Tag: ISKCON

Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada was a Gaudiya Vaishnava teacher and the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) commonly known as the "Hare Krishna Movement".

His mission was to propagate the Gaudiya Vaishnavism, a form of Hinduism that had been taught to him by his guru, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakura, throughout the world.

Born Abhay Charan De in Calcutta, he was educated at the prestigious local Scottish Churches College. Before adopting the life of a pious renunciant (vanaprastha) in 1950, he was married with children and owned a small pharmaceutical business.

In 1959 he took a vow of renunciation (sannyasa) and started writing commentaries on Vaishnava scriptures.

In his later years, as a traveling Vaishnava monk, he became an influential communicator of Gaudiya Vaishnava theology to India and specifically to the West through his leadership of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), founded in 1966. As the founder of ISKCON, he emerged as a major figure of the Western counterculture, initiating thousands of young Americans.

Despite attacks from anti-cult groups, he received a favorable welcome from many religious scholars, such as J. Stillson Judah, Harvey Cox, Larry Shinn and Thomas Hopkins, who praised Prabhupada's translations and defended the group against distorted media images and misinterpretations. In respect to his achievements, religious leaders from other Gaudiya Vaishnava movements have also given him credit.

He was exceptionally charismatic in the sense that he was successful in acquiring so many followers in the United States, Europe, India and elsewhere. After his death in 1977, ISKCON, the society he founded based on a type of Hindu Krishnaism using the Bhagavata Purana as a central scripture, continued to grow and is respected in India, though there have been squabbles about leadership among his followers.

Prabhupada was sometimes criticized by Neo-Vedantic relativistic philosophers, mainly due to uncompromising and 'unkind remarks' against non-Vaishnava systems, particularly 'the mayavadis'. This may be taken in the perspective of general underlying hostility of Neo-Vedantists towards bhakti, devotion, and orthodox Vedanta system presented by Prabhupada being in conflict with heterodox views of mayavadis.

He left home as a A naishtik brahmachari when he was nine years old to become a Sadhu and lived in jungles. He returned home and again left at the age of seventeen and lived at Shri Vrindavana Dham.

He became the disciple of Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada in the year 1974 and took Sanyas in the year 1975 at the age of 29.

After taking Sanyas, he traveled around the world over a dozen times for preaching purposes. He was preaching the Vedic Philosophy in several languages such as Dogri, Urdu, Punjabi, English, Bengali, Gujrati and some of the African languages. He was also establishing, developing, and running temples and preaching centers at Africa, England, America, Chandigarh, Vrindavana, Udhampur, Katra, Lucknow, Amritsar, Maharahstra and other places.

He is said to be very loving and affectionate with people and keen in helping them solving their problems.