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

"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 Find Nityananda Chandra's course here: https://www.sanskritverses.com/wots ******************************************************************** LOVE THE PODCAST? WE ARE COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AND WOULD LOVE FOR YOU TO JOIN! Go to https://www.wisdomofthesages.com WATCH ON YOUTUBE: https://youtube.com/@WisdomoftheSages LISTEN ON ITUNES: https://podcasts/apple.com/us/podcast/wisdom-of-the-sages/id1493055485 CONNECT ON FACEBOOK: https://facebook.com/wisdomofthesages108 *********************************************************************

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. ******************************************************************** LOVE THE PODCAST? WE ARE COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AND WOULD LOVE FOR YOU TO JOIN! Go to https://www.wisdomofthesages.com WATCH ON YOUTUBE: https://youtube.com/@WisdomoftheSages LISTEN ON ITUNES: https://podcasts/apple.com/us/podcast/wisdom-of-the-sages/id1493055485 CONNECT ON FACEBOOK: https://facebook.com/wisdomofthesages108 *********************************************************************

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. Help Support Divya's Kitchen: https://gofund.me/81358219c Srimad Bhagavatam 10.28.1-7 ******************************************************************** LOVE THE PODCAST? WE ARE COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AND WOULD LOVE FOR YOU TO JOIN! Go to https://www.wisdomofthesages.com WATCH ON YOUTUBE: https://youtube.com/@WisdomoftheSages LISTEN ON ITUNES: https://podcasts/apple.com/us/podcast/wisdom-of-the-sages/id1493055485 CONNECT ON FACEBOOK: https://facebook.com/wisdomofthesages108 *********************************************************************

"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 ******************************************************************** LOVE THE PODCAST? WE ARE COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AND WOULD LOVE FOR YOU TO JOIN! Go to https://www.wisdomofthesages.com WATCH ON YOUTUBE: https://youtube.com/@WisdomoftheSages LISTEN ON ITUNES: https://podcasts/apple.com/us/podcast/wisdom-of-the-sages/id1493055485 CONNECT ON FACEBOOK: https://facebook.com/wisdomofthesages108 *********************************************************************

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 shares an excerpt from his upcoming book, The Six Pillars of Bhakti, on why apologizing is one of the non-negotiables of spiritual life. The longer we delay, the more the ego rewrites the story — softening our role, magnifying theirs, reframing events until we are no longer the person who caused harm but the misunderstood one. And that rewriting doesn't just damage our relationships. It keeps us existentially stuck. The Srimad Bhagavatam illustrates this through Indra's apology to Krishna — which dissolves his illusion and brings him to a deeper recognition of his true self. This is the great existential apology — the breaking point of countless lifetimes in samsara. Verses: Srimad Bhagavatam 10.27.5-13 ******************************************************************** LOVE THE PODCAST? WE ARE COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AND WOULD LOVE FOR YOU TO JOIN! Go to https://www.wisdomofthesages.com WATCH ON YOUTUBE: https://youtube.com/@WisdomoftheSages LISTEN ON ITUNES: https://podcasts/apple.com/us/podcast/wisdom-of-the-sages/id1493055485 CONNECT ON FACEBOOK: https://facebook.com/wisdomofthesages108 *********************************************************************

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 losses, the things that knock us off our pedestal, are not punishments. They are invitations to let go of the false sense of self that was blocking us from what we actually want. In this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha explore that teaching through a stunning passage in the Srimad Bhagavatam, where Indra — the powerful king of the heavens — comes to Krishna in shame after his pride led him to his worst moment. And Krishna, in a gesture of remarkable tenderness, arranges their meeting privately so that Indra is not further humiliated. What Krishna was actually destroying was not Indra but his false pride — his failure to grasp his own true spiritual identity, which the text describes as throwing us into the violent currents of material existence. Our challenges are not punishments. They are here to reform us. Verses: SB 10.24.1-4 ******************************************************************** LOVE THE PODCAST? WE ARE COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AND WOULD LOVE FOR YOU TO JOIN! Go to https://www.wisdomofthesages.com WATCH ON YOUTUBE: https://youtube.com/@WisdomoftheSages LISTEN ON ITUNES: https://podcasts/apple.com/us/podcast/wisdom-of-the-sages/id1493055485 CONNECT ON FACEBOOK: https://facebook.com/wisdomofthesages108 *********************************************************************

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 this episode keeps returning to is simple and urgent: what are you going to make of this rare human life? Your raw material isn't the whole story. It never was. Raghunath and Kaustubha explore that insight alongside one of the most transformative teachings in the Bhagavad Gita's fourth chapter — where Krishna describes transcendental knowledge as a blazing fire that burns away everything obscuring your true nature. The zeros of material life — wealth, beauty, talent, education — line up and add up to nothing on their own. But place a one in front of them and everything changes. That one is Krishna. Connection to the divine doesn't change your raw material. It reveals what it was always worth. ******************************************************************** LOVE THE PODCAST? WE ARE COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AND WOULD LOVE FOR YOU TO JOIN! Go to https://www.wisdomofthesages.com WATCH ON YOUTUBE: https://youtube.com/@WisdomoftheSages LISTEN ON ITUNES: https://podcasts/apple.com/us/podcast/wisdom-of-the-sages/id1493055485 CONNECT ON FACEBOOK: https://facebook.com/wisdomofthesages108 *********************************************************************

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 through him. Every great artist eventually arrives at the same humbling, liberating realization: the music doesn't come from you. It comes through you. The Bhagavad Gita names this directly — Krishna says from him comes knowledge, remembrance, and forgetfulness. Whatever ability we have to create, to compose, to lift a single finger — it's being granted. And when we truly recognize that, the pressure drops and the joy deepens. Raghunath and Kaustubha explore that teaching alongside the conclusion of the Govardhan Lila, where the gopis walk home singing — spontaneously composing kirtan straight from their hearts, overwhelmed with love. The means and the end are the same. In bhakti, we call it Krishnifying your life. ******************************************************************** LOVE THE PODCAST? WE ARE COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AND WOULD LOVE FOR YOU TO JOIN! Go to https://www.wisdomofthesages.com WATCH ON YOUTUBE: https://youtube.com/@WisdomoftheSages LISTEN ON ITUNES: https://podcasts/apple.com/us/podcast/wisdom-of-the-sages/id1493055485 CONNECT ON FACEBOOK: https://facebook.com/wisdomofthesages108 *********************************************************************

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 you're looking for is already available, anytime, by going within. The Bhagavad Gita's fifth chapter speaks of how the self-realized person enjoys unlimited happiness not because their circumstances changed, but because their direction did. Raghunath and Kaustubha explore that teaching through the Govardhan Lila, where Indra — king of the heavens — had every external blessing and was still miserable. His problem wasn't his circumstances. It was an internal issue — his ignorance of his own true nature. The escape hatch was never a location. It was always a direction. ******************************************************************** LOVE THE PODCAST? WE ARE COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AND WOULD LOVE FOR YOU TO JOIN! Go to https://www.wisdomofthesages.com WATCH ON YOUTUBE: https://youtube.com/@WisdomoftheSages LISTEN ON ITUNES: https://podcasts/apple.com/us/podcast/wisdom-of-the-sages/id1493055485 CONNECT ON FACEBOOK: https://facebook.com/wisdomofthesages108 *********************************************************************

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 much self-love. It comes from too little self-knowledge. It's the mask we wear when we can't bear to feel small. And the pendulum swings — from "I am the greatest" to "I am worthless" — and back again. Neither is true. In this episode Raghunath returns from a week working with a recovery community in Dayton, Ohio, where men coming off the streets were asked one simple question: who are you? The answers stopped him cold. "I am a divine light covered in a fleshy body." "I am a pure soul struggling in this flesh machine." That clarity — born not from comfort but from hitting bottom — is exactly what the Srimad Bhagavatam points toward. And when you can see the scared person underneath someone's arrogance, something shifts — you stop being offended and start feeling sympathy. That may be the most practical thing this episode offers. ******************************************************************** LOVE THE PODCAST? WE ARE COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AND WOULD LOVE FOR YOU TO JOIN! Go to https://www.wisdomofthesages.com WATCH ON YOUTUBE: https://youtube.com/@WisdomoftheSages LISTEN ON ITUNES: https://podcasts/apple.com/us/podcast/wisdom-of-the-sages/id1493055485 CONNECT ON FACEBOOK: https://facebook.com/wisdomofthesages108 *********************************************************************