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Sri Rāmakrishna Paramahamsa Biography
Sri Rāmakrishna ParamahamsaGadadhar Chattopadhyaya was born on 18 February 1836, in the village of Kamarpukur, in the Hooghly district of West Bengal, India, into a very poor, pious, and orthodox Brahmin family, devoted to Hindu God Rama. His parents were Khudiram Chattopadhyay and Chandramani Devi.
The name “Rāmakrishna ” was given to him by his father, as recorded in his diaries: "I was a pet child of my father. He used to call me Rāmakrishna babu."
Rāmakrishna ’s father died in 1843 and family responsibilities fell on his elder brother Ramkumar. Although Rāmakrishna attended a village school with some regularity for 12 years, he later rejected the traditional schooling saying that he was not interested in a "bread-winning education". He resolved to give up study and devote himself solely to the pursuit of spiritual knowledge.
Kamarpukur village, being a transit-point in well-established pilgrimage routes to Puri, brought him into contact with renunciates and holy men. He became well-versed in the Puranas, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and the Bhagavata Purana, hearing them from wandering monks and the Kathaks - a class of men in ancient India who preached and sang the Purāṇas. He could read and write in Bengali.1
As the family's financial position worsened, Ramkumar started a Sanskrit school in Kolkata and also served as a priest. Rāmakrishna moved to Kolkata in 1852 with Ramkumar to assist him with his work.
In 1855 Rāmakrishna ’s brother was appointed as the priest of Dakshineswar Kālī Temple, built by Rani Rashmoni - a wealthy female zamindar2 of Kolkata who was well known for her kindness and benevolence to the poor and for her religious devotion. Rāmakrishna helped his brother with the morning and evening worship. When Ramkumar died in 1856, Rāmakrishna took his place as the priest of the Kālī temple.
He started wondering if there was anything behind the image of Mother Kālī, and “Is it true there is a Mother of Bliss in the universe? Is it true that She lives and guides this universe, or is it all a dream? Is there any reality in religion? Is the Blissful Mother an imagination of poets and misguided people, or is there such a Reality?”
After the regular rituals “he would sit there for hours and hours, singing hymns and talking and praying to her as a child to his mother, till he lost all consciousness of the outward world. Sometimes he would weep for hours, and would not be comforted, because he could not see his mother as perfectly as he wished.” Such thoughts grew stronger in him until he was unable to conduct his temple worship duties properly.
Rumors spread that Rāmakrishna had become unstable as a result of his spiritual practices at Dakshineswar. Rāmakrishna 's mother and his elder brother Rameswar decided to get Rāmakrishna married, thinking that marriage would be a good steadying influence upon him, by forcing him to accept responsibility and to keep his attention on normal affairs rather than his spiritual practices and visions.
Sarada Devi (1853–1920)The bride, Saradamani Mukhopadhyaya (later known as Sarada Devi), a five-year-old girl, was found as indicated by Rāmakrishna himself, and the marriage was duly solemnized in 1859. Rāmakrishna was twenty-three at this point, but this age difference for marriage was typical for nineteenth-century rural Bengal.
By the time his bride joined him, Rāmakrishna had already embraced the monastic life of a sannyasi; the marriage was never consummated.
As a priest Rāmakrishna performed the ritual ceremony where Sarada Devi was worshipped as the Divine Mother. Rāmakrishna regarded Sarada Devi as the Divine Mother in person, addressing her as the Holy Mother, and it was by this name that she was known to Rāmakrishna 's disciples. Sarada Devi outlived Rāmakrishna by thirty-four years and played an important role in the nascent religious movement.
In 1860, after his marriage, he returned to Calcutta in charge of the temple again, but instead of toning down, his fervor and devotion increased a greatly. At that time he had no teacher, nobody to tell him anything, and people thought he lost his mind. One day as he was feeling his separation from Devi very keenly and thinking of putting an end to himself as he could not bear his loneliness any longer, he lost all outward sensation, and saw his mother (Kālī) in a vision.
In 1861 Bhairavi Brahmani, a middle-aged female ascetic came to meet Rāmakrishna . He described to her his extraordinary visions, the loss of his consciousness of the external world, the burning sensation in his body, his sleeplessness, and other peculiar bodily changes.
He repeatedly asked her, “Mother, what are these things that happen to me? Have I actually become mad?” She told him “It is not madness; you are in the state of Mahābhāva”3 She loved Rāmakrishna like her own son.
To free Rāmakrishna from doubts regarding his own condition, the Brahmani initiated him into the Tantras. He followed the path of discipline of previous Sadhakas as described in the sixty-four main Tantras and had the experience of the spiritual states as experienced by them and understood that those states of his were not produced by any disease.
Under her guidance, Rāmakrishna went through sixty-four major tantric sādhanā which were completed in 1863 and also learnt Kuṇḍalinī Yoga. The Bhairavi, with the yogic techniques and the tantra played an important part in the initial spiritual development of Rāmakrishna.
In 1864, Rāmakrishna practiced vātsalya bhava4 under a Vaishnava guru Jatadhari. During this period, he worshipped an image of Ramlālā (Rama as a child) in the attitude of a mother. According to Rāmakrishna, he could feel the presence of child Rama as a living God in the image.
After Bhairavi Brahmani departure in 1864, Rāmakrishna met Totapuri, an itinerant Nāga Saṃnyāsa who trained him in Advaita Vedānta. Totapuri first guided Rāmakrishna through the rites of sannyasa - renunciation of all ties to the world. Rāmakrishna reportedly experienced nirvikalpa samādhi, which is considered the highest state in spiritual realization, after just three days of practice. Totapuri was astonished and said: “My boy! What I realized in forty years of hard struggle you have arrived at in three days.”
Totapuri stayed with Rāmakrishna for nearly eleven months and instructed him further in the teachings of Advaita. Rāmakrishna said that this period of nirvikalpa samadhi came to an end when he received a command from the Mother Kālī to "remain in Bhavamukha for the enlightenment of the people". Bhavamukha being a state of existence intermediate between samādhi and normal consciousness.
After devoting himself to Vaishavism, in 1866, Rāmakrishna practiced Christianity and Mohammedanism, always arriving at an understanding of their highest purposes in an incredibly short time. He concluded that all religions are true, though each of them takes account of one aspect only of the Akhaṇḍā Sacchidānanda5
Each of these different religions seemed to him a way to arrive at that One. Whenever Rāmakrishna wished to learn and practice the doctrines of any faith, he always found a good and learned man of that faith coming to him and advising him how to do it.
These could have been assumed to be happy coincidences that could not be explained. In a such instance, he was sitting one day under a big banyan tree, a place he found very secluded and fit for carrying out his religious practices without disturbance. He was thinking of building a little thatched hut in that place.
It just happened that when the tide came up, the river brought along with it all that was necessary to make a little hut: the bamboos, the sticks, the rope and all and dropped them just a few yards off the place where he was sitting. He joyfully took the materials and with the help of the gardener built his little hut, where he practiced his Yoga.
In 1867 Rāmakrishna met Sarada Devi, his wife, who now was fourteen years old. He confessed he was now a sannyasi. Their marriage was never consummated.
From 1868 to 1872 Rāmakrishna spent some time on pilgrimages to Vaidyanath, Varanasi, Allahabad, Vrindaban, Mathura and Nadiya, birthplace of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.6
In 1872 Sarada Devi returned to Dakshineswar, at the age of eighteen. “He addressed her as his mother, worshipped her with flowers and incense, asked her blessings, as a child does from his mother, and then became lost in a deep trance. The wife, who was fully worthy of such a hero, told him she wanted nothing from him as her husband, but that he would teach her how to realize God, and allow her to remain near him and cook his meals and do what little she could for his health and comfort. From that day forward she lived within the temple compound and began to practice whatever her husband taught her.”
In 1875, Rāmakrishna met the influential Brahmo Samaj7 leader Keshab Chandra Sen. Keshab had accepted Christianity and had separated from the Adi Brahmo Samaj (the first development of Brahmoism).
Formerly, Keshab had rejected idolatry, but under the influence of Rāmakrishna he accepted Hindu polytheism and established the "New Dispensation" (Nava Vidhan) religious movement, based on Rāmakrishna 's principles—"Worship of God as Mother", "All religions as true" and "Assimilation of Hindu polytheism into Brahmoism".
Keshab also published Rāmakrishna's teachings in the journals of New Dispensation over a period of several years, which was instrumental in bringing Rāmakrishna to the attention of a wider audience, especially the Bhadralok (English-educated classes of Bengal) and the Europeans residing in India.
Following Keshab, other Brahmos such as Vijaykrishna Goswami started to admire Rāmakrishna, propagate his ideals and reorient their socio-religious outlook. Many prominent people of Kolkata—Pratap Chandra Mazumdar, Shivanath Shastri and Trailokyanath Sanyal—began visiting him during this time (1871–1885).
Mazumdar wrote the first English biography of Rāmakrishna, entitled The Hindu Saint in the Theistic Quarterly Review (1879), which played a vital role in introducing Rāmakrishna to Westerners like the German Indologist Max Müller.
Newspapers reported that Rāmakrishna was spreading "Love" and "Devotion" among the educated classes of Kolkata and that he had succeeded in reforming the character of some youths whose morals had been corrupt.
Rāmakrishna also had interactions with Debendranath Tagore, the father of Rabindranath Tagore, and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, a renowned social worker. He had also met Swami Dayananda. Rāmakrishna is considered one of the main contributors to the Bengali Renaissance.
Among the Europeans who were influenced by Rāmakrishna was Principal Dr. William Hastie of the Scottish Church College, Kolkata. While explaining the word “trance” in the poem The Excursion by William Wordsworth, Hastie told his students that if they wanted to know its "real meaning", they should go to "Rāmakrishna of Dakshineswar." This prompted some of his students, including Narendranath Dutta (later Swami Vivekananda), to visit Rāmakrishna.
Ramakrishna, on 10 December 1881 at the studio of "The Bengal Photographers" in Radhabazar, Calcutta (Kolkata)Despite initial reservations, Vivekananda became Rāmakrishna's most influential follower, popularizing a modern interpretation of Indian traditions which harmonized Tantra, Yoga and Advaita Vedānta. Vivekananda established the Rāmakrishna order, which eventually spread its mission posts throughout the world.
As his name spread, an ever-shifting crowd of all classes and castes visited Rāmakrishna. Most of Rāmakrishna's prominent disciples came between 1879–1885.
Rāmakrishna began to teach them and talk to them from morning till evening. At night, too, he had no rest, as some of the more earnest would remain and spend the night with him.
He then forgot his sleep and talked to them incessantly about bhakti (devotion) or jñāna (knowledge) and his own experiences, and how he arrived at them.
Although this incessant labor began to take a toll on him, he would not rest. Meanwhile, the crowds of men and women began to increase daily, but he went on as before. When pressed to take rest, he would say, “I would suffer willingly all sorts of bodily pains, and death also, a hundred thousand times, if by so doing I could bring one single soul to freedom and salvation.”
In preparation for monastic life, Rāmakrishna ordered his monastic disciples to beg their food from door to door without distinction of caste. He gave them the saffron robe, the sign of the Sanyasi, and initiated them with Mantra Dīkṣā8.
In the beginning of 1885 Rāmakrishna suffered from chronic inflammation of the pharynx (clergyman's throat), which gradually developed into throat cancer. He was moved to Shyampukur near Kolkata, where some of the best physicians of the time were engaged. When his condition aggravated, he was relocated to a large garden house at Cossipore on 11 December 1885.
During his last days, he was looked after by his monastic disciples and Sarada Devi. Rāmakrishna was advised by the doctors to keep the strictest silence, but ignoring their advice, he incessantly conversed with visitors.
According to traditional accounts, before his death, Rāmakrishna transferred his spiritual powers to Vivekananda9 and reassured him of his avatar status10. Rāmakrishna asked Vivekananda to look after the welfare of the disciples, saying, "keep my boys together" and asked him to "teach them". Rāmakrishna also asked other monastic disciples to look upon Vivekananda as their leader.
Rāmakrishna's condition gradually worsened, and he died in the early morning hours of 16 August 1886 at the Cossipore garden house. According to his disciples, this was Mahāsamādhi.
After the passing of their master, the monastic disciples led by Vivekananda formed a fellowship at a half-ruined house at Baranagar near the river Ganges, with the financial assistance of the householder disciples. This became the first Math or monastery of the disciples who constituted the first Rāmakrishna Order.
Sources
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramakrishna
• Ramakrishna, His Life and Sayings, by Max Muller
• Swami Vivekananda on Himself
• https://www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info
• http://www.advaitayoga.org
• http://www.hindupedia.com
Footnotes
1. Rāmakrishna never received a proper classical education and he didn’t learn Sanskrit, although, as Max Muller stated in his biography of Rāmakrishna , “a man who speaks Bengali can guess the meaning of Sanskrit as an Italian may guess the meaning of Latin. Some of the classical Sanskrit texts exist in Bengali translations, and may have given him all the information which he wanted for his own purposes, to say nothing of his constant intercourse with learned men who would have warned him against mistakes and answered any question he chose to ask.”
2. A zamindar in the Indian subcontinent was an autonomous or semiautonomous ruler of a state who accepted the suzerainty of the Emperor of Hindustan. The term means landowner in Persian. Typically hereditary, zamindars held enormous tracts of land and control over their peasants, from whom they reserved the right to collect tax on behalf of imperial courts or for military purposes.
3. Mahābhāva literally means “the great emotion”. This is a technical term especially used by the Bengal school of Vaiṣṇavism. An ordinary bhāva or emotion is the joy derived from enjoying the worldly objects. When the object is the divinity and the intensity of joy reaches such a height that the devotee feels identified with that divinity, it is termed “mahābhāva”.
4. Vātsalyabhāva refers to one of the five primary relationships with Śrī Kṛṣṇa, namely, love or attachment for Him expressed in the mood of a parent.
5. i.e. sat+chit+ānanda: existence, knowledge, and bliss.
6. Shri Krishna Chaitanya Mahaprabhu a.k.a. Mahāprabhu or "Great Lord" was a 15th century Indian saint and founder of Vedantic philosophy of Achintya Bheda Abheda. Devotees consider him an incarnation of the god Krishna. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's mode of worshipping Krishna with ecstatic song and dance had a profound effect on Vaishnavism in Bengal. He expounded Bhakti yoga and popularized the chanting of the Hare Krishna Mahā-Mantra :
Hare Rāma Hare Rāma
Rāma Rāma Hare Hare
Hare Kṛṣṇa Hare Kṛṣṇa
Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa Hare Hare
7. The societal component of Brahmoism, a religious movement which began in mid-19th century as a monotheistic reformist movement of the Hindu religion that appeared during the Bengal Renaissance.
8. Dīkṣā : "preparation or consecration for a religious ceremony", is giving of a mantra or an initiation by the guru (in Guru–shishya tradition) of Indian religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Dīkṣā is given in a one-to-one ceremony, and typically includes the taking on of a serious spiritual discipline.
9. In his autobiography, Vivekananda wrote: “Two or three days days before leaving his body, he called me on his side one day, and asking me to sit before him, looked steadfastly at me and fell into Samadhi. Then, I really felt that a subtle force like an electric shock was entering my body! In a little while, I also lost outward consciousness and sat motionless. How long I stayed in that condition I do not remember; when consciousness returned, I found Sri Rāmakrishna shedding tears. On questioning him, he answered me affectionately: ‘Today, giving you my all, I have become a beggar. With this power, you are to do many works for the world’s good before you return.’” (p50)
10. In his autobiography, Vivekananda wrote: “one day while he [Rāmakrishna] was staying at Cossipore garden, his body in imminent danger of falling off forever, by the side of his bed I was saying in my mind, “Will, now if you can declare that you are God, then only will I believe you are really God Himself. It was only two days before he passed away. Immediately he looked upwards, all of a sudden and said: ‘He who was Rama, He who was Krishna verily is He now Rāmakrishna in this body. And that not from the standpoint of your Vedanta!” (p51)
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