BB Govinda Swami

in

 ISKCON gurus and Swamis

Bhakti Bhringa Govinda Swami is a disciple of His Divine Grace A.C.

Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada and a preacher, monk and initiating guru of the
International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

His life is one of active service and preaching as can be seen even from this concise list
of his activities which he personaly described:

May/June 1971 Joined ISKCON at the ISKCON Temple in Buffalo, New York

Received initial training in cooking from Tejiyas das and Gunagrahi Maharaja

Accepted initiation in October 1971

September 1972 moved to ISKCON temple in Toronto Canada

Served as sankirtan devotee, pujari, cook

Visited India first time for the Gaura Purnima festival in 1976

Autumn 1976 til May 1977 helped establish and served in the Govinda’s
Vegetarian Restaurant in Toronto, Canada

June 1977 moved to India

July 1977 til April 1979 served in Vrindavan as cook and pujari at the
samadhi of Srila Prabhupada.

April 1979 til April 1980 served in Athens, Greece

May 1980 til November 1982 served in Israel. Established another ISKCON
vegetarian restaurant.

November 1982 til August 1983 served in Villa Vrindavan, Florence, Italy.
 September 1983 til April 1984 served as temple president Krishna Balaram
Mandir, Vrindavan

May 1984 til September 1984 served in Manchester, England

September 1984 til June 1985 served in the Gurukula at New Mayapur, France

June 1985 til September 1986 served as coordinator of Deity and cooking
standards in the Southern European region.

October/November 1986 visited Vrindavan

December/Jan 1987 stayed in Antwerp, Belgium

Feb til May 1987 preached in SA and Mauritius with HH IDS

June 1987 returned to Vrindavan

Jan 1988 took responsibility as coordinator of ISKCON’s camp in the upcoming

1989 Maha Kumbha Mela

December 1989 established Food for Life in Vrindavan

Served with Food For Life and as a kitchen coordinator and cook in ISKCON
Vrindavan.

1992 visited CIS for the Gauranga Bhajan Band program

1995 began focusing on Central Asia

1997 moved my base from Vrindavan to Kazakhstan

In 1999 BB Govinda Swami established a rural spiritual coomunity near Almaty,

Kazakhstan, and spent many years developing it into a beautiful project
with the temple complex, living facilities for spiritual practitioners,
bio-farm, apple gardens and a herd of cows.

This project, Sri Vrindavan Dham, is famous for hosting many festvals of the Holy
Name
that attract guests from all over Central Asia, Russia, Ukrainia and
other countries. In the middle 2000s the peaceful development turned into
the fight for human rights as the Government decided to take away the land
owned by the community. BB Govinda Swami struggled hard to protect the
rights of people to practice pure and healthy life-style on their own land.

Although he never stopped his world-wide preaching tours, BB Govinda Swami

has greatly increased his travelling activities after 2005. He is well-known for his
music presentations of mantra-meditation, which he does in many attractive
ways. Traditional Bengali kirtan style is combined with the original jazz
tunes and the sounds of saxophone, flute, guitar and violin. Recently he
has performed a number of times with the symphony orchestra.

Chanting the names of God is his life and soul, as well as taking care
of devotees, spiritual practitioners, and giving the taste for self-realization
to other people.

web site: http://govindaswami.com