By the time Narottama Dasa Thakura reached Vrindavana, Lokanatha Gosvami had already lived out most of the events described elsewhere on this site's pages: the long chase after Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the settled years of solitary bhajana, the discovery of Radha-Vinoda at Kishori-kunda. He had also, by this point, endured the loss of much of the community he had grown old alongside — Rupa and Sanatana Goswami had already ended their earthly pastimes, and Lokanatha grieved their passing deeply. It was into this later chapter of his life that Narottama, the son of Raja Krishnananda Datta of Gopalpura in what is now Rajshahi district, Bangladesh, arrived.
This site's own page on Narottama Dasa Thakura's discipleship under Lokanatha Gosvami tells this story in detail from Narottama's side, including Jiva Goswami's role in directing him toward Lokanatha rather than initiating him personally; the account that follows here fills in the same events as they are remembered from Lokanatha's own side of the relationship.
Two Vows in Collision #
Lokanatha had, by this stage of his life, settled firmly into a vow never to accept a disciple at all — consistent with everything else about how he had lived since receiving Radha-Vinoda. Narottama, for his part, made an equally firm vow of his own: he would take initiation from Lokanatha Gosvami, and from no one else. The two vows could not both be honored, and for some time neither man showed any sign of budging. Narottama asked repeatedly; Lokanatha refused just as consistently.
A Year of Service No One Was Meant to See #
Rather than keep asking, Narottama changed his approach. Each night, in secret, he went to the place in the forest where Lokanatha relieved himself and cleaned it thoroughly, by some accounts even preparing fine sifted earth and water so his guru-to-be would have something clean with which to wash afterward. He did this for close to a year without being discovered. When Lokanatha finally noticed that the place was mysteriously being kept clean, his curiosity got the better of him: one night he hid nearby and waited, chanting japa, until he caught the person responsible in the act. Discovering that it was Narottama — the son of a raja, performing the most menial and unglamorous task imaginable, purely in the hope of winning his mercy — Lokanatha was taken aback, and asked him directly what he thought he was doing. Narottama fell at his feet in tears and said, in effect, that his life would be worthless without Lokanatha's mercy.
A Guru's Resolve Softens #
That plain, humble answer accomplished what a year of open requests could not. Moved by Narottama's evident humility and the depth of what he had endured to prove it, Lokanatha's resolve broke, and he agreed at last to initiate him. The ceremony took place, by every account consulted for this page, on the full-moon day (purnima) of the month of Shravana. Narottama became Lokanatha's one and only disciple; no source claims he ever initiated anyone else.
A Guru Sends His Disciple Home #
Having spent his own life in almost total withdrawal from the world, Lokanatha nonetheless recognized in Narottama something rarer than his own temperament: a cultured, capable young man with a genuine gift for dealing with people, not merely for solitary bhajana. Together with Jiva Goswami's own instruction to the wider group of departing preachers, Lokanatha's blessing sent Narottama back toward Bengal to carry the Goswamis' teaching to a part of India Lokanatha himself would never see again — a mission this site's Narottama Dasa Thakura pages describe in full, culminating in the Kheturi festival that helped unite Gaudiya Vaishnavism a generation after Mahaprabhu's disappearance.
A Buried Blessing on the Padmavati #
One further detail links this episode back to Narottama's own childhood, well before the two men ever met. Years earlier, when Nityananda Prabhu was on his way to Puri at Mahaprabhu's order, he is said to have wept in ecstasy at a spot on the banks of the Padmavati river near Kheturi, a place later remembered as Prematila, and to have "buried" the love he felt there for Narottama's future benefit. Only years afterward, when Narottama happened to bathe at that same spot, was he suddenly overcome with divine love strong enough to cut every tie to his father's kingdom and set him on the road to Vrindavana in the first place. Read alongside Lokanatha's own life, the story suggests that Narottama's initiation was, in the eyes of the tradition, being prepared for by more than one acharya long before he ever cleaned a single night's ground in Lokanatha's service.