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Gaudiya Vaishnavism

Also Known As Chaitanya Vaishnavism · Bengali Vaishnavism · Gaudiya Vaishnava
Hinduism

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Origin 1486 to 1534

Gaudiya Vaishnavism is the tradition of Krishna devotion that grew from Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in early sixteenth century Bengal. It holds that Krishna is the supreme form of God rather than an incarnation of Vishnu, that Radha's love for him is the highest religious condition, and that congregational chanting of the divine names is the practice appointed for this age. Its theology, worked out by the six Goswamis of Vrindavan, is called achintya bheda abheda, inconceivable simultaneous oneness and difference between God and the soul.

Facts
Origins
Origin Period
1486 to 1534 1
Place of Origin
Bengal, in the early sixteenth century. 1
Founder
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, 1486 to 1534 1
Organisation
Governance
Authority in a living teacher and their succession 1
Its own record names its founding teacher Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and the six Goswamis of Vrindavan, matching Vaishnavism, already carried as guru-lineage.
Ordination
Authority conferred by initiation rather than by ordination 1
Its own record states authority runs "in a living teacher and their succession," the same guru-disciple diksha structure already carried this way for Shri Vidya and Nath Sampradaya.
Status
Status Today
Living tradition, practised today 1
Belief
Defining Doctrinal Position
Achintya bhedabheda: inconceivable oneness and difference 1
Doctrinal Position Detail
Achintya bheda abheda: inconceivable simultaneous oneness and difference between God and the soul 1
Position Profile
Key Text
The Bhagavata Purana and the Chaitanya Charitamrita, its principal hagiographical and theological text. 1
Trajectory
Membership Over Time
ISKCON, Gaudiya Vaishnavism's largest global organization, reports about one million congregational members worldwide alongside roughly 10,000 formally initiated temple members, a two-tier structure dating to a shift toward congregational membership in the 1990s. 2
Membership Figure As Of
2019-01-01 2
Basis of the Membership Figure
Church-Reported Rolls 2
Practice
Liturgical Language
Sanskrit 1
Its theology, worked out by the six Goswamis of Vrindavan, is textual Sanskrit scholarship, matching Vaishnavism, already carried as sanskrit.
Liturgical Language
The vernacular 1
Congregational chanting of the divine names is its appointed practice, matching Vaishnavism, already carried as vernacular.
Reach
Adherents Today
The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), the tradition's largest global organization, reports about one million congregational members worldwide and roughly 10,000 formally initiated temple members, per a Religion Media Centre factsheet; Gaudiya Vaishnavism as a whole has no single worldwide census, since adherence continues through many additional maths, temples and gurus outside ISKCON. 2
Learn More
The Six Goswamis and the Theology of Rasa

Chaitanya wrote almost nothing. Eight verses are attributed to him and no systematic work, and the theology of the tradition was produced by six scholars he sent to Vrindavan to recover the sites associated with Krishna and to put the teaching in order. Rupa and Sanatana Goswami were brothers who had held office under the sultan of Bengal; Jiva Goswami, their nephew, wrote the philosophical treatises; Gopala Bhatta, Raghunatha Das and Raghunatha Bhatta completed the six.

Their central innovation is the treatment of religious emotion through the categories of Sanskrit dramatic theory. Rupa Bhaktirasamritasindhu takes rasa, the tasted flavour of an emotion that an audience experiences, and applies it to devotion, sorting the relationships a devotee may have with Krishna into a graded set: the neutral, the servant, the friend, the parent and the lover, each more intimate than the last. The devotion is not preparation for knowledge but the goal itself, and its highest form is the love of the cowherd women of Vrindavan, and above theirs the love of Radha.

Jiva Goswami supplied the metaphysics under it, the doctrine that God and the soul are simultaneously one and different in a way the mind cannot reconcile. The inconceivability is doing real work: it is not an evasion of the contradiction but the claim that a relation between the infinite and the finite is not the kind of thing that resolves.

The Name, the Street, and the Twentieth Century Missions

The practice appointed for the present age is the chanting of the names of God, and the tradition means this literally rather than as one option among several. Sankirtana, congregational chanting with drum and cymbals, was performed in public processions in Chaitanya lifetime and drew people who would not have been admitted to a temple, which is part of why the movement spread across Bengal and Odisha as fast as it did. The sixteen word maha-mantra of Hare, Krishna and Rama is its standard form.

The tradition passed through a difficult period in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when a number of groups claiming Gaudiya descent were regarded within the tradition as having departed from it. The reform that produced the modern movement came from Bhaktivinoda Thakur, a Bengali magistrate who wrote extensively and worked to establish which lineages and texts were authoritative, and from his son Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, who founded the Gaudiya Math in the early twentieth century, took sannyasa outside the usual channels, and built a preaching organisation with printing presses.

One of his disciples, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, went to New York in 1965 and founded the International Society for Krishna Consciousness the following year. That is how a sixteenth century Bengali devotional tradition became visible on Western streets, and ISKCON is now one branch among several, alongside the Gaudiya Math lines and the older communities of Bengal, Odisha and Vrindavan.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Gaudiya Vaishnavism directly: "visualisation practice within Gaudiya Vaishnavism, drawing on the tradition's own textual sources."

ISKCON is one branch of Gaudiya Vaishnavism and not the whole of it.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)

The Gaudiya Vaishnava movement's emergence is recorded separately as an event.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)

Belongs to Tradition

Hinduism, Religions

Branch Of

Hinduism, Religions

A Vaishnava tradition, holding Krishna as the supreme form of God.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)

Contains

ISKCON is a twentieth century institutional movement within the Gaudiya Vaishnava lineage, founded by Prabhupada on a claimed disciplic succession from Chaitanya through Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur.

Source Hare Krishna TransformedE. Burke Rochford Jr.

Founded By

Chaitanya, Figures

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, whose teaching and public sankirtana in early sixteenth century Bengal gave Gaudiya Vaishnavism its distinctive theology and practice.

Source A Survey of HinduismKlaus K. Klostermaier

Holds Element

Dhrupad, Sacred Sound

Dhrupad was sung in the Vaishnava temples of Braj before it became a court genre, and the temple repertory survives beside the concert one.

The hill Krishna is held to have lifted is circumambulated barefoot over a route of some twenty-one kilometres, and the practice is central to Gaudiya devotion.

Held to be the practice prescribed for the present age, and counted on tulsi beads.

Chaitanya spent the last eighteen years of his life at Puri, and the temple and the chariot festival are at the centre of the tradition he founded.

Chaitanya took the singing of the names into the street, and public congregational chanting has been the movement's outward form ever since.

Mathura, Sacred Sites

The town is held to be Krishna's birthplace and is the northern centre of the devotional tradition Chaitanya founded.

Objects and Practices of This Tradition

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)

The inconceivable simultaneous oneness and difference of Krishna and his energies is Gaudiya Vaishnavism's foundational theological position, taught by Chaitanya and systematized by Jiva Goswami.

Source A Survey of HinduismKlaus K. Klostermaier

The Bhagavata Purana is Gaudiya Vaishnavism's primary scriptural authority, supplying the theology of Krishna's pastimes that Chaitanya's teaching and the Chaitanya Charitamrita both draw on.

Source A Survey of HinduismKlaus K. Klostermaier

The Chaitanya Charitamrita is Gaudiya Vaishnavism's definitive account of its founder's life and teaching, read alongside the Bhagavata Purana.

Source A Survey of HinduismKlaus K. Klostermaier
Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)

Manipuri Vaishnavism follows the Chaitanya, Gaudiya, school specifically, embraced as the state religion of the Meitei people under King Gareeb Niwaz in 1717.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

A devotional song written from within Harrison's own practice under a Gaudiya Vaishnava teacher, its verses built directly around the Hare Krishna maha-mantra, not a passing reference to the tradition.

Congregational chanting as the prescribed practice of this age is Chaitanya's own central teaching, carried forward across the whole Gaudiya lineage.

Source A Survey of HinduismKlaus K. Klostermaier

Position On

Ahimsa, Doctrines

Non-injury is held in Gaudiya Vaishnavism, and vegetarian diet follows from the requirement that food be offered to Krishna before it is eaten.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Atman, Doctrines

The self is held in Gaudiya Vaishnavism to be real, eternal, and eternally an infinitesimal part of Krishna, distinct from him and never identical with him.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Avidya, Doctrines

Ignorance is held in Gaudiya Vaishnavism as forgetfulness of one's relationship to Krishna.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Bhakti, Doctrines

Devotion is the means and the goal in Gaudiya Vaishnavism, and the tradition's distinctive contribution is its ranking of the relationships in which it can be practised.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Brahman, Doctrines

Brahman is held in Gaudiya Vaishnavism to be Krishna, and the impersonal absolute is treated as the least complete of three aspects under which the same reality is known.

Dana, Doctrines

Giving is held in Gaudiya Vaishnavism, and the distribution of food offered to Krishna is its characteristic form.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Dharma, Doctrines

Dharma is held in Gaudiya Vaishnavism, and the tradition places devotion above the ordinary duties as the eternal function of the soul.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)

The teaching lineage is central in Gaudiya Vaishnavism, and initiation into a line running back through Chaitanya is what makes a practitioner a member of it.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)

A chosen deity is held in Gaudiya Vaishnavism, and the choice is not open: Krishna with Radha is the supreme reality.

Jnana Yoga, Doctrines

Knowledge is valued in Gaudiya Vaishnavism and is explicitly not the means: knowledge pursued for its own sake is held to obstruct devotion, and devotion is held to bring the knowledge worth having with it.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Karma, Doctrines

Karma is held in Gaudiya Vaishnavism, and the tradition holds that devotional service cuts through it rather than merely working it off.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Lila, Doctrines

The play is central in Gaudiya Vaishnavism rather than incidental: Krishna's activity in Vrindavan is held to be the eternal reality the world is a shadow of, not a symbol of something else.

Mahapurusha, Doctrines

The supreme person is held in Gaudiya Vaishnavism, with the particular claim that Krishna is that person in his own right rather than an incarnation of Vishnu.

Moksha, Doctrines

Liberation in Gaudiya Vaishnavism is entry into Krishna's eternal play in a relationship the soul is constituted for, and the tradition ranks that above the impersonal liberation it regards as a lesser attainment.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)

Merit and demerit are held in Gaudiya Vaishnavism.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Paramatman, Doctrines

The indwelling supreme self is held in Gaudiya Vaishnavism as the second of the three aspects, above the impersonal absolute and below Krishna himself.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Samsara, Doctrines

Transmigration is held in Gaudiya Vaishnavism as fully real.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Samskara, Doctrines

Latent impressions are held in Gaudiya Vaishnavism.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)

The three strands are held in Gaudiya Vaishnavism as the constitution of the material world, with devotional service held to be beyond all three.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Vedanta, Doctrines

Vedanta is held in Gaudiya Vaishnavism, and the tradition's reading of it is the inconceivable difference and non-difference the Gosvamis worked out, which refuses both the non-dualist and the dualist settlement.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)

Held Differently

Samadhi, Doctrines

Collected absorption is held in Gaudiya Vaishnavism as absorption in Krishna, reached through the chanting of the names rather than through seated withdrawal.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Sat-Chit-Ananda, Doctrines

Being, consciousness and bliss are held in Gaudiya Vaishnavism as real qualities of Krishna.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Sources
1. Encyclopedia of Hinduism
Denise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.), Routledge, 2008View the Source
2. Factsheet: Iskcon and the Hare Krishna Movement (Religion Media Centre, 2019)
Religion Media Centre, 2019View the Source
Krishna: The Beautiful Legend of God (Srimad Bhagavata Purana, Book X)
Edwin F. Bryant (trans.), Penguin Classics, 2003View the Source
A Survey of Hinduism
Klaus K. Klostermaier, State University of New York Press, 2007View the Source
An Introduction to Hinduism
Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press, 1996the chapters on Vaishnava devotion and the Bengali traditionView the Source
Hare Krishna Transformed
E. Burke Rochford Jr., New York University Press, 2007the twentieth century transmission of the tradition to the WestView the Source
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