Yoga Pitha

Yoga Pitha is situated in the Antardwipa & is the appearance place of Sri Chaitanya. This was confirmed by Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura: a 19th century Gaudiya Vaishnava, prolific author and high court judge, who hails from the disciplic lineage starting from Sri Chaitanya himself, and also happens to be the great grand spiritual master of Radhanath Swami.

Bhaktivinoda Thakura personally collected funds to purchase this land and built a small temple here. His son and spiritual successor, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, built the present day temple in 1934.

This place is around a kilometer from ISKCON’s main gate and the main temple houses the deities of Sri Sri Radha Madhava and Lord Chaitanya on the left altar, Sri Gaura Narayana with his two wives Sri Vishnupriya and Sri Lakshmipriya in the central altar.

A few steps to the right of the main altar is a neem tree where Sri Chaitanya appeared. This is why Sri Chaitanya was also known as Nimai in his childhood. Next to the tree is a small hut which has the deities of Jagannatha Misra and Sachimata (Sri Chaitanya’s parents) holding young Nimai on her lap. This is the area where Sri Chaitanya had all of his childhood and boyhood pastimes until the time he took to the renounced order of life.

Radhanath Swami describes some of the most sweet childhood pastimes of Sri Chaitanya at this place:

“When Nimai was just 4 months old, he would cry, and nothing would pacify him, until all the devotees, relatives and friends clapped their hands and chanted the holy names ”Haribol! Haribol!”(Audience clap and chant the holy names) and he would smile. When he would cry, it would break their hearts, because everyone loved him more than their own lives, more than they loved their own family members, their own children, more than they loved all their property. He is the Supersoul, the all attractive, and he was revealing his sweet beauty to these devotees’ hearts. They were intoxicated by seeing little Nimai. Although he was a tiny baby, his moonlike face, his lotus like eyes, his ruby lips, when he smiled upon them, it was a shower of ecstatic nectar that left them drowning in uncontrollable ecstasy. To see him cry was worse than death. To see him smile is the ultimate joy of life. So, throughout the day, people would be ready to run to his side to have kirtan, to make Nimai happy by chanting the holy names.

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare/ Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.

are Rama

In this way, from his infancy, he established the yuga dharma of the congregational chanting of the holy names.”