Srila Bhakti Vinod Thakur
Pranam mantra
vande bhaktivinodam sri-gaura-sakti-svarupakam
bhakti-sastrajna-samrajam radha-rasa-sudha-nidhim
“I offer my obeisance unto Srila Bhakti Vinod Thakur, the embodiment of Sri Gaurasundar’s potency. He is the king of all knowers of the scriptures of pure devotion and an ocean of the nectar of devotion to Srimati Radharani.”
guru-dam grantha-dam gaura-dhama-dam nama-dam muda
bhakti-dam bhuri-dam vande bhakti-vinodakam sada
“I offer my obeisance forever with joy unto the Srila Bhakti Vinod Thakur who is the prolific giver of Sri Guru, the scriptures, the abode of Sri Gaura, the Holy Name, and pure devotion.”
A brief biography
Srila Sachchidananda Bhakti Vinod Thakur, the nineteenth century pioneer of Krishna consciousness, was born in 1838 in Bengal. He worked tirelessly to preserve the spiritual tradition and literature of India; he composed, edited, and published more than 100 books in Sanskrit, Bengali, and English.
The pioneer of pure devotion, it was Srila Bhakti Vinod Thakur who foretold that people the world over would join under the banner of Sri Chaitanya Maharabhu’s Hari-nam-sankirtan [congregational chanting of the Holy Names of Lord Krishna]. By his profuse writings, Srila Bhakti Vinod Thakur infused the current which was to be the renaissance of a devotional civilisation, which had become overgrown with spurious interpretations und misrepresentation.
He advocated exclusive surrender [saranagati] to the service of the Supreme Lord’s pure devotees as the life of devotion, and to this end he composed a great stream of books, prayers, poems, and commentaries in Sanskrit, Bengali, Hindi, English, and other languages, which are now revered by the genuine devotees as scripture. His style of presentation was chiefly analytic, simple, and appealing. He taught that the apparently sophisticated philosophies and doctrines which deviate one to materialism, salvation, voidism, etc. (karma, jnana, sunyavada, etc.) must be abandoned by the true aspirants of devotion; yet, he acknowledged that from the universal standpoint such ‘charming’ distractions served to segregate the insincere from the sincere. Thus, he foresaw that inevitably the intelligentsia of the world must come to appreciate the all-attractive path of divine love given by Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.
The Thakur inaugurated the worship of Lord Chaitanya at the holy site known as Sri Yoga Pith, the advent location of Sri Chaitanyadev in the holy Sri Dham Mayapur.