About the Author
Radhamadhav Das is a researcher, writer and educator. He lives in Sri Vrindavan Dham with his wife and daughter. He served as a monk for seventeen years and as a householder for three years (in the classical Vedic system, most monks don’t take vows of life-long celibacy and eventually get married).
Radhamadhav Das is presently serving as the founder of the Sublime Union, as a co-founder and educator of the Vanamali rewilding and reforesting NGO, as a Yoga tour facilitator and Yoga teacher, as a columnist of the Yoga Life Magazine and as a visiting lecturer in various universities. He is a disciple of the great Bhakti Yoga master Srila Bhakti Ballabh Tirtha Goswami Maharaj, who served as the President of the World Vaishnava Association and wrote the classic Sri Chaitanya: His Life and Associates.
Radhamadhav Das was born in rural Switzerland in 1980 into a multi-cultural family. His Swiss mother is a doctor and former state council of Zurich and his Malaysian father co-founded Interwind, setting up the first large-scale wind turbines in Switzerland. After studying environmental science at the ETH Zurich (Federal IT), Radhamadhav Das taught at colleges in Zurich and Bern. In the holistic school Ecole d’Humanite, he taught networked science, biology, mathematics, sound engineering, Batik painting, and martial arts. He obtained a PhD in philosophy from the Florida Vedic College.
He has been living in and travelling across India for fifteen years, practicing and teaching Bhakti Yoga and classical Ashtanga Yoga. In 2oo1 he studied Yoga based on the classical samadhi-centered Ashtanga Yoga of Patanjali in Chennai and then deepened his practice in solitude in the Himalayan mountains. From 2003-2005 he studied and served at the New Jagannath Puri Dham Temple Zurich and Bhakti Sanga Bern.
Thereafter, he moved to India, where he became the personal servant of the late Dr. Fakir Mohan Das Prabhu, who was the most eminent scholar on Gaudiya Vaisnava culture in Orissa and on Srila Bhaktivinode Thakur. He was known for rediscovering and serving Srila Bhaktivinode Thakura’s ancestral Radha-Madhava Deities. Radhamadhav Das was fortunate to serve as Their Pujari and continues to do so when They visit Vrindavan every Kartik month. He also assisted Dr. Fakir Mohan Prabhu in completing his D. Lit thesis entitled “The Origin and Development of Gaudiya Vaisnavism in Orissa.”
In 2007 he completed his Bhakti-shastri course in the Srimad-Bhagavata Vidyapitham in Govardhan, where he also studied Sanskrit, Srimad-Bhagavatam and Tattva-Sandarbha. Sri Aindra Prabhu, the founder of the 24 hours kirtan in the Krishna-Balaram temple in Vrindavan, taught him Bhakti-rasamrita-sindhu and gave him his blessings to follow his heart and take first and second initiation from Srila Bhakti Ballabh Tirtha Goswami Maharaj.
After his initiation in Mayapur in 2009, he traveled with his spiritual master across India for five years. Besides assisting him as his personal servant, he recorded and web-casted his lectures, edited and translated his books and photographed his perfect example of pure devotion. Srila Tirtha Maharaj instructed him to take care of the foreign devotees, to carefully study all devotional books, to complete his PhD thesis on Sri Caitanya’s acintya-bhedabheda-darsana and to present the science of devotion to the educated circles. During his association with his spiritual master, he also spent a lot of time with Srila Bhakti Vijnana Bharati Goswami Maharaja, the Chief Adviser of the World Vaishnava Association.
In 2014, Radhamadhav Das won the Audarya Award of Benevolence for his book Unity in Diversity. He initially started to compile this book at the request of the Director of the Bhaktivedanta Instititute, H. H. Bhaktisvarup Damodar Maharaj (Dr. T. D. Singh), to present the school of thought of Sri Caitanya in a scientific way. Around that time, his spiritual master decided to withdraw from the external world and entered a state of half-samadhi. He entered full samadhi in April 2017.
Radhamadhav Das is also working in various eco projects, for which he was awarded the 2016 Munger Raj Award and the 2021 Vrindavan Kumbha Mela Green Award for sustainable development. To raise global eco-awareness, he is teaming up with VR producers in Hollywood to make a VR experience of Mother Earth, for which he has composed the song “I am Your Mother” as well as the script.
He is also working on a new book about the inner connection of Lord Caitanya and Lord Jagannatha focusing on Krishna’s empathic experience of Srimati Radharani’s super-excellent love for Him. Although this particular union in separation lies at the core of Sri Caitanaya’s inner journey, it is still waiting to be unfolded more and more to the devotee community.
Radhamadhav Das is presently serving as the main editor and commentator of the English translation of the book Imlitalā Mahātmya by Śrīla Bhakti Saraṅga Gosvāmī Mahārāja. It gives valuable insights on the connection of Gaura-lila within Vrindavan.
Nectar Pot – Its Story and Vision
Whenever devotees from all over the world would visit our sanga, they would ask me to copy recorded lectures, kirtans, soft books and other nectar for them. Since I have a large collection I ended up spending countless nights copying data unto hard-discs.
One day I started calling the discs Nectar Pots, because ultimately we should relish all this nectar in the nectar pot of our heart. Krsna steals butter from the gopis‘ pots and He relishes the prema-rasa in the nectar pots of His devotees‘ hearts.
Once they started relishing the nectar, they came back begging for more and wanted the latest nectar and I spent extra time cross-checking what they already had and what not. So the idea was to take Nectar Pot online. I purchased the domain nectarpot.com and was planning to keep on uploading nectar. Due to other commitments, this hasn’t taken off yet and I have used the domain for personal publications, which could easily be shifted to a sub-site.
In fact, that was the idea – that every member has an account and a personal platform with a profile that contains all their skills (e. g. expertise in a particular field of bhakti, language, healing, professional skills, etc), interests ( e. g. Hindi kirtans) needs (e. g. looking for Bangla to English translator in India), publications, links, etc. The Nectar Pot Bee Dance algorithm then acts like bees who come to the hive and show-dance to others where some newly discovered nectar matching their profile is waiting for them. Giving and taking is both nectar in bhakti, so both will be suggested to the members. Similar algorithms are used by platforms like LinkedIn.
Through Buddy Press we can have a dedicated Gaudiya social media platform without all the downsides of Facebook et al, and through open source Wiki we can have our own Gaudiya Wiki. However, we will tailor it in such a way as to minimize conflicts. Instead of putting edit against edit, we will provide parallel versions of Wiki entries on the same topic, allowing for a coverage of all stakeholders‘ opinions. This will provide an interesting one-stop research tool.
Every entry has a blog attached where Nectar Pot members can comment (contesting comments are limited to one comment with a link to a separate article and blog dedicated to debate, unless the creator invites debate). Membership is free but binds one to follow guidelines and etiquette, allowing admins to warn members, delete comments and suspend accounts.
The Nectar Pot library will systematically categorize all Gaudiya and related media in one space and provide links to where the nectar can be found, be it on other websites, Google drive or YouTube, etc. It will be searchable and browse-able by category. All member profiles (if permission is granted by the member) will be searchable too, so I can e. g. search for an English speaking parikrama guide in Assam. Of course, if I enter the same as a need then the Bee Dance algorithm will automatically find it or notify me once it becomes available.
Life is short, so I’m sharing this here with all devotees. In case I happen not to see this come to fruition, others hopefully will. Radhe-Syam!
