Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

Vishvambhara Mishra was born at Navadvipa on the full moon of Phalguna, during a lunar eclipse while people were chanting Hari’s name, and was called Nimai. He grew into a brilliant and proud young teacher of nyaya and grammar. At Gaya, where he went to offer pinda for his father, he met Ishvara Puri, received diksha, and came back changed: he wept at the name of Krishna and began the nightly sankirtan in Shrivasa’s courtyard that soon filled the streets of Navadvipa. At twenty-four he took sannyasa from Keshava Bharati at Katwa and became Shri Krishna Chaitanya. He settled at Jagannath Puri, travelled through south India and to Vrindavan, where he sent Rupa and Sanatana Goswami to recover the places of Krishna’s leela. For Gaudiya Vaishnavas he is Krishna himself, come in the mood of Radha to taste her love and to give the Name freely to everyone. He wrote nothing but the eight verses of the Shikshashtakam. His life is told in the Chaitanya Bhagavata and the Chaitanya Charitamrita. He spent his last years at Puri absorbed in the love of Krishna, and in 1534 he passed from the world there.