Wisdom of the Sages

Latest Episodes:

1771: The Weakness of Willpower & The Power of Attention May 19, 2026

Show notes

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 Kaustubha bring this insight into conversation with the Gopīs of Vṛndāvana, whose loving meditation on Kṛṣṇa accomplished what no effort of will could. The Bhagavad-gītā's method of inner transformation is simple: turn your attention toward Kṛṣṇa. And the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam promises that faithfully hearing about the Gopīs' love for Him is itself enough to conquer material lust, the deepest disease of the heart. Srimad Bhagavatam 10.29.9-11

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1770: The Mind of the Buddha, The Mind of the Gopī May 14, 2026

Show notes

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 episode Raghunath and Kaustubha explore where Bhakti takes it one step further. Buddhism negates the names and forms of matter, freeing the mind from attachment, pointing toward liberation. Bhakti provides the positive side. Not just improved wellbeing. Not just liberation. The prema prayojana — the full awakening of divine love. The Srimad Bhagavatam shows us what that looks like through the gopis – always focused on the meditation's highest object. When they hear Krishna's flute they leave everything behind and refuse all callings to turn back.

Srimad Bhagavatam 10.29.5-9

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1769: Answer the Call of the Heart | The Bhaktivedanta Path of Renunciation May 13, 2026

Show notes

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 it. The total giving of the self is what Thomas Merton calls a blind spiritual instinct. And when you actually follow it, people may think you've gone crazy. Raghunath and Kaustubha explore that calling alongside Krishna's flute-song call of love to the gopis, instigating a "terrible act of thievery" by stealing their sobriety, shyness, fear and discrimination. Through this pastime the Bhaktivedanta tradition shares one of its most radical teachings — that true renunciation can only be the result of pure love, and that renunciation is artificial if it is not a derivative of such devotional love. Srimad Bhagavatam 10.29.2-5

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1768: From Beauty to Absolute Beauty | Plato, Krishna and the Rāsa Dance May 12, 2026

Show notes

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 reality in which the same love exists in an absolute, pristine state. So we don't need to turn away from beauty and love in this world. We just need to see the source and origin behind it. Raghunath and Kaustubha explore Plato's ladder of beauty alongside the bhakti path — and find they are pointing in the same direction. Every spark of beauty in this world springs from the same source. Use it as a stepping stone, not a dead end. And at the top of that ladder, the Srimad Bhagavatam opens the most sacred passage in all of Vedic literature — the Rāsa Līlā. Krishna, lacking nothing, takes shelter of his own internal potency and enters the most intimate of all loving affairs. The unconquerable is conquered by love. Srimad Bhagavatam 10.29.1

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1767: Entering the Rāsa Dance with the Eye of Love May 07, 2026

Show notes

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 heart. And after six and a half years of reading through the Srimad Bhagavatam, Raghunath and Kaustubha have arrived at its most sacred passage — the Rāsa Līlā. The essence of the essence of the essence. Five chapters describing Krishna's circle dance with the gopis, considered the pinnacle of all Vedic literature and the ultimate expression of divine love. But this is not a romantic story in any ordinary sense. The Bhagavatam itself declares that hearing it properly frees the soul from lust rather than inflaming it. To see it rightly requires what the tradition calls prema netra — the eye of love. Raghunath and Kaustubha introduce the Rāsa Līlā through Professor Graham Schweig's landmark study, The Dance of Divine Love — exploring what these five chapters contain and how the Bhagavatam's vision differs from the greater Vedic tradition out of which it arises. Rather than forced renunciation, it offers something far deeper — renunciation that arises naturally, spontaneously, out of love. When you taste the highest taste, everything else falls away on its own.

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1766: When the Ego Steps Back | The Existential Sense of Being Blessed May 06, 2026

Show notes

"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 — it's a marker of spiritual depth and the default setting of the self. When the false ego dissolves, the rising of gratitude appears as a natural effect of the soul understanding itself correctly in relation with God. The conversation then moves into fascinating territory — exploring a ladder of spiritual consciousness, and how its some of its highest expressions manifest not in the powerful mystics, but in the simple, pure hearts of the cowherd men of Vrindavan, ordinary farmers who love Krishna without pretense or pride.

Srimad Bhagavatam 10.28.11-17

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1765: Robert De Niro, Vedanta and the Art of Being Chill May 05, 2026

Show notes

"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 in both the highs and the lows. Fame, wealth, prestige — they come and they go. And when that truth settles not just as a concept but as a genuine inner recognition, something shifts. Detachment arises — not as resignation, not as indifference, but as the fertile ground in which deeper contemplation and bhakti-yoga can take root. In this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha explore that teaching alongside the Srimad Bhagavatam, where the cowherd men of Vrindavan — hearing that Varuna himself worshiped their little boy — begin to wonder: will he bestow his transcendental abode upon us?

Srimad Bhagavatam 10.28.8-11

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1764: Speaking Truth to Power with Love Apr 30, 2026

Show notes

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 child saint who spoke truth to power without apology, yet never bore animosity toward the person trying to destroy him. His core teaching, drawn from the Srimad Bhagavatam, is more relevant than ever: except for the uncontrolled and misguided mind, there is no enemy in this world. That's not passivity. That's spiritual vision.

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1763: Let Go But Don't Give Up | Bhakti, Business and the Art of Surrender Apr 29, 2026

Show notes

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 City's beloved Divya's Kitchen — discovered that separating her spiritual life from her business life created nothing but internal war. The moment she saw the restaurant as her devotional service, everything shifted. Raghunath and Kaustubha sit with Divya for a conversation about what a decade of serving prasadam in the most competitive restaurant city in the world teaches you about surrender, letting go, and trusting Krishna with the outcome. The Srimad Bhagavatam then raises a question that stops everything: who exactly is this cowherd boy? Add Krishna to anything and everything becomes auspicious. Even, it turns out, an alien abduction.

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Srimad Bhagavatam 10.28.1-7

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1762: No Pride Allowed | Muhammad Ali on the Hereafter Apr 28, 2026

Show notes

"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 we're given are on loan, not owned. The strength, the beauty, the wit, the fame. None of it is ours. And the moment we claim it as ours, we cut ourselves off from the very source it came from. Raghunath and Kaustubha explore that teaching alongside one of the most tender moments in the Srimad Bhagavatam — where Krishna tells Indra directly: I stopped your sacrifice out of mercy. I wanted you to always remember me. The Bhagavad Gita makes the same point with striking precision — those absorbed in material opulence and sense enjoyment cannot attain samadhi, the focused clarity of mind needed to perceive the truth. One ounce of pride blocks the signal entirely. Do the inner work and salvation comes naturally. Reframe the crumble

Srimad Bhagavatam 10.27.14-28

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