When Lokanatha reached Nabadwipa and took darshan of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the Lord embraced him warmly and told him to go and live in Vrindavana without delay. Lokanatha understood, from something in the Lord's manner, that Mahaprabhu himself intended to accept sannyasa within days, and he wept at the thought of the Lord's beautiful hair being shaved and of the grief this would cause the devotees of Nabadwipa. Mahaprabhu consoled him, promising they would be reunited in Vrindavana, and Lokanatha — accompanied now by his lifelong companion Bhugarbha Gosvami, who could not bear to see him go alone — set out on the long walk toward Vraja, passing through Rajmahal, Tajpur, Purnia and Lucknow before finally arriving.
A Chase Across Half of India #
What followed was not the settled life of bhajana Lokanatha might have expected. Still burning with separation from Mahaprabhu, he set out for South India the moment he heard the Lord had gone there on pilgrimage after taking sannyasa at Jagannatha Puri — only to learn, on arriving, that Mahaprabhu had already left for Vrindavana. Lokanatha turned back toward Vraja at once, but by the time he reached it, Mahaprabhu had departed again, this time for Prayaga. Heartbroken at having missed the Lord a second time, Lokanatha resolved to leave for Prayaga the very next morning. That night, Mahaprabhu appeared to him in a dream and told him plainly to stop running from place to place and remain in Vrindavana to do his bhajana — adding, by one account, that he had not broken his promise, but had already come to Vrindavana himself, in another form, so that Lokanatha's connection to him would always be maintained there. From that point Lokanatha stayed in Vraja for good, his presence unknown to almost anyone for some time.
A Circle of Goswamis Takes Shape #
Lokanatha's isolation eventually ended when Rupa Goswami, Sanatana Goswami, Gopala Bhatta Goswami, Bhugarbha and others of Mahaprabhu's dearest followers gradually arrived to settle in Vraja as well. Sources describe the reunion in terms of pure affection — devotees of one mind and one heart — and note that among this circle Lokanatha, despite standing outside what later tradition would formalize as the Six Goswamis of Vrindavana, was regarded as the eldest, fully absorbed in prema even by the standards of that extraordinary company. Sanatana Goswami, in the opening verses (mangalacarana) of his own Hari-bhakti-vilasa, paid Lokanatha the honor of naming him directly, alongside Kashishvara Pandit and Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami, as one of the devotees especially dear to Govinda in Vrindavana — a rare instance of Lokanatha's name appearing in a text he did not have veto power over (see The Vow of No Fame for why that veto mattered so much to him elsewhere).
Settling Into Solitude #
Even within this community of renunciants, Lokanatha kept largely to himself. He is remembered as a *viviktananda* Vaishnava, one who takes his pleasure in solitary worship rather than in the company even of like-minded devotees, and the Goswamis of Vrindavana are said to have managed to keep him in their company at all only by considerable effort. It was in this state — settled in Vraja, absorbed in Radha and Krishna, largely unknown even to the pilgrims passing through — that Lokanatha spent the years leading up to his discovery of the Deity that would define the rest of his life (see The Radha-Vinoda Deity).
Arriving Before the Rest #
If the traditional dating of Lokanatha's departure from Bengal — Shaka 1431, or roughly 1509-1510 CE — is accurate, he would have reached Vraja several years before Rupa and Sanatana Goswami were free to join him there; both men remained occupied for some years afterward in the service of the Bengal Sultanate before they were able to renounce their posts and travel to Vrindavana themselves. This is part of why several sources describe Lokanatha as being, by the time the others arrived, already the senior figure among Vraja's Gaudiya Vaishnava renunciants — not senior in initiation or in scholarship, where Rupa, Sanatana and later Jiva Goswami had no equal, but senior simply in how long he had already been living the solitary life all of them were coming to Vrindavana to take up.