Radhanath Swami

His Holiness Radhanath Swami Maharaj is one of the world’s most prominent exponents of bhakti yoga. He is the author of “The Journey Home”, a memoir describinghow he set off alone as a teenager on a spiritual quest, hitch-hiking through Europe, the Middle-East, and finally India.He wandered penniless, slept in caves, and studied with nagababas, yogis, and sadhus of all varieties, including many of the most well-known spiritual teachers of his era. Today, His Holiness Radhanath Swami Maharaj travels the world teaching devotional wisdom. His teachings draw from the sacred texts of India such as the Bhagavad-Gita, Bhagavata-purana, and Ramayana, and aim to reveal the practical application of the sacred traditions, while focusing on the shared essence which unites apparently disparate religious or spiritual paths.

Born Richard Slavin, in his teens he came to confront a deep sense of alienation from suburban Chicago life and the civil injustices of mid-century America. At the age of nineteen, while on a summer trip to Europe, his internal struggles culminated in a commitment to search for God wherever it might lead him. Meditating on the Isle of Crete, he felt a supernatural calling and the next morning set off alone to find spiritual India.

The Journey Home documents his odyssey as a penniless hitch-hiker through Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and finally India. Ultimately, he was led to the holy town of Vrindavan, where he found his path amongst the bhakti-yogis.
In Vrindavan, he found the teacher he was searching for in A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896-1977) the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), and representative of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, (the Krishna bhakti tradition stemming from the 16th century mystic avatar Sri Chaitanya).
In choosing Bhaktivedanta Swami as his guru, His Holiness Radhanath Swami felt compelled to shear his matted locks and reenter Western society with a mission to share the sacred wisdom he had received. This return exemplifies the form of devotional yoga which is at the heart of Radhanath Swami’s teachings, a spiritual practice expressed as tangible action meant to bring about personal fulfillment and benefit the world.
At the the age of 31, he took the monastic vows of a Vaishnava sanyassin and became known as Radhanath Swami. Today, His Holiness Radhanath Swami Maharaj  travels regularly throughout India, Europe and North America. He serves as a Governing Board Comissioner for ISKCON and resides much of the year at the Radha Gopinath Ashram, the ISKCON Girgaum Chowpatty Centre, Mumbai. He is being invited by big corporate houses in India and abroad and universities like Harvard, New York and many more  to give lectures on spiritualism. For the past twenty five years he has guided the community’s development and has directed a number of acclaimed social action projects as under:

Midday Meal
Midday Meal is a programme to provide meals to under-privileged school children. Education is needed for a better future, but hunger forces a young child away from school. ISKCON Food Relief Foundation provides 12,00,000 nutritious meals every day throughout India to such underprivileged children.
The twin objectives of His Holiness Radhanath Maharaj in initiating this activity was to eradicate hunger and promote education amongst the under-privileged sections of the society and thereby ensuring their socio-economic development.

LNH Orphanage
Lady Northcote Hindu Orphanage fell under the care of Radhanath Swami in 1987. Today, the orphanage is home to many boys from underprivileged backgrounds. Radhanath Swami helped expand the services to cater to underprivileged children from the entire state of Maharashtra. The primary motto is to inculcate in children the spiritual learning, build up God’s wisdom among the boarders and to nourish them emotionally and socially, to develop their inherent talents and guide them towards a fulfilling future.
Boys attend state-run day schools, tuition for academic studies and skills for speed reading, memorisation, notes taking and other study techniques are taught by experts. There is training in gardening, handicrafts, painting and in vocations for use in future. Farm grown organic grains, vegetables and milk from local cows are part of their nutritious diet. Extra curricular activities include prayers, meditation, yoga, music and drama performances in community. Daily sportsincluding swimming, and physical training. Educational trips to historical places and a weekly class for teaching spiritual values

 Gopal’s Garden school
The quality of life of our children is a major concern for parents in these times of exposure to immorality and unethical values. Good experiences which form their character have become a rare commodity. Gopal’s Garden School aims to provide a loving environment suited for the best possible learning experience, where children are nourished with devotion and inspired with a will to work to become leaders of society, first class human beings and devotees of the Lord.

Gopal’s Fun School
Gopal Fun School is a weekend programme for urban kids. Every parent has an earnest desire to give their child the best by fulfilling their physical, emotional, social and spiritual needs. GFS recognises the importance of these priorities and equips the kids with life-long skills and attitudes, which will enable them to make positive and outstanding contributions in all aspects of life. His Holiness Radhanath  Swami Maharaj says, “Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an everlasting impression.”

Barsana Eye Camp
Every year since 1992,  ISKCON has been organising a free cataract surgery camp for the villagers of Barsana area, where they have no access to a hospital and live below the poverty line. Hundreds go blind due to cataracts every year. Over 33,000 patients have been screened so far. More than 4,000 patients have been operated successfully.

Bhakthivedanta Hopital
Bhaktivedanta Hospital was established not just to meet the health needs of the burgeoning suburban residents of Mira Road, but also give solace to their mind and spirit. A non-profit organisation supported by philanthropic donors, it extends its services to the society in form of subsidised treatment of the underprivileged, an active role in treatment of disaster victims and free health camps for the needy.
Bhaktivedanta Hospital firmly believes that health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

Vrindavan Hospice
Although modern medicine is making tremendous advancement in disease management, there are many cases that reach a state of incurability. Death is inevitable but arrives slowly and is accompanied by severe pain, discomfort and emotional crisis both for the patient and the family. Globally, hospice is a facility for such end stage patients who do not need active medical intervention for cure.
Personalised service and a compassionate approach to end-of-life care is the foundation upon which the premise is built. Skilled and capable medical care goes a long way in helping an individual bound to death and limited by life. Although death is a natural part of life, the thought of dying terrifies many people. In this time of need, it is but our ultimate goal to honour their decisions and choices, thus giving them the emotional and spiritual support they desire.
Care and counseling goes beyond the person in his last stages. It includes embracing the family and providing support to them as well. This type of care provides the patient’s family with a route to go beyond the physical realities of anadvanced condition and deal with important emotional and spiritual issues. Simply because, in the end every moment spent together is a precious and infinite memory.

Govardhan Eco Village
Govardhan Eco Village (GEV) is situated on 50 acres of pristine farmland in the Wada district of Maharashtra. It illustrates ‘Simple Living & High Thinking’ – a principle which is so succinct, yet profound, and formed the basis of life in the bygone age of wisdom. Life in the Vedic times was focused on service, but not on exploitation. This was the cardinal rule of living and the very essence of people’s dealings – with each other and that with Mother Nature. With the concepts of eco living being innate, the Vedic lifestyle was truly an eco-friendly way of living life as instanced in the timeless Vedic scriptures like Srimad Bhagavatam and Bhagavad-Gita.
The main objective of Govardhan Eco Village is to give individuals a first-hand experience of our utter dependence on Mother Nature’s gifts. Three-month-intensive courses are offered on “Simple Living, High Thinking” to help cultivate an attitude of reverence and gratitude towards Mother Nature and all her children, and to engender a spirit of peaceful cooperation among living entities for the supreme good of all Govardhan Farm aims to demonstrate the principles of self-sufficiency and localised economy to the world. In consultation with organic farming experts, all inputs and outputs are natural, and only indigenous varieties of grain are grown. Instead of chemical fertilisers, we employ cow dung and natural compost. Cow urine and neem oil serve as organic pesticides and bulls are favoured over machinery for ploughing.

Venu Madhuri
Venu Madhuri is a rural development project that aims at sustainable development and self-sufficiency through traditional wisdom. Although agriculture contributes only 21 per cent of India’s GDP, its importance in the country’s economic, social, and political fabric goes well beyond this indicator. The rural areas are still home to some 72 per cent of the India’s 1.1 billion people, a large number of whom are poor. Most of the rural poor depend on rain-fed agriculture, fragile forests for their livelihoods and lack basic amenities.
The father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi, contemplated a programme of village organisation based on sound agricultural practices and village industry that would ensure the proper health and well-being of the villagers. Inspired by Gandhian ideals and the vision of Radhanath Swami, Venu Madhuri, adopted a village named Ramanwadi in Maharashtra as a model village to later replicate the project in other villages.
D.Y. Patil Annual Achiever’s Award was given to ISKCON Food Relief Foundation (IFRF) on Sunday, November 13, 2011 for its exemplary social welfare work. This project in Mumbai is inspired by and in executed under the vision and guidance of HH Radhanath Swami Maharaj.