone before disappearing it is not known for certain if this was the case.
Vishnujana Swami (1948-1976)[1], born Mark Walsen, was a disciple of A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, and a sannyasi within the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (commonly known as the 'Hare Krishnas' or ISKCON). Even though he is presumed to have died in 1976 he has continued to be a well-known figure within ISKCON through recordings of his singing of the Hare Krishna mantra and his historical position as a preacher in the early days of the movement.
Vishnujana Swami took birth on June 2, 1948, in San Jose, California. At the age of seventeen he moved to San Francisco along with his long-term girlfriend, who he married in 1966. It was also in 1966 that Vishnujana first came into contact with the Hare Krishnas, and by 1968 he had received initiation from Srila Prabhupada and was a full-time member of the movement. By July 20, 1970, Srila Prabhupada had awarded Vishujana the order of sannyasa.
Vishnujana was especially well known within ISKCON for his singing voice, and skill at playing instruments, such as the Mridangam (drum). Musical recordings of Vishunjana would later be released in 1995[2] and are still popularly sold within ISKCON today. Recordings of his lectures and singing are included in the official MP3 archive collection of A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.
In 1973, Vishnujana Swami and his close associate Tamal Krishna Goswami headed up a team of devotees traveling on a bus across the USA which became famous within ISKCON as one of its most successful preaching parties. The team was named after the deities which travelled with them in the bus, called Radha-Damodara. This bus, filled with ISKCON devotees, would travel from city to city, performing sankirtan, and distributing Srila Prabhupada's books. Vishujana Swami continued travelling with the Sankirtan Party in this way until 1976.
In 1976, during the Mayapur festival, Vishnujana disappeared. It is commonly believed that he committed suicide, throwing himself from a bridge at the confluence of several sacred rivers including the Ganges. During a walk some days earlier it is believed he had mis-heard a general statement by Prabhupada concerning the duty of a sanyassi which could have led to him taking his own life, but as Vishnujana is not recorded to have disclosed his thoughts to anyone before disappearing it is not known for certain if this was the case.
Swami Vivekananda in Chicago, 1893 On the photo, Swamiji has written in Bengali, and in English: “One infinite pure and holy—beyond thought beyond qualities I bow down to thee” - Swami Vivekananda
While he is widely credited with having uplifted his own nation, India, he simultaneously introduced Yoga and Vedanta to America and England with his seminal lectures and private discourses on Vedanta philosophy. Vivekananda was the first known Hindu Sage to come to the West, where he introduced Eastern thought at the World's Parliament of Religions, in connection with the World's Fair in Chicago, in 1893. Here, his first lecture, which started with this line "Sisters and Brothers of America," ([1] - not his voice) made the audience clap for two minutes just to the address, for prior to this seminal speech, the audience was always used to this opening address: "Ladies and Gentlemen". It was this speech that catapulted him to fame by his wide audiences in Chicago and then later everywhere else in America, including far-flung places such as Memphis, Boston, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and St. Louis.
Narendranath Dutta was born in Shimla Pally, Kolkata, India on January 12, 1863 as the son of Viswanath Dutta and Bhuvaneswari Devi. Even as he was young, he showed a precocious mind and keen memory. He practiced meditation from a very early age. While at school, he was recognized early on as an academic genius, and showed excellence in games of various kinds. He had a photographic memory, displaying the power to read entire books in mere minutes. He organized an amateur theatrical company and a gymnasium and took lessons in fencing, wrestling, rowing and other sports. He also studied instrumental and vocal music. Even when he was young, he questioned the validity of superstitious customs and discrimination based on caste and religion.[1]
Questions started to arise in young Narendra's mind about God and the presence of God. This made him associate with the Brahmo Samaj, an important religious movement of the time, led by Keshub Chunder Sen. And along with his classmate and friend Brajendra Nath Seal, he regularly attended meetings of the breakaway Sadharan Brahmo Samaj. Later they would part ways with Dutta aligning himself with Keshub Chunder Sen's Nava Vidhan and Seal staying on as an initiated member. During this time spent together, both Dutta and Seal sought to understand the intricacies of faith, progress and spiritual insight into the works of John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer and G.W.F. Hegel.
But the Samaj's congregational prayers and devotional songs could not satisfy Narendra's zeal to realize God. He would ask leaders of Brahmo Samaj whether they have seen God. Their answers did not satisfy his quest for knowledge. It was during this time that Reverend William Hastie, the Principal of the Scottish Church College told him about Sri Ramakrishna of Dakshineswar. [2]
Narendra met Ramakrishna for the first time in November 1881. He asked Ramakrishna the same old question he has asked others so often[2], "Mahashaya (Venerable Sir), have you seen god?." The instantaneous answer from Ramakrishna was, "Yes, I see God, just as I see you here, only in a much intenser sense." " God can be realized," he went on; "one can see and talk to Him as I am seeing and talking to you. But who cares? People shed torrents of tears for their wife and children, for wealth or property, but who does so for the sake of God? If one weeps sincerely for Him, he surely manifests Himself.". Narendra was astounded and puzzled. He could feel the man's words were honest and uttered from depths of experience. He started visiting Ramakrishna frequently. At first he did not believe that such a plain man could've seen God but gradually he started having faith in what Ramkrishna said.
Though Narendra could not accept Ramakrishna and his visions, he could not neglect him. It had always been in Narendra's nature to test something thoroughly before he could accept it. He tested Ramakrishna to the maximum, but the master was patient, forgiving, humorous, and full of love. He never asked Narendra to abandon reason, and he faced all of Narendra's arguments and examinations with patience. In time, Narendra accepted Ramakrishna, and when he accepted, his acceptance was whole-hearted. While Ramakrishna predominantly taught duality and Bhakti to his other disciples, he taught Narendra the Advaita Vedanta, the philosophy of non-dualism.
During the course of five years of his training under Ramakrishna, Narendra was transformed from a restless, puzzled, impatient youth to a mature man who was ready to renounce everything for the sake of God-realization. Soon, Ramakrishna's end came in the form of throat cancer in August 1886. After this Narendra and a core group of Ramakrishna's disciples took vows to become monks and renounce everything, and started living in a supposedly haunted house in Baranagore. They took alms to satisfy their hunger and their other needs were taken care of by Ramakrishna's richer householder disciples.
Soon, the young monk of Baranagore wanted to live the life of a wandering monk with rags and a begging bowl and no other possessions. On July 1890, Vivekananda set out for a long journey, without knowing where the journey would take him. The journey that followed took him to the length and breadth of the Indian subcontinent. During these days, Vivekananda assumed various names like Vividishananda (in Sanskrit, Vividisha means "the desire to know" and Ananda means "bliss"), Satchidananda, etc. It is said that the Maharaja of Khetri, Ajit Singh, suggested to him the name Vivekananda because of his discernment of things, good and bad. Viveka or discrimination between the eternal and the transient was highly valued by the Swami, who, recollecting that Keshab Chandra Sen used to call him by that name, accepted it. [3]
During these wandering days, Vivekananda stayed in kings' palaces, as well as the huts of the poor. He came in close contact with the culture of different regions of India and various classes of people in India. Vivekananda observed the imbalance in society and tyranny in the name of caste. He realised the need for a national rejuvenation if India was to survive at all. He reached Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of the Indian subcontinent on 24 December1892. There, he swam across the sea and started meditating on a lone rock. He thus meditated for three days and said later that he meditated about the past, present and future of India. The rock went on to become the Vivekananda memorial at Kanyakumari.
Vivekananda Temple on Vivekananda rock at Kanyakumari, India
Vivekananda went to Madras and spoke about his plans for India and Hinduism to the young men of Madras. They were impressed by the monk and urged him to go to the United States and represent Hinduism in the World Parliament of Religions. The Raja of Ramnad, who was originally invited for the conference, promoted Vivekananda as the right person to represent the views of Hinduism in the Parliament. Thus, helped by his friends at Chennai, Bhaskara Sethupathi, Raja of Ramnad and Maharajas of Mysore and Khetri, Vivekananda set out on his journey to the USA.
In one of his lectures in California, the swami described about his condition during wandering days as follows: [4]
“
Many times I have been in the jaws of death, starving, footsore, and weary; for days and days I had no food, and often could walk no farther; I would sink down under a tree, and life would seem to be ebbing away. I could not speak, I could scarcely think, but at last the mind reverted to the idea: "I have no fear nor death; never was I born, never did I die; I never hunger or thirst. I am It! I am It! The whole of nature cannot crush me; it is my servant. Assert thy strength, thou Lord of lords and God of gods! Regain thy lost empire! Arise and walk and stop not!" And I would rise up, reinvigorated; and here I am today, living! Thus, whenever darkness comes, assert the reality and everything adverse must vanish. For after all, it is but a dream. Mountain-high though the difficulties appear, terrible and gloomy though all things seem, they are but Maya. Fear not, and it is banished. Crush it, and it vanishes. Stamp upon it, and it dies.
Vivekananda was encouraged by J.H. Wright, a professor of Greek at Harvard University, to represent Hinduism in the 1893 World Parliament of Religions in Chicago. When he expressed reservations saying he had no credentials, the professor replied, "To ask you, Swami, for your credentials is like asking the sun about its right to shine." He wrote about Vivekananda to the chairman of the committee on selection of delegates, "Here is a man more learned than all our learned professors put together." [5]
Vivekananda was received well at the Parliament of Religions, where he delivered a series of lectures. The audience arose in their seats and applauded loudly (for two minutes) when he started his first address with the famous words, "Sisters and brothers of America." When the applause subsided the Swami began his speech by thanking the young nation "in the name of the most ancient monastic order in the world, the Vedic order of sannyasins."[6] A newspaper account described him as "an orator by divine right and undoubtedly the greatest figure at the Parliament." Vivekananda's arrival in the USA has been identified by many to mark the beginning of western interest in Hinduism not as merely an exotic eastern oddity, but as a vital religious and philosophical tradition that might actually have something important to teach the West.
Vivekananda successfully introduced yoga and Vedanta to the West and lectured around America introducing the topics (1894-6). He taught hundreds of students privately in free classes held in his own room beginning in New York in 1895. Later, he started Vedantic centers in New York City and London, lectured at major universities and generally kindled western interest in Hinduism. His success was not without controversy, much of it from Christian missionaries of whom he was fiercely critical. After four years of constant touring, lecturing and retreats in the West, he came back to India in the year 1897.
Memorial Plaque inside the Art Institute. The plaque reads: "On this site between September 11 and 27, 1893, Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), the first Hindu monk from India to teach Vedanta in America, addressed the World’s Parliament of Religions, held in conjunction with the World’s Columbian Exposition. His unprecedented success opened the way for the dialogue between eastern and western religions." On 11 November1995, the stretch of Michigan Avenue that passes in front of the Art Institute was formally conferred the honorary name “Swami Vivekananda Way.”
Admirers and devotees of Vivekananda gave him an enthusiastic reception on his return to India. In India, he delivered a series of lectures, and this set of lectures known as "Lectures from Colombo to Almora" is considered to have uplifted the morale of the then downtrodden Indian society. He founded one of the world's largest charitable relief missions, the Ramakrishna Mission and reorganized the ancient Swami order by founding one of the most significant and largest monastic orders in India, the Ramakrishna Math.
However, he had to bear great criticism from other orthodox Hindus for having traveled in the West. In his day there was hardly a Hindu in America and he received criticism for crossing the ocean, at that time a cause for "outcasting." Vivekananda scoffed at these critiques from the orthodox saying "I cannot be outcast - As a monk, I am beyond caste." His contemporaries also questioned his motives, wondering whether the fame and glory of his Hindu evangelism compromised his original monastic vows. His enthusiasm for America and Britain, and his spiritual devotion to his motherland, caused significant tension in his last years.
He once again toured the west from January 1899 to December 1900. He inculcated a spirit of respect and good will for exchanges between the East and the West. He had American disciples whom he brought to India and initiated as Swamis and brought Indian Swamis to America where they and their successors have been ever since.
On July 4, 1902 at Belur Math near Calcutta, he taught Vedanta philosophy to some pupils in the morning. He had a walk with Swami Premananda, a brother-disciple, and gave him instructions concerning the future of the Ramakrishna Math. He passed away in the evening after a session of prayer at Belur Math. He was 39. Doctors pronounced that the death was due to apoplexy, but the monks were convinced that he had attained mahasamadhi, as Sri Ramakrishna had predicted. Vivekananda had fulfilled his own prophecy of not living to be forty-years old.[7]
What have we done in Braja? The Kund Restoration Group's projects and the media interview with His Divine Grace Sri Srimad Bhaktivedanta Narayan Goswami Maharaja.
The Lord of the Universe rides on a chariot to go to the Forest of Braja. This ancient festival is yearly celebrated in Jagannath Puri. It is a great festival of dance and devotion, of union and separation, of religion and tradition, lots of sun and perspiration; and one of the biggest gathering in India -- very meaningful and sublime, full of confidential secrets. Understanding a glimpse of its glories is possible only to the fortunate sincere souls. Sri Jagannathastakam sung by Sripad BV Muni Maharaja.
en español 
en inglés 
en francés - en alemán
Público
