Podcasts · Religion & Spirituality
Wisdom of the Sages
Raghunath Cappo & Kaustubha Das
300 episodes
Truths about life from the timeless wisdom of the Bhakti-yoga tradition - fun, relevant, and deep. Learn about dharma, yoga, bhakti, and how it relates to all the basic questions of life. This show is about how to live your best life, let go of the external distractions, and uncover the spiritual happiness that lies within the heart as the true nature of the soul.
More about the show
Raghunath and Kaustubha's connection goes back to their teens in the New York Hardcore Punk Scene of the early 80s, through serving together as Bhakti-yogi monks in the 90's, to sharing their experiences in the world of yoga in the 21st century.
Episodes page 1 of 6
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1836: The Absolute Truth Goes to School | Why Krishna Studied Under a Guru
He is the origin of every branch of knowledge, and yet he sits down at the feet of a teacher. In this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha, live from the ISKCON temple in Toronto, follow Krishna and Balarāma as they leave…
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1835: Can You Love Without Possessing? | Siddhartha and the Art of Letting Go
A sage who has found peace beside the river is suddenly undone by love for a son he never knew he had, and Time, in the form of the river, laughs at him. In this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha read from Hermann…
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1834: Hurt Others, Hurt Yourself | The Web of Mutual Obligation
"I'm independent. I don't owe anybody anything." It's the modern dream: happiness without obligation. Moral teachings answer that we're woven into a web of mutual obligation. Deeper spiritual teachings explain why: in…
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1833: If You Don't See God in All, You Won't See God at All | Beyond Religious Ritual
You can attend every service, perform every ritual perfectly, but if you're unkind to the people around you, then you've missed God entirely. In this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha explore why seeing God in every…
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1832: Adapting Ancient Wisdom Without Losing It / Q&A Vol. 302
How does an ancient wisdom tradition survive for thousands of years? It needs teachers who hand it down unchanged, and yet each generation has to hear it in a new way. In this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha take…
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1831: Living Bhakti Among People Who Don't Share It / Q&A Vol. 301
There's a sticky note in Ashley's refrigerator that reads "meat section." She's the only devotee in her home, and between a loving family that doesn't share her path and a day with too few hours, her spiritual practice…
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1830: Bhakti Doesn't Grow in a Hard Heart / Q&A Vol. 300
Someone on the street asks you for money, and you're fairly sure where it will go, and it's not good. Can walking past be compassion, or is it quietly hardening your heart? Raghunath and Kaustubha take live questions…
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1829: A Field Guide to Your Inner Demons | Bhaktivinoda Thakur Decodes Krishna's Pastimes
In the 19th century, British colonial scholars dismissed the pastimes of Krishna as primitive and immoral, and a generation of educated Indians began to believe them. The brilliant bhakti theologian Bhaktivinoda Thakur…
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1828: We Never Learned the Power of Our Thoughts | You Become What You Think About
Be good. Behave. Behave yourself. Growing up, most of us heard plenty about our actions and almost nothing about the thoughts that produce them. In this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha begin with Earl Nightingale's…
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1827: The Emptiness of Peace and the Fullness of Love | Meditation Beyond Stillness
Most of us long for a quiet mind. But what fills it once the noise is gone? On a solo bike ride across upstate New York, Raghunath finds that solitude alone doesn't bring peace. Left to itself, the mind drifts to its…
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1826: Why the Comment Thread Is Killing Your Soul | Speaking Truth to Power
When something is wrong and we say nothing, our own inner light begins to fade. But speaking up only heals when it comes from a place of love. Raghunath and Kaustubha draw on an old Quaker insight: love endures and…
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1825: Our Labels Are Warping Our Vision | The Many Ways We Respond to Krishna
I'm a man. I'm a woman. I'm American. I'm this, I'm that. Every label we carry colors how we see the world, ourselves and God. Yoga starts from a bold premise: our perception is clouded, and it can be cleared. Bhakti…
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1824: You're Not in Control | The Placebo Illusion and the Bhakti Reality
Our sense of security is based on illusion — confirmed by both modern science and the sages of the Bhakti Yoga tradition. A landmark psychiatric study reveals something startling about what actually determines whether…
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1823: Life Is Sacred and Life Is Everywhere | The Earth Personified in Krishna's Pastimes
In the form of a beautiful teenager God enters a new city, meets a hunchback girl in the street, transforms her body and enters a romance with her. On the surface it sounds bizarre. But read with the right eyes, it is…
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1822: Grace in Your Face | Human Nature's Resistance to Unconditional Love
Are we all like wounded animals caught in a fence, biting the hand of the person trying to help? Is spiritual grace something exceptionally rare — and most of us the unfortunate ones who never win the lotto? Or is…
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1821: Krishna Doesn't Need Your Zucchini Bread | But He Wants Your Love
The Bhagavad-gītā sings of Krishna as the Absolute Truth — complete in himself, independent and lacking nothing. He doesn't need anything we can offer him. And yet — he wants our love. Raghunath and Kaustubha explore…
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1820: They Took Him Into Their Hearts Through Their Eyes | Krishna Enters Mathurā
When Krishna and Balarāma entered Mathurā, the women climbed to the rooftops and showered them with flowers. They took him into their hearts through their eyes — embraced him, the embodiment of all ecstasy — and their…
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1819: Daring to Fly Higher | Jonathan Livingston Seagull and the Ascent to Bhakti
In the 1970s the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull became a bestseller. A parable about a gull who refuses to follow the flock and discovers that his true nature is limitless. It serves as an insightful description of…
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1818: Why Nothing in This World Satisfies Us
Voltaire — the greatest writer of the French Enlightenment wrote that there is a dim flame burning in every heart — an intuition that somewhere there is a home, a happiness that is real and lasting. We spend our lives…
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1817: All Rivers Flow to the Sea | Beyond Exclusivism and Hyper-Inclusivism
Westerners who take interest in Eastern Spirituality may be reacting to elements of exclusivism found in Western religion (we're right and everyone else is wrong). The swing to the East may carry all the way to…
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1816: Krishna, Vishnu and the Mystery of the Avatars
Most Vedic literature speaks from a perspective within this universe. But some reveal that this universe is just a tiny bubble among countless others — and invite us to view our place in existence from outside.…
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1815: Watch Until the Dust Settles | Krishna's Love Never Leaves Vrindavan
It is said that Krishna never takes one step out of Vrindavan. But it appears that he does leave, and breaks the hearts of the Gopis. In this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha explore that image the idea of how it is…
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1814: We Crash | God's Opulences and Our Limitations
What happens when an individual soul thinks the gifts they have are their own? Why do we see so many celebrities struggle, even though they have achieved so much success? Raghunath and Kaustubha explore the source of…
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1813: The Philosopher vs the Mystic | Understanding the Passion of the Gopīs
To the philosopher, the weeping of Krishna's lovers looks like ordinary suffering. To the mystics it's the culmination of the highest knowledge. Evelyn Underhill — first woman to lecture in theology at Oxford — said…
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1812: The Love Sewed in Every Stitch | Dolly Parton and the Bhagavad Gīta
It's not the coat of many colors that mattered. It was the love her momma sewed into every stitch. Dolly Parton understood something the Bhagavad Gīta states plainly: offer me a leaf, a flower, a little water — but…
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1811: Proust's Madeleine and Krishna's Footprints | The Power of the Senses to Transport You
A taste, a smell, a place, a song — something dormant rises suddenly from the depths. The Vedic tradition calls this Udīpana — stimuli that transport you. But where? Raghunath and Kaustubha explore that question…
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1810: Beneath Every Fear Is the Fear of Death
Anxiety, OCD, eating disorders, panic disorder, depression – beneath the specific symptoms of almost every mental health condition there is a fear of death at the root. This is the conclusion of a landmark study that…
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1809: The Fish in the Water Is Thirsty | Kabir and the Departure of Gus
"I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty. You don't grasp the fact that what is most alive of all is inside your own house, and you walk from one holy city to the next with a confused look." Kabir —…
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1808: Everything on Earth Has a Purpose | Mourning Dove's Dharma
"Everything on the earth has a purpose. Every disease, an herb to cure it. And every person, a mission." Morning Dove — the first Native American women to publish a novel — called this the Indian theory of existence.…
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1807: We're All Kings for a Moment | King Canute and the Force of Time
Commonly people speak of time as measurements – days, months, years, etc. Philosophers speak of time as the force that moves — and ultimately crushes — what we measure. The Viking King of England, Canute, said: "Let…
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1806: Low Self-Esteem and a Big Ego | Mike Tyson and the Keśī Demon
Low self-esteem and a big ego are two sides of the same coin. Mike Tyson saw it— there was "Iron Mike," the undefeatable persona built for the ring. And then there was the real confused person underneath. The ego can…
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1805: The Humility and Heroism of Accepting Your Fate
Mariano Rivera — the greatest closer in baseball history — was willing to teach his rivals exactly how to throw his most devastating pitch. He knew that, regardless of their strength or skill, unblessed they were…
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1804: The Love Is Gone | Gandhi on Warped Religion
People use religion it to feel superior, or to protect their position. The name and rituals remain. But the love is gone. "What passes as Christianity is a negation of the Sermon on the Mount." Gandhi wasn't rejecting…
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1803: Everything Is Nothing | George Harrison and the Krishna Mantra
You need people who have everything to show you that everything is nothing. George Harrison had wealth, fame, mansions, cars — everything material desire could want. And he said just sitting down and chanting the Hare…
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1802: No One Truly Knows Me | The Loneliness Epidemic and Bhakti Vedānta
The majority of Americans say no one truly knows them. Research shows that warm, real connection correlates directly with physical health and peace of mind. We are relational beings by nature. The question is whether…
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1801: The World Responds to Krishna's Beauty
Many spiritual traditions lack a personal conception of the Divine. Other's do, but offer little description of what that means. The Bhakti tradition's Srimad Bhagavatam goes further — painting an incredibly detailed…
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1800: I'm Coming Out!
Episode 1800. To celebrate, Raghunath and Kaustubha open the floor to the Wisdom of the Sages community — sharing the stories of the moment they told family, friends and spouses: I'm a Hare Krishna. Funny, vulnerable,…
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1799: Give Me a God That Sings and Dances | Was Nietzsche Looking for Krishna?
"I would believe only in a God who knows how to dance." Nietzsche didn't reject God — he rejected a God who was solemn, heavy and joyless. What he wanted was a God with joy in him. He had no idea that on the other side…
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1798: Beauty: Blessing or Curse? | Dostoevsky and the Heart of Man
Studies show that beautiful people earn more, get hired faster, and receive lighter sentences in court. Beauty is power. But Dostoevsky saw the danger: "God and the devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the…
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1797: The Diametric Opposite of Lust | The Rāsa Līlā Completes
How does meditating on Krishna's romantic pastimes conquer lust? Not through repression — through a higher meditation. In classical yoga, the very first demand is to root out every vestige of erotic thought. With the…
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1796: Prabhupāda Made New York a Holy Place | ISKCON at 60
Sixty years ago Śrīla Prabhupāda arrived in New York City — not by accident, but by design. He understood that what happens in New York radiates out to the world. In this special episode Raghunath and Kaustubha are…
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1795: The Absurdity of Imitation on the Spiritual Path
When we first find the spiritual path, we imitate. It's natural. We put on the costume before we've done the inner work. We adopt the style before we've absorbed the substance. We copy what we see in the saints and the…
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1794: Jñāna & Bhakti: Both Bring Detachment, One Does It Beautifully
"Love separates all things from the soul." Meister Eckhart — fourteenth century Christian mystic, so radical the Pope investigated him for heresy — arrived at the same place as the Bhakti Vedāntins. Both jñāna and…
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1793: The Highest Transcendence Through Passionate Love | The Rāsa Dance Begins
A first reading of the Rāsa Līlā might suggest the gopīs' love is selfish, irresponsible, even unethical. But looking closer one can find the highest transcendence attained not through grinding austerity but through…
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1792: How Do You Know What Krishna Wants Next? / Q&A Vol. 299
Live from the Wisdom of the Sages annual Tuscany retreat, three questions that go to the heart of the practice. How do we deepen intimacy in bhakti without imitating it? How do you reconcile respect and resentment…
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1791: Parents, Teenagers, Codependency and Mercy / Q&A Vol. 298
Q&A Live from the Wisdom of the Sages annual Tuscany retreat. How does a bhakti practitioner maintain boundaries with a parent whose behavior has been harmful — without abandoning dharma or their own wellbeing? How do…
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1790: How Do You Know You're Advancing? / Q&A Vol. 297
Live from the Wisdom of the Sages annual Tuscany retreat, Raghunath and Kaustubha take questions from their live audience. Four questions: When Krishna takes something away — is it punishment or love? How do you know…
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1789: The Debt Krishna Cannot Repay | Arthur Ashe and the Signature of Real Love
That is the signature of real love — not what you get out of it, but how impossible it feels to ever pay it back. Arthur Ashe, dying, wrote to his young daughter: "You gave me so much happiness I can never repay you."…
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1788: The Gopīs' Love | The Complete, Concentrated Form of Yogic Awareness
The yogī sits for years, disciplining the mind, trying to bring scattered awareness to a single point of focus. In this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha trace how Śukadeva repeatedly frames the gopīs' intimate love…
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1787: What Are You Exchanging Your Life For? | Thoreau and the Gopī Gīta
Henry David Thoreau wrote, "The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it." With every choice, we're trading the moments of our life for something. The Vedic tradition asks: what is it actually worth…
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