Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu passed through Varanasi twice during the years He travelled after accepting sannyasa, and on both occasions Chandrasekhara Acharya's house was where He was found.
A Brief Meeting on the Way to Vrindavana #
The first contact came in passing. As Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu journeyed toward Vrindavana, He stopped in Varanasi only briefly. Chaitanya-charitamrita records that Tapana Mishra's entire family took the remnants of the Lord's food that day, and that "when news spread that the Lord had come, Candrasekhara came" to see Him. It is a single verse, no more - a courtesy call rather than a stay - but it establishes that Chandrasekhara Acharya was already known to Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu well before the Lord's longer visit on His way back.
Two Months Under One Roof #
That longer visit came after Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had seen Vrindavana and turned back toward Jagannatha Puri. Chandrasekhara Acharya, the text says, had already seen the Lord's arrival in a dream the night before; he rose in the morning and went outside the city to receive Him in person. He then took Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu into his own home and, that same day, invited Balabhadra Bhattacharya - the brahmana companion who had escorted the Lord on His journey - to take lunch there as well. For the full two months that followed, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu lived at Chandrasekhara Acharya's house while accepting His daily meals at Tapana Mishra's residence nearby - an arrangement Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami sets down in a single couplet naming Chandrasekhara Acharya, Tapana Mishra and Tapana Mishra's son Raghunatha Bhattacharya as "the prominent devotees at Varanasi." It is one of the plainest, least embellished facts in the whole of Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, and it is also the clearest evidence of how much trust Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu placed in this one household.
Witnessing the Lord's Victory in Kashi #
This same stay was the occasion of one of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's most consequential public acts in Varanasi: His debate with the Mayavadi sannyasis of the city, led by the renowned scholar Prakashananda Sarasvati, and His subsequent explanation of Srimad-Bhagavatam as the true commentary on Vedanta-sutra at the temple of Bindu Madhava. Chaitanya-charitamrita's own summary of this episode credits a Maharashtrian brahmana devotee, not Chandrasekhara Acharya, with arranging the sannyasis' meeting with the Lord - an important distinction, since later retellings sometimes blur who convened that famous assembly. Chandrasekhara Acharya's part was narrower but still notable: a condensed retelling of the episode records that "Chandrasekhara, Tapana Mishra and Sanatana" were all "extremely pleased" on hearing the arguments and seeing Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's victory, and the accompanying explanation observes that the Lord's only local friendships in Varanasi were with Chandrasekhara Acharya and Tapana Mishra, even as His fame in the city, following that victory, spread far beyond His own small circle. From this same household, in other words, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu quietly set in motion the conversion of an entire city's establishment of Vedanta scholars, without ever changing His address.
Balabhadra Bhattacharya, the brahmana Chandrasekhara Acharya welcomed to lunch that first evening, is worth a note of his own: he was the traveling companion who had cooked for and looked after Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu throughout the demanding journey to and from Vrindavana, and his presence at Chandrasekhara Acharya's table is a small sign of how completely the household had opened itself to the Lord's entire traveling party, not to Mahaprabhu alone.
By the time Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu finally left Kashi for Jagannatha Puri, He had spent two full months as a guest under Chandrasekhara Acharya's roof, converted the city's most prominent Mayavadi sannyasis to devotional service, and - as told in Relationship to Sanatana and Rupa Goswami - received one of the Six Goswamis of Vrindavana at that same front door.
