Sri Ramakrishna

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.