A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Indian Gaudiya Vaishnava spiritual teacher, founder-acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), and the man who, at sixty-nine years of age in 1965, sailed from Calcutta to New York with seven dollars and a trunk of books to carry the Hare Krishna lineage of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486-1534) to the West. Born Abhay Charan De in 1896 in Calcutta, initiated by his guru Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati in 1933, he received the order to bring Krishna consciousness to the English-speaking world and spent the next twelve years preparing — translating, writing, and finally embarking on the voyage that would establish ISKCON in 1966. By the time of his death in 1977 he had circled the globe fourteen times, founded over a hundred temples, written or translated more than seventy volumes (including the canonical Bhagavad-gītā As It Is and Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam), and trained the disciples who would carry the movement forward. His teaching centers on bhakti-yoga — the path of devotion — and on the chanting of the Hare Krishna mahamantra as the most accessible spiritual practice for the present age (Kali Yuga).