HH Kesava Bharati Dasa Goswami
After graduating in 1968 with honors from UCLA with a BS in Business Management, spending a year as the Assistant to the Studio Manager at Columbia Pictures in Hollywood, and a couple of years pursuing a career as a professional musician in the San Francisco Bay Area, Kenneth Beck, as he was known in those days, embarked on a spiritual quest that led him to a 1972 meeting with his spiritual master, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the Founder-Acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). In 1973 Kenneth was formally initiated and received the spiritual name Kesava Bharati Dasa.
He traveled and preached in America, distributing Srila Prabhupada’s books. He then managed the Radha-Damodar TSKP from 1975 until 1977 when he joined HH Tamala Krishna Goswami to assist him in his service to Srila Prabhupada a few weeks before His Divine Grace departed this world.
On 1 January 1979, Maharaja entered the renounced order of life and received the further title Dasa Goswami. Since then, Kesava Bharati Dasa Goswami has dedicated his life to teaching the science of bhakti-yoga.
He has traveled extensively, having lived in eight countries, including England, Spain, Italy, France, Greece, the Fiji Islands, India, and the United States. In 1994, Maharaja made his base at ISKCON Bhaktivedanta Ashrama in Govardhana, one of the most profound places of pilgrimage in India.
After overseeing the refurbishment of the ashrama, in 1998 Maharaja was asked by Gopiparanadhana Prabhu and HH Sivarama Maharaja to be their English editor. He has since edited 17 volumes of published transcendental literature, including the three-volume first English translation of Srila Sanatana Goswami’s auto commentary on Brhad-bhagavatamrta, translated by ISKCON’s senior Sanskritist Gopiparanadhana Prabhu, and the epic nine volume work on the pastimes of Radha and Krsna, Nava-vraja-mahima, by HH Sivarama Swami. He also edited Our Family Business by Vaisesika Prabhu.
Maharaja has also recorded more than 1200 hours of live readings of Srila Prabhupada’s major works, cover-to-cover including purports, with short reflections, along with the above mentioned Brhad-bhagavatamrta These recordings can be found on the YouTube Channel “Daily Readings of Srila Prabhupada’s Books.” He also completed an audiobook of the entire Sri Caitanya-caritamrta with purports, which was released in 2021.
Currently Maharaja lives in semi-retirement in the UK. He counsels devotees from around the world through the internet, along with those who visit him personally.
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