Sri Ramakrishna
1836 CE–1886 CE · Modern · Kamarpukur
1836–1886 CE (born 18 February 1836, Kamarpukur; died 16 August 1886, Cossipore)
Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadādhar Chattopādhyāy into a poor Brāhmaṇa family at Kamarpukur in Bengal, became in 1855 a priest at the newly built Kālī temple at Dakshineswar on the Hooghly outside Calcutta, where he spent most of his life. He is celebrated for intense states of devotional ecstasy (samādhi) directed to the Mother Goddess Kālī, and for undertaking, by his own account, the disciplines of several traditions — Tantra, Vaiṣṇava bhakti, Advaitic non-dualism under the monk Totāpurī, and even Islamic and Christian practice — concluding that they lead to the same goal. His simple, parable-rich Bengali teaching, recorded by disciples (notably in the 'Kathāmṛta'/'Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna'), gathered a circle of young followers; chief among them, Narendranāth Datta (Swami Vivekananda) and the householder devotees, would after his death from throat cancer in 1886 establish the Ramakrishna Order. Much of his life is known through devotional sources written by those followers, so the line between attested biography and hagiography should be kept in view.
Did you know?
While Thoreau read the Gita at Walden Pond, he was a boy in Bengal
When Henry David Thoreau sat reading the Bhagavad Gita at Walden Pond (1845–1847), and when his book Walden appeared in 1854, Sri Ramakrishna — born in 1836 in the Bengal village of Kamarpukur — was first a child of about nine and then a young man of eighteen, living halfway around the world.
How we know
Sri Ramakrishna b. 18 Feb 1836, Kamarpukur, Bengal; Thoreau (1817–1862) lived at Walden Pond 4 Jul 1845 – 6 Sep 1847 and cites the Bhagavad Gita in Walden, published 1854; Emerson 1803–1882.
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Kamarpukur
What they did here
Birthplace; born Gadādhar Chattopādhyāy into a poor, pious Brāhmaṇa family and raised here.
About Kamarpukur
Kamarpukur is a village in Hooghly district, West Bengal, in eastern India. It is the birthplace of Sri Ramakrishna (1836–1886), the Bengali mystic and devotee of the goddess Kālī.
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Sri Ramakrishna’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Sri Ramakrishna’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Jewish world
Islamic world
Christian world
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.