Wisdom of the Sages

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 blessed by God to throw they wouldn't be able to. The Stoics understood it. They called it "amor fati" — love of fate. There are things within our control and things outside our control. The wise person f...

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 Jesus — he was rejecting what had been done in his name. Something starts with a genuine God experience, rooted in love. Over time it gets warped — In this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha explore that patt...

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 Krishna mantra gives more happiness than all of it. "The response that comes from chanting is bliss — a much higher taste than any happiness found in the material world." Raghunath and Kaustubha explore th...

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 we've found the right object of love. Raghunath and Kaustubha explore that question alongside the Yugala Gīta — where Bhakti Vedānta paints a picture of spiritual relations in perfection: Krishna moving through t...

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 picture of the Absolute Truth, and doing it through poetic exchanges of love. In this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha enter Canto Ten, Chapter Thirty-Five — the Yugala Gīta. Pairs of verses, each describing...

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, beautiful and deeply human. Happy 1800, everybody.

********************************************************************

LOVE THE PODCAST? WE ARE COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AND WOULD LOVE FOR YOU TO JOIN!

Go to ht...

"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 of the world, thousands of years before he was born, that God had already been described. Raghunath and Kaustubha explore George Harrison's idea that everybody is looking for Krishna – some just don't kno...

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 heart of man." Beauty pulls in two directions — one kind inflates the ego and drags the consciousness down without you noticing, another makes you want to be better, kinder, more alive. In this episode Raghunath...

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 meditators on Krishna, the romantic mood became the queen of all meditation. The gopīs' love is the diametric opposite of lust — being entirely selfless. Meditating on something so pure reprograms the heart...

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 joined by Aditya Devi Dasi from the Brooklyn Temple to talk about the ISKCON 60th anniversary weekend — a full three days of festivities in the city where it all began. The Wisdom of the Sages community will ...

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 sages — the dress, the language, the mood. But it's been said: "No man was ever great by imitation. Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble." Raghunath and Kau...

"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 bhakti dissolve material attachment. Jñāna does it through relentless intellectual negation. Bhakti does it through love. And love, as the Rāsa Dance shows, does it beautifully. In this episode Raghunath and K...

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 love so real and complete that everything else simply fell away. In this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha arrive at Canto Ten, Chapter Thirty-Three — the Rāsa Dance itself. Krishna expands between each pair of gopī...

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 toward a teacher who gave you bhakti but also caused real harm? And how do we recognize what Krishna wants from us as our next step?

********************************************************************

LOVE THE PODCAST? ...

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 you help teenage daughters navigate comparison and self-worth in the age of social media? And how do we balance codependency with the aspect of mercy — in the context of the guru/disciple relationship?

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 if you're actually making progress on the path of bhakti? How do you stay Krishna conscious in a kirtan scene that rarely chants the Mahā-mantra? And how do we process the apparent repercussions of Krishna's Līlā...

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." He raised her. By any accounting, she owes him. And yet the giver feels the debt. In this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha arrive at Krishna's confession to the gopīs: the Supreme Person, whom no one can place un...

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 against the highest reference points of contemplative life. Not to dignify their love by comparison to meditation, but to show the reverse: what the yogī seeks through discipline, the gopīs already possess, fully and comp...

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 – material prosperity? Liberation? Bhakti Vedanta points higher — divine love, connection with the very origin of your existence. In this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha explore the meaning of Krishna's Li...