Who is the iMonk?
Bhakti Lalita Akinchan Maharaj abruptly quit his lucrative
Silicon Valley job as a Network Administrator and Webmaster for the biggest
Internet networking company in the world, gave away most of his possessions,
and went to West Bengal, India, to become a sannyasi — an
itinerant monk — in March 2003.
He was accepted as a sannyas disciple, and
received the sannyas mantra from His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad Srila
Bhakti Sundar Govinda Dev-Goswami Maharaj on March 19th, during the
celebration of the Gaura Purnima festival at the worldwide
headquarters of the Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math on the banks of the sacred
Ganges River in Sri Nabadwip Dham — and thus became the first South
African citizen to become a swami: a tridandi-sannyas mendicant
monk.
Akinchan Maharaj was born in Durban, South Africa, in
1953. He became interested in Krishna consciousness after reading
Bhagavad Gita — As It Is by Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami
Maharaj Prabhupad in October 1981. After searching for a guru for two years,
Akinchan Maharaj became a disciple of His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad Srila
Bhakti Rakshak Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj when he received harinama
initiation, and the name Lalita Charan Das, in September of 1983. A month
later, he traveled to the Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math in Nabadwip to attend
Srila Sridhar Maharaj's Vyasa Puja, and he received second
initiation (diksha) from His Divine Grace in October.
While he was in Nabadwip, Akinchan Maharaj met His
Holiness Sripad Bhakti Sudhir Goswami Maharaj, who invited him to the U.S.A.
to work on the layout of the Golden Volcano of Divine Love and other
books by Srila Sridhar Maharaj, published at the Guardian of Devotion Press
in San Jose, California. He lived and worked in San Jose from 1984 to
2003.
iMonk – 2003-2013 – California, USA
http://imonk.net/bio/imonk.html