Radhanath Swami

According to the Upanishads, the Absolute Truth can never be caught by anyone. Either the incredible discrimination and knowledge developed by Jnanis, or the incredible sense control, mind control or the Mystic Siddhis of Yogis, who could catch the Absolute Truth? But Yashoda Mayi she was running after him, and as she was running, flowers malati flowers were falling from her hair. Jiva Goswami tel...

There was milk, that Padmagandha lotus milk that I was talking about. There was a little pot, and she was preparing something for Krishna with that. It began to boil over. According to some of our acharyas, it is explained the reason it boiled over is because the milk is conscious. Everything in the spiritual world is fully conscious. And the milk was thinking ‘My only existence is for Krishna to...

In Vrindavan, Yoga Maya makes everyone dance according to Krishna's will. Everyone is simply an instrument to increase the sweetness of the love between Radha and Krishna. Chandravali prayed that “if you leave us Radharani no one will survive in Vrindavan and Krishna will never come back. Please do not die.”

In all of the wonderful incarnations of the supreme Lord, the principal incarnations, we find that Balaram is present as Narayana. Balaram appears as Sankarsana, Sesanaga, he becomes the Lord’s bed. Laxmi is massaging His feet and Balaram is His bed, His resting place. In the avatar of Sri Ramachandra, Balaramji appears as His younger brother, Laxman. And what was Laxman’s constant meditation? “Si...

Their only desire is not to enjoy, but to please Krishna. Because that is the only way of attracting the mercy of Krishna, to be the servant of the servant of his servants.

Does she need our hadful of water? We are taking from her, and its insignificant. But when we offer it to her with love, Ganga Devi, the preciding deity of the river, she considers that handful of water more valuable than all the water she has, because it’s a reciprocation of Love.

And at this particular time, I'm personally meditating on how His Holiness Bhakti Charu Swami Maharaj was very much following in the footsteps of Ishwara Puri. Bhakti Charu Maharaj, he was born and raised in an aristocratic family in Kolkata, was very highly educated, eloquent in every way. But the perfection of his life, he has always considered was the opportunities he had to follow in the foots...

Sometimes Bhakti Charu Maharaj, on a personal level would share with me that we were soul brothers. In a way because at exactly the time, same time in 1970, I was leaving the West travelling overland to India to look for spiritual life. And Bhakti Charu Maharaj was traveling west for the same purpose. And of course, I don't remember or recall that we ever physically and personally met on that leve...

Lord Chaitanya, pretending he didn't know who the king was, he embraced him, again and again. He wept tears on the king, and he cried out, “You are the most munificent, you are the most munificent.” And then, he revealed, he revealed his divine opulence to King Pratap Rudra, he revealed his true identity as Krishna. He awakened in full King Pratap Rudra’s original love, his prema. When Lord Chaita...

When Lord Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was feeling the ecstasy of separation from Jagannath, he could come here every year and here the deity of Lord four-armed, Narayan, Lord Chaitanya came in the mood of Srimati Radharani, Lord Chaitanya would see Krishna himself, Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in his supreme ecstasies of separation, he would lay on the stone and the stone would melt. And we can see the...

I was left with nothing. And I was thinking, “Ok, what am I supposed to learn from this?” And I got a wonderful lesson, as the Bible says, seek and you shall find. I was thinking that compared to the incredible wealth that I gained, sitting on that rock, learning from Mother Ganga every day, all the wealth and power and prestige of this world is like peanuts. People lie and cry and die for these p...

I also saw a Mother Ganga because it was a very, very rapid place, and the waves were going very fast, and it was so beautiful. I was thinking, just seeing her current is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. It's a work of art. But at every moment, it's changing. It's never the same. It's always different water, it's always a different shape. And similarly, that's the way this world...

My first day, I sat in meditation and prayer for several hours. And then a holy man wearing robes with long gray beard and hair, came out of the forest and was walking in my direction. His robes were flapping in the breeze for Mother Ganga. He walked right up to me. I stood up to greet him, his first words, he said, “You do not know who I am. But I know you. I have been watching you. And I see you...

Now, for those of you who know, the social dynamics of the jungle, there is a historical hatred between Tiger and Deer. It's worse than anything you could imagine. You know, we think we have problems with Palestinians and Israelis and there's so many problems between people and religions, problems between people with races, even in our own families there are so many problems, they are the same rel...

Talk by HH Radhanath Swami at Wisdom of the Sages Retreat, Bhakti Center on 10 Jun 2022 by Radhanath Swami

It’s ekadasi so… it’s pandava nirjal ekadasi. Previously it was the standard that people would, practically all devotees would not eat or drink anything on ekadasi. That was the standard. No eating, no drinking. Even many would not sleep. No eating, sleeping, drinking, they would just chant all night long. They would chant and read all day and chant and read all night. That was the proper ekadasi.

This chanting is like the filtering of water. When you filter dirty water, it simply brings it back to its original natural state. This chanting, cleanses our minds, cleanses our hearts, and restores its original, sacred, blissful condition. Ananda, we are naturally happy people. It's totally unnatural, foreign and artificial for the soul to be an any anxiety or any unhappiness. So how many of us...

The things that disturb us so much, we don't even remember in a day or two, to keep our mind focused, what is real love? What is our real potential to love? How we can connect to that love and share that love, whether on politics, or business, or industry, or engineering, whether we're artists, or an agriculture or teachers, or monks, the important thing in life is our dharma. And if we focus on o...

If we have unity, we can create unity. If our mind is in conflict, if our mind is not balanced with our body, and with the needs of the soul, then there is a fundamental disunity in our life. And when there are so many dysfunctional people, they may be simple people in the streets, they may be big, big politicians, big, big industrialists, but if they are not in harmony with their own consciousnes...

That the process of Krishna consciousness begins when we associate with sincere devotees of the Lord, when we hear them speak. An ordinary person who speaks Krishna katha, cannot have any potency in his words to awaken your dormant love for Krishna. Nor can impersonal philosophers. Only a genuine vaishnava, who was humbly endeavouring to be the servant of the servant of the Lord and repeat his mes...

This experience made me contemplate how it's so easy for us to focus on our differences. But what this leper woman taught me is if we look deeper into our own selves, into the world and into others, we will find that beyond the differences in nationality and religion, in gender, in appearance, in race, in health or disease, there's something essential that we all have in common the souls inherent...

In the world we live in today's, people have been so distracted from a meaningful, purposeful or happy life. Because there's so much propaganda that success comes from the quantity of what you have, your money, your power, your fame, your knowledge in regard to intellectualization and in the pursuit of quantity people forget that there cannot be happiness in ourselves nor can we give happiness to...

Life is like a rainbow, a multi-colored, multi-splendared thing in which the joy of sunshine and the tears of rainfall are reflected equally. When we see the whole picture of the sky with the rainbow, we can appreciate it. Similarly, the real joy of life is not simply when everything goes our way because things will, no matter what we do no matter what we gain things will not always go our way. Th...

As I was sitting on the bank, I thought that this river has been flowing throughout our history. She was flowing here when Alexander the great came to India, through the centuries of the Mogul empire, through the British empire, through all the changes of after Indian’s independence, everything's changing around but she just keeps flowing to the sea. In a similar way, in this world despite all the...

They worshipped the deities in the way they worshipped the devotees. There was not a differentiation. In India sometimes people who are senior or people who are Pujaris, develop a certain type of pride that they have a special service and certainly, Pankajanghri Prabhu and Jananivas Prabhus had the most special service of the senior most pujaris: personal direct intimate servants of Krishna and Sr...