Tripurari

Tripurari
Religion Gaudiya Vaishnavism, Hinduism
Other names Bhaktivedanta Swami Tripurari
Personal
Born March 12, 1949
Teaneck, New Jersey
Senior posting
Based in California
Predecessor A. C. Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada, B. R. Sridhara Dev-Goswami
Religious career
Initiation Diksa–1972, Sannyasa–1975
Post Guru, Sannyasi
Website Sri Caitanya Sanga

Tripurari Swami, also known as Swami BV Tripurari, is an American author, poet, and guru, described as "a prominent master in the Gaudiya Vaishnava lineage", and "one of the leading practitioners of Bhakti-yoga in the West."[1]

Biography

Tripurari was born in 1949 in Teaneck, New Jersey. He devoted his youth to the pursuit of transcendental knowledge and mystic experience. His lifetime of spiritual practice and teaching has brought him notice in spiritual circles around the world and earned the appreciation of scholars and practitioners alike. He has been described as helping "scholars... apprehend more clearly the dynamic nature of the Krsna consciousness movement."[2]

Tripurari met his initiating guru, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, in the spring of 1972.[3] Tripurari relates that he felt as though he had met a long-lost friend, as Prabhupada blessed him with his all-knowing glance. Over the years that followed, Prabhupada showered Tripurari with affection and repeatedly expressed his appreciation for Tripurari's selfless service and ability to inspire others. In 1974 Prabhupada instructed Tripurari in a widely circulated letter,[4] "So you organize freely. You are the incarnation of book distribution. Take the leadership and do the needful." Accordingly, Tripurari has set an example of one who is independently thoughtful and capable of making an insightful literary contribution to the world.

Before accepting sannyasa in 1975, Tripurari Swami was known as Tripurari dasa.[5]

Shortly before Prabhupada's death, he suggested that, should the need arise, his students could receive further instruction from his "godbrother", B. R. Sridhara. Tripurari was present when Prabhupada gave this instruction,[6] however, it was not until several years later, in the midst of the confusion that followed Prabhupada's death,[7] that they would affect the course of Tripurari's spiritual pursuit.

Tripurari expresses his experience of hearing from and serving Sridhara thus: "With the setting of the sun of the manifest pastimes of our beloved preceptor, Srila A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the world became dark. Then suddenly in the shadows of the night the reflected light of the moonlike discourse of Srila B. R. Sridhara Deva Goswami flooded the path with new light and dynamic insight that illumined the inner landscape, leading me to the soul of Srila Prabhupada and Gaudiya Vaisnavism." The association and instructions of B. R. Sridhara profoundly affected Tripurari, and under his guidance, Tripurari began initiating his own students in 1985.

Reviews

In 1998, Yoga Journal gave Tripurari's Aesthetic Vedanta a one-paragraph review. Aesthetic Vedanta In 2002, Bhagavad Gita: Its Feeling and Philosophy, was reviewed in Yoga Journal,[8] and then by Arvind Sharma in 2005 for the Journal of Vaishnava Studies.[9]

Bibliography

References

  1. ↑ Rosen, Steven (2002), Holy war: violence and the Bhagavad Gita, Deepak Heritage Books
  2. ↑ Babhru Dasa 1999
  3. ↑ "Prabhupada Disciple database". Prabhupada.com. Retrieved 2010-01-20. (primary source)
  4. ↑ Prabhupada (12 November 1974), Letter to Tripurari - Bombay
  5. ↑ Dasa, Riddha (2002). Mission in service of His Divine Grace. Visnu Garuda Books. ISBN 1-901593-01-0. Accessed from the Bhaktivedanta VedaBase, published by the Bhaktivedanta Archives "In March 1975, Pusta Krsna Swami traveled to India for the Mayapura festival. (...) Before I could go I had to gain the approval of my authority, Tripurari dasa, the leader of our BBT travelling party. (...) One week later, however, while in Vrndavana, after having received sannyasa initiation from Srila Prabhupada, the now Swami Tripurari finally conceded that it would be a great service opportunity for me to travel to South Africa as a BBT sankirtana representative..."
  6. ↑ Ekstrand & Bryant 2004, pp. 187
  7. ↑ Visnu, Swami. "The guardian of devotion: disappearance and rejection of the spiritual master in ISKCON after 1977".
  8. ↑ Mixed Media, Yoga Journal
  9. ↑ Arvind Sharma review
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