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 2 of 6

  1. 1787: What Are You Exchanging Your Life For? | Thoreau and the Gopī Gīta

    · 56 min · Episode 1787

    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…

  2. 1786: Our Love and Prayers for the People of Venezuela

    · 59 min · Episode 1786

    This episode begins with a sober heart. A dear member of the Wisdom of the Sages community was caught in the middle of the earthquake that struck Caracas — calling from the nineteenth floor of her building as it shook,…

  3. 1785: Direction Will Come to You | Phil Jackson and the Heart of Bhakti

    · 55 min · Episode 1785

    Phil Jackson won eleven championship rings — the most of any coach in NBA history. His secret wasn't more effort. It was less noise. "If you have a clear mind and an open heart, you won't have to search for direction.…

  4. 1784: "If Creation Is Play of Brahman, Why all the Suffering?" | Bhakti-Vedānta and Līlā

    · 1 h 01 min · Episode 1784

    If creation is God's play, why do we suffer? It's one of the oldest questions in philosophy — and the Srimad Bhagavatam answers it through the Rāsa Līlā. A full cup doesn't drink. It overflows. Krishna doesn't enjoy…

  5. 1783: Keeping the Bhakti Romance Alive / Q&A Vol. 296

    · 1 h 01 min · Episode 1783

    How do you keep bhakti fresh, sweet and progressive for the rest of your life — fueled by genuine love rather than institutional guilt or a rigid checklist? In this special Q&A episode recorded live in Torgau, Germany…

  6. 1782: Nothing Can Remain Hidden | Da Vinci, Manu and Radharani

    · 58 min · Episode 1782

    The wheels of justice grind slow, but fine. The truth eventually rises to the top. "Truth at last cannot be hidden. Nothing is hidden under the sun." Leonardo da Vinci wrote those words in his notebooks. Thousands of…

  7. 1781: The Hunger for Beauty | A Signal from the Soul

    · 53 min · Episode 1781

    Every beautiful thing we encounter is a signal pointing somewhere. Our hunger for beauty isn't random — it can be read as a signal. In this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha explore where that signal leads — through the…

  8. 1780: Bhakti's Sacred Longing | In Separation, the Beloved Is Found Everywhere

    · 1 h 01 min · Episode 1780

    How can longing be ecstasy? How can absence be the deepest form of presence? This is one of the great mysteries of love — and bhakti yoga illuminates it. When Ram banished Sita, it looked like abandonment. When Krishna…

  9. 1779: Divine Madness | The Samādhi of the Gopīs

    · 1 h 00 min · Episode 1779

    What looks like madness from the outside is the whole goal of yoga from the inside. Jacopone da Todi — Crazy Jim from Todi — found that every door of the senses leads straight to God. The gopīs of Vrindavan, wandering…

  10. 1778: No Monopoly on God | Exclusivism and the God Who Withdraws

    · 54 min · Episode 1778

    The moment you think your group owns God is the moment He begins to slip away.understood this. When Bill Wilson, founder of AA and a devout Christian, wrote the program that would help millions get sober, he kept it…

  11. 1777: Nothing Compares 2 U | The Gopīs' Message of Surrender

    · 41 min · Episode 1777

    William James — the father of American psychology — spent years studying mystical and religious experiences across every tradition. What he found surprised him. When a person is seized by something bigger than…

  12. 1776: Authority Descends from the Author | The Gopīs Reveal the Highest Dharma

    · 49 min · Episode 1776

    The Vedic tradition lays out dharma with remarkable precision — the duties of a wife, a husband, a parent, a child, a citizen. The gopīs of Vrindavan take it deeper. In this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha explore the…

  13. 1775: When Krishna Closes One Door He Opens Another / Q&A Vol. 295

    · 1 h 00 min · Episode 1775

    Sometimes the thing that feels like a loss turns out to be the setup for something far better. In this special retreat Q&A from Super Soul Farm, Raghunath and Kaustubha share stories of how previous chapters in their…

  14. 1774: What is a Pure Devotee? / Q&A Vol. 294

    · 1 h 04 min · Episode 1769

    Recorded live at the Wisdom of the Sages retreat at SuperSoul Farm, this Q&A episode opens with a question that sits at the heart of bhakti — what does it actually mean to be a pure devotee? From there, Raghunath and…

  15. 1773: Let Your FOMO Be for the Divine | Saint Augustine and the Gopīs

    · 56 min · Episode 1773

    There is a restlessness in the human heart that nothing in this world can satisfy. Saint Augustine called it the clue to our true nature — we were made for God, and until we find that, the searching never stops. Every…

  16. 1772: Everyone Worships Something | Free Will and the Object of Our Affection

    · 56 min · Episode 1772

    Everyone worships something. The rock star, the ideology, the bottle of wine, the beautiful person across the room. Dostoevsky identified it as an incessant, painful longing: so long as man remains free, he strives for…

  17. 1771: The Weakness of Willpower & The Power of Attention

    · 59 min · Episode 1771

    Willpower is fundamentally the wrong tool for inner transformation. French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil argued that attention — not discipline or force of will — is the true engine of inner change. Raghunath and…

  18. 1770: The Mind of the Buddha, The Mind of the Gopī

    · 55 min

    Buddhism and Bhaktivedanta share a lot of common ground. Both embrace the same radical insight — that the mind is the architect of our experience, and that what we feed it determines the life we live. But in this…

  19. 1769: Answer the Call of the Heart | The Bhaktivedanta Path of Renunciation

    · 1 h 01 min · Episode 1769

    Life is kind of empty if there is not something so meaningful and beautiful that we feel a calling to give everything out of love. We spend our lives looking for that higher cause — or feeling empty if we haven't found…

  20. 1768: From Beauty to Absolute Beauty | Plato, Krishna and the Rāsa Dance

    · 57 min · Episode 1764

    Most people think of God simply as a witness or facilitator of their own romantic affairs. The Bhaktivedanta tradition reveals that the conjugal love experienced by human beings is a mere reflection of a spiritual…

  21. 1767: Entering the Rāsa Dance with the Eye of Love

    · 55 min · Episode 1767

    Every love story ever told — the Song of Solomon, Layla and Majnun, the Bollywood heroine running toward her true love — is a shadow of this. The desire for intimacy with the divine is the deepest longing in the human…

  22. 1766: When the Ego Steps Back | The Existential Sense of Being Blessed

    · 53 min · Episode 1766

    "The gift of gratitude. In order to feel it, your ego has to take a backseat." A shift that happens when the ego stops driving. In this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha explore how gratitude isn't just an etiquette —…

  23. 1765: Robert De Niro, Vedanta and the Art of Being Chill

    · 57 min · Episode 1765

    "Just be calm. When things are going well, be calm. Don't think you're on top of the world. Everybody is dispensable." The Bhagavad-gita calls it samathvam. Robert De Niro calls it being chill. Evenness of mind, steady…

  24. 1764: Speaking Truth to Power with Love

    · 54 min · Episode 1764

    On the appearance day of the fascinating Avatar Narasimha — the ferocious half-man, half-lion form of Krishna — Raghunath and Kaustubha explore the life and teachings of his most celebrated devotee, Sri Prahlad, the…

  25. 1763: Let Go But Don't Give Up | Bhakti, Business and the Art of Surrender

    · 56 min · Episode 1763

    After twenty years of living in an ashram, Divya Alter opened a restaurant — and her spiritual practice tested new ways and taken to a whole new level. Divya — Ayurvedic chef, Sanskrit scholar, and founder of New York…

  26. 1762: No Pride Allowed | Muhammad Ali on the Hereafter

    · 58 min · Episode 1762

    "If you've got one ounce of pride, you can't enter the hereafter." From the man who called himself the greatest, that statement lands differently. Ali understood something that took a lifetime to learn — that the gifts…

  27. 1761: Dethroning the Ego | The Existential Apology

    · 53 min · Episode 1761

    An apology can be the turning point on a spiritual path. Through apology the ego is gently dethroned. And strangely, we feel not smaller — but freer. That insight sits at the heart of this episode, where Raghunath…

  28. 1760: Our Challenges Are Here to Reform Us

    · 1 h 01 min · Episode 1760

    What's standing between us and our genuine happiness isn't our circumstances, it's our false pride. Bhakti Yoga has a radical insight into this — and that the difficult moments of our lives, the humiliations, the…

  29. 1759: Human Potential and The Fire of Knowledge

    · 57 min · Episode 1759

    A thousand grams of iron is worth about $100. Make it into sewing needles and it's worth $70,000. Turn it into precision laser components and it's worth $15 million. Same iron. Completely different value. The question…

  30. 1758: The Joy of Being an Instrument | Bhakti and Creative Flow

    · 1 h 02 min · Episode 1758

    The best thing you ever created — you probably didn't create it. Bob Dylan said he could never write a song like Blowin' in the Wind again. Marvin Gaye told Smokey Robinson that What's Going On wasn't his — it came…

  31. 1757: Staycation | Marcus Aurelius, Bhagavad-gita and the Peace Within

    · 56 min · Episode 1757

    You can pack your bags, book the flight, and still bring every anxious thought with you. Emperor Marcus Aurelius writes in his Meditations that escaping to the country, the beach, or the mountains is idiotic. The peace…

  32. 1756: A Divine Light Struggling Inside This Flesh Machine

    · 1 h 00 min · Episode 1756

    Underneath every arrogant person is a frightened one. That's the insight Desmond Tutu — Nobel Peace Prize winner and moral architect of post-apartheid South Africa — pointed us toward: arrogance doesn't come from too…

  33. 1755: Krishna Doesn't Punish. He Liberates.

    · 57 min · Episode 1755

    False pride might be the one thing standing between you and genuine happiness. We protect it, defend it, build our identity around it — and all the while it's quietly keeping us from the love, the freedom, and the…

  34. 1754: You're Not Unlucky. You're Unexamined. | Karma and Carl Jung

    · 1 h 00 min · Episode 1754

    The unexamined stuff in us — today — is shaping our external experiences tomorrow. We might think of karma like a cosmic scorekeeper out there keeping tabs on us. Like the universe is going to get us back eventually.…

  35. 1753: A Better Metric for Loving God

    · 56 min · Episode 1753

    You can check every box of religious life and still be miles from God. The real spiritual metric is simpler — and much harder. Raghunath and Kaustubha open with a passage from Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov…

  36. 1752: Why Your Spiritual Checklist Might Be Working Against You

    · 53 min · Episode 1752

    In this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha ask a question that cuts to the heart of any serious spiritual practice: is my practice actually changing me. Goodhart's Law states that when a measure becomes a target, it…

  37. 1751: The Cosmic Authority Problem | A Prominent Atheist Admits His Fear of God

    · 1 h 05 min · Episode 1751

    Nobody wants a boss — and according to a prominent atheist philosopher, that's exactly the problem. Thomas Nagel, professor of philosophy at New York University and one of the most respected philosophers of the 20th…

  38. 1750: The Distracted Mind | Obstacle or Opportunity?

    · 1 h 02 min · Episode 1750

    Every time your mind wanders during meditation is a great opportunity. The wandering mind can be exactly where the real yoga begins. In this episode Raghunath welcomes back Kaustubha, fresh off a pilgrimage to…

  39. 1749: The Ritual Trap | Krishna & Real Devotion

    · 59 min · Episode 1749

    This conversation explores a timeless tension in spiritual practice: rules that serve love, and rules that replace it. On this Ram Navami episode, Raghunath reflects on Lord Ram's appearance and follows that thread…

  40. 1748: Do We Really Need Someone to Complete Us?

    · 54 min · Episode 1748

    When worldly identities fade and external things lose their shine, Vedic wisdom points us back to what is steady—our relationship with Krishna and the deeper level of consciousness. In this episode of the Wisdom of the…

  41. 1747: The Many Faces of Priests and Beggars — Lessons from India's Holy Places

    · 1 h 09 min · Episode 1747

    Bhakti Yoga shines a light on a simple but revealing truth: not all priests are equal, and not all beggars are the same—their consciousness shapes everything. In this episode, Raghunath and Kaustubha share decades of…

  42. 1746: When Religious Externals Kill Spiritual Life

    · 50 min · Episode 1746

    When the externals of spiritual practice become the focus, we can forget what they were meant to uncover—becoming religious while losing touch with the spiritual. In this episode, a powerful insight from Albert…

  43. 1745: Every Desire Is a Search for Divine Love

    · 57 min · Episode 1745

    Bhakti Yoga and Vedic wisdom uncover a profound insight: every human desire—even those that seem misguided—is ultimately a search for Krishna and the soul's lost connection with divine love. Beginning with a striking…

  44. 1744: The Quiet Hum of Mortality in the Back of Our Minds

    · 1 h 27 min · Episode 1744

    We try to avoid thinking about death. We push it into the background of our minds. But beneath the surface of our thoughts there is a quiet "hum" of mortality creating an undercurrent of anxiety. In this episode of…

  45. 1743: Krishna Isn't Immoral — He's Trans-Moral Bhakti-Yoga's Radical Insight on Love and Surrender

    · 1 h 00 min · Episode 1743

    In this episode of Wisdom of the Sages, Raghunath and Kaustubha unpack a controversial passage from the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam — the ancient Sanskrit text of Vedic wisdom centered on Krishna and the path of Bhakti Yoga. The…

  46. 1742: A Vision of Death… and the Sweetest Transcendence

    · 57 min · Episode 1742

    After witnessing a man drown in the Ganges during the Holi festival in Rishikesh, Kaustubha shares a sobering reflection on death, prayer, and the fragile nature of material life. In this episode of Wisdom of the…

  47. 1741: Refine the Mind's Lens — From Thoreau to Krishna's Lovers

    · 57 min · Episode 1741

    Bhakti Yoga wisdom from the Srimad Bhagavatam, one of the foundational texts of Vedic philosophy, meets a powerful reflection from Henry David Thoreau about shaping the "atmosphere through which we look." In this…

  48. 1740: The Hare Kṛṣṇa Mantra: Śrī Caitanya's Gift of Divine Love

    · 53 min · Episode 1740

    On the day of Śrī Caitanya's appearance, this episode is a crash course in what makes His gift of bhakti so special. Raghunath and Kaustubha explore His followers' central claim: Caitanya isn't a saint among many, but…

  49. 1739: When God Plays the Flute: Gopī-Prema, the Pinnacle of Bhakti

    · 52 min · Episode 1739

    Raghunath and Kaustubha enter the sacred poetry of Canto 10, Chapter 21—The Gopīs Glorify the Song of Kṛṣṇa's Flute. This is the theological summit of bhakti yoga, where love is defined, refined, and elevated beyond…

  50. 1738: George Harrison & the Spiritual Revolution of the 60s

    · 53 min · Episode 1738

    The 1960s weren't just a musical revolution—they were a spiritual one. In this episode, we reflect on George Harrison's role in that shift: from global superstardom to sincere spiritual seeker. After "meeting everyone…

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