Bhakti-yoga talk that starts in ordinary life
Raghunath and Kaustubha talk through Bhagavad-gita verses and Bhakti-yoga teaching the way old friends talk: check-ins, tangents, and sudden depth. A story about a staycation or a bad upload connection turns into a question about where happiness actually lives.
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Wisdom of the Sages is a Bhakti-yoga podcast hosted by Raghunath with co-host Kaustubha, a senior educator at the Bhakti Center in New York City. It numbers past seventeen hundred episodes and sounds like two friends who have been having the same conversation for decades. The structure is loose on purpose. An episode might begin mid-thought, cut to the standard welcome, name the city they're calling from, wish someone a happy birthday, and note that the internet is misbehaving. Then a verse gets read and the tone changes without any announcement that it has. Scripture is the spine. The Bhagavad-gita supplies the recurring diagnosis: the belief that one is the controller and the enjoyer, which the hosts treat as the root distortion behind most ordinary unhappiness. They pair it constantly with twelve-step recovery, where the first admission is the same one. Arrogance gets a full episode's attention, framed not as strength but as the most repulsive thing a person can carry, and inseparable from the self-loathing that follows it. The remedy they describe is someone with clarity who isn't shaken by either pose. Outside sources are welcome when they earn their place. Marcus Aurelius sits alongside the Gita in a discussion of equanimity. Carl Jung turns up in a conversation about karma as "cosmic sensitivity training," the idea that circumstances are arranged to teach rather than to punish. Bob Dylan and Smokey Robinson illustrate creative flow — the songwriter as instrument rather than author, and the odd finding that the joy is greater when the credit is smaller. Stories about Krishna and Indra become a case for chastisement as an act of love rather than aggression. One episode proposes a plainer test for devotion: not how loudly a person professes love for God, but whether they can love the great people, the pretty good people, and the jerks that God has actually placed in front of them. Community texture is part of the product, not a distraction from it. Listeners hear about reunions, Prabhupada disciples, travel legs, and people who wander into the room. Sanskrit terms and figures get explained when needed, though the show assumes a returning audience that mostly keeps up. Nothing is scripted tightly. Sentences trail off, one host corrects the other, jokes land in the middle of serious passages. The credibility comes from decades of practice rather than polish, and the register stays casual even when the subject is death, ego, or liberation.
Made for: Listeners drawn to Bhakti-yoga, the Bhagavad-gita, and contemplative practice who want teaching delivered as conversation rather than lecture. It also fits anyone in twelve-step recovery or Stoic and Jungian reading who likes seeing those frameworks placed side by side.
What sets it apart: Most scripture-study shows edit out the small talk; this one lets travel updates, birthday shout-outs, and technical hiccups sit right next to verse commentary, and uses the ordinary material as the entry point. The pairing of Gita teaching with twelve-step language, Marcus Aurelius, Carl Jung, and songwriter interviews is unusually wide-ranging for the format.
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.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.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
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