Thakur Sri Ramakrishna
Sri Ramakrishna was born on 18 February 1836 in a poor and Brahmin family at Kamarpukur in Hoogly district. Kshudiram Chattopadhyay and Chandramani Devi were his parents. His real name was Gadadhar. From his early childhood Sri Ramakrishna was devoted to God. At the age nineteen he became a priest at the Kali Temple. He realised God in different names and forms of the one Supreme Being. Various eminent persons of the 19th Century were tremendously impressed by this Great Spiritual Leader. The foremost among his disciples was Swami Vevikananda, the embodiment of supreme Truth and its manifestations, Sri Ramakrishna breathed his last on 15th August, 1886 at Cossipore, Kolkata. Romain Rolland, a distinguished, world-renowned French writer and Nobel Laureate truly said “His inner life embraced the whole multiplicity of men and Gods.”
“জীবনে শান্তি পেতে মনের ময়লা গুলো ধুয়ে ফেলতে হবে যে বাবা, মনে যতক্ষণ কাম, কোদ্ধ, লোভের বাস সেখানেই সর্বনাস।”
Ma Sarada Devi
Dear Mother! You are full of love! And it is not a flushed and violent love, like ours, and like the world’s, but a gentle peace that brings good to everyone and wishes ill to none. It is a golden rediance, full of play.”
–Sister Nivedita–
(in a letter to the Holy Mother)
Sarada Devi was born on 23 December 1853 as the child of a pious couple, Ramachandra Mukhopadhyay and Shyama Sundari Devi. She had no formal Schooling. Sri Ramakrishna at the age of twenty-three Married her and made here his companion for spititual attainments. He even worshipped her as the Divine Mother. Sarada Devi took care of Thakur’s disciples as her own children.
‘যেমন ফুল নাড়তে নাড়তে ঘ্রাণ বের হয়, চন্দন ঘষতে ঘষতে সুগদ্ধ বের হয়, তেমনই ভগবত্ তত্ত্বের আলোচনা করতে করতে তত্ত্বজ্ঞানের উদয় হয়।’
Owing to her purity, service, love and spiritual enlightenment, Swamiji regarded her as the ideal for women in the modern age. Swamiji wanted to start an independent monastic order for women on the same lines as Ramakrishna Math with Holy Mother as its centre. His dream came true when Sri Sarada Math and Ramakrishna Mission were founded, which works on the lines of Ramakrishna Math and Mission.
Swami Vivekananda
Swami Vivekananda, known in his pre-monastic life as Narendranath Datta, was born in an aristocratic Bengali Kayastha family in Kolkata on 12 January 1863. His father, Vishwanath Datta, was a successful attorney at the Calcutta High Court with interests in a wide range of subjects, and his mother, Bhuvaneshwari Devi, was endowed with deep devotion, strong character and other qualities. A precocious boy, Narendra excelled in music, gymnastics and studies. By the time he graduated from Calcutta University, he had acquired a vast knowledge of different subjects, especially Western philosophy and history. Born with a yogic temperament, he used to practise meditation even from his boyhood, and was associated with Brahmo Movement for some time.