CHAPTER 3
The Life of Chaitanya
Second Period
Chaitanya’s resolve to abandon the life of a householder was carried into effect secretly at Kātwā, a village not far from Navadvīpa, about the end of the year 1510, when he was 24 years of age.
The sannyāsī who performed the rite of initiation was an ascetic named Keśava Bhāratī, who, like Īśvara Purī, Chaitanya's other guru, belonged to the Mādhva sect.
It seems strange that, for so important a step in his life, Chaitanya should not have sought the guidance of the same teacher who had ushered him into the life of a bhakta.
But forms and ceremonies were of little concern to this seeker after God, and it is quite probable that, once the decision was reached, the Vaishnava sannyāsī nearest at hand was the best.
Although by this act Keśava Bhāratī became Chaitanya’s sannyāsa guru, we hear no more of him.
Evidently he played no vital part in the spiritual experience culminating in the vow of sannyāsa, merely serving as the instrument by which that vow was consummated.
Chaitanya was now a sannyāsi of the Bhāratī order, and his new name was Krishna Chaitanya. Probably the particular order he was joining made no more difference to him than the way in which he became an ascetic.
We read in the Caritamṛta that, when the great scholar, Vāsudeva Sārvabhauma, met the young sannyāsī at Purī soon after this,
he was disappointed that so gifted a man should have entered an order of sannyāsīs of lower rank, and proposed to get him admittance into a higher order:
A disciple of Chaitanya's then replied that the master had little concern about the matter and was indifferent as to the relative orders!