Acharya Prashant

Prashant Tripathi, known as Acharya Prashant, is an Indian author, and an Advaita teacher. He teaches seventeen forms of Gita’s and sixty forms of Upanishads. His recent Amazon bestseller book Karma: Why Everything You Know About It Is Wrong, is published by Penguin Books. Acharya regularly writes and speaks, connecting everyday topics of life to spirituality. He is the founder of a non-profit organization named Prashant Advait Foundation and is a vegan activist....

December 31, 2021 · 1 min · TheAum

Appayya Dikshitar

Appayya Dikshita (IAST Appayya Dīkṣita, often “Dikshitar”), 1520–1593 CE, was a performer of yajñas as well as an expositor and practitioner of the Advaita Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy but with a focus on Shiva or Shiva Advaita.

December 31, 2021 · 1 min · TheAum

Badarayana

Badarayana (IAST Bādarāyaṇa; Devanāgari बादरायण) was an Indian philosopher, who is estimated to have lived around 500 BCE - 200 BCE.His work Brahma Sutras is variously dated from 500 BCE to 450 CE. The Brahma Sutras of Bādarāyana, also called the Vedanta Sutra, were compiled in its present form around 400–450 CE, but “the great part of the Sutra must have been in existence much earlier than that”. Estimates of the date of Bādarāyana’s lifetime differ between 200 BCE and 200 CE....

December 31, 2021 · 1 min · TheAum

Baladeva Vidyabhushana

Baladeva Vidyabhushana (also written Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṇa) (c. 1700 – 1793 AD) was an Indian Gaudiya Vaishnava acharya (religious teacher). Despite being renowned all over the world as the Gaudiya Vedanta Acarya, the scarcity of available authentic biodata has led misinformed authors to spread incorrect information about his life incidents. There is no known historical evidence regarding either his birthplace or date, nor any known reference to it in his works. Some wrongly believe that he disappeared in 1768....

December 31, 2021 · 4 min · TheAum

Bannanje Govindacharya

Bannanje Govindacharya (3 August 1936 – 13 December 2020) was an Indian philosopher and Sanskrit scholar versed in Veda Bhashya, Upanishad Bhashya, Mahabharata, Puranas and Ramayana. He wrote Bhashyas or commentaries on Veda Suktas, Upanishads, ShataRudriya, BrahmaSutra Bhashya, Gita Bhashya and was an orator. He was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 2009.

December 31, 2021 · 1 min · TheAum

Bhakti Hridaya Bon Swami

Bhakti Hridaya Bon (Sanskrit: भक्ति हृदय वन, IAST: Bhakti Hṛdaya Vana), also known as Swami Bon (Baharpur, 23 March 1901 – Vrindavan, 7 July 1982), was a disciple of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati and a guru in the Gaudiya Math following the philosophy of the Bhakti marg, specifically of Caitanya Mahaprabhu and Gaudiya Vaishnava theology. At the time of his death, he left behind thousands of Bengali disciples in India. Reference books on Bon’s life include My First Year in England, On the path to Vaikuntha, Vaikunther Pathe (in Bengali), and Viraha-vedana (in Bengali)....

December 31, 2021 · 1 min · TheAum

Bhakti Prajnana Kesava Goswami

Bhakti Prajnan Keshava (IAST: Bhakti Prajñāna Keśava; 9 February 1898 – 6 October 1968), addressed by the honorific Mahārāja (Mahārāja), was a disciple of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati and the founder of the Gaudiya Vaishnava religious organisation Sri Gaudiya Vedanta Samiti, formed in Calcutta in 1940. Bhakti Prajnan Keshava Maharaja and A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada were godbrothers (disciples of the same spiritual master). Abhay Charanaravinda Prabhu became A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami (taking the title “Bhaktivedanta” and name Swāmī) when Keśava Gosvāmī initiated him into the renounced order of life (sannyasa) on 17 September 1959 at Keshava Maharaja’s temple in Mathura....

December 31, 2021 · 1 min · TheAum

Bharati Teertha Swamigal

Dakṣināmnāya Śrī Śāradā Pītham or Sri Sringeri Mutt is one amongst the four cardinal pīthams established by acharya Śrī Ādi Śaṅkara to preserve and propagate Sanātana Dharma and Advaita Vedānta, the doctrine of non-dualism. Located in Śringerī in Chikmagalur district in Karnataka, India, it is the Southern Āmnāya Pītham amongst the four Chaturāmnāya Pīthams, with the others being the Dvārakā Śāradā Pītham (Gujarat) in the West, Purī Govardhana Pīṭhaṃ (Odisha) in the East and Badri Jyotishpīṭhaṃ (Uttarakhand) in the North....

December 31, 2021 · 2 min · TheAum

Caitanya Mahaprabhu

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (IAST: Caitanya Mahāprabhu, born as Vishvambhar Mishra) was a 15th century Indian Saint, who is considered to be the combined avatar of Radha and Krishna by his disciples and various scriptures. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s mode of worshipping Krishna with ecstatic song and dance had a profound effect on Vaishnavism in Bengal. He was also the chief proponent of the Vedantic philosophy of Achintya Bheda Abheda Tattva. Mahaprabhu founded Gaudiya Vaishnavism (a....

December 31, 2021 · 1 min · TheAum

Chandrashekhara Bharati III

Swami Chandrasekhara Bharati (born Narasimha Sastri; 1892–1954 ) was the Jagadguru Sankaracarya of Sringeri Sharada Peetham in 1912–1954. He was one of the most significant spiritual figures in Hinduism during the 20th century. They were believed to be a Jivanmukta (Sanskrit for one liberated while alive).

December 31, 2021 · 1 min · TheAum

Chinmayananda Saraswati

Swami Chinmayananda Saraswati, (born Balakrishna Menon; 8 May 1916 – 3 August 1993) was a Hindu spiritual leader and a teacher. In 1951, he founded Chinmaya Mission, a worldwide nonprofit organisation, in order to spread the knowledge of Advaita Vedanta, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, and other ancient Hindu scriptures. Through the Mission, Chinmayananda spearheaded a global Hindu spiritual and cultural renaissance that popularised these spiritual texts and values, teaching them in English all across India and abroad....

December 31, 2021 · 2 min · TheAum

Dayananda Saraswati

Maharshi Dayanand Saraswati (pronunciation ) (12 February 1824 – 30 October 1883) was an Indian philosopher, social leader and founder of the Arya Samaj, a reform movement of the Vedic dharma. He was the first to give the call for Swaraj as “India for Indians” in 1876, a call later taken up by Lokmanya Tilak. Denouncing the idolatry and ritualistic worship, he worked towards reviving Vedic ideologies. Subsequently, the philosopher and President of India, S....

December 31, 2021 · 2 min · TheAum

Dnyaneshwar

Sant Dnyaneshwar (Marathi pronunciation: [d̪ɲaːn̪eʃʋəɾ]), also referred to as Jnaneshwar, Jnanadeva, Dnyandev or Mauli or Dnyaneshwar Vitthal Kulkarni (1275–1296), was a 13th-century Indian Marathi saint, poet, philosopher and yogi of the Nath Vaishnava tradition. In his short life of 21 years, he authored Dnyaneshwari (a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita) and Amrutanubhav. These are the oldest surviving literary works in the Marathi language, under the patronage of the Yadava dynasty of Devagiri, and these are considered to be milestones in Marathi literature....

December 31, 2021 · 1 min · TheAum

Gaudapada

Gauḍapāda (Sanskrit: गौडपाद; fl.c. 6th century CE), also referred as Gauḍapādācārya (“Gauḍapāda the Teacher”), was an early medieval era Hindu philosopher and scholar of the Advaita Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy. While details of his biography are uncertain, his ideas inspired others such as Adi Shankara who called him a Paramaguru (highest teacher).Gaudapada was the author or compiler of the Māṇḍukya Kārikā, also known as Gaudapada Karika. The text consists of four chapters (also called four books), of which Chapter Four uses Buddhist terminology thereby showing it was influenced by Buddhism....

December 31, 2021 · 1 min · TheAum

Govinda Bhagavatpada

Govinda Bhagavatpada (IAST Govinda Bhagavatpāda) was the Guru of the Adi Shankara. Little is known of his life and works, except that he is mentioned in all the traditional accounts (Shankara Vijayams) as the teacher of Adi Shankara. He was the disciple of Gaudapada (IAST Gauḍapāda). He is mentioned in the first verse of Adi Shankara’s Prakaraņa grantha (treatise) Viveka Chudamani. He is named after Gaudapada in the Guru Parampara (lineage) of Sringeri Sharada Peetham....

December 31, 2021 · 1 min · TheAum