Raghunath Cappo Was a Monk for 6 Years | Joe Rogan

And I'm walking around and you know. How long were you a monk for? I was a monk for about six and a half years. Wow. Yeah. And it was a great time of life. How old were you? I was 22. So from 22 to 28 you were a monk. I was a monk. That means celibate, no masturbating, nothing. Seven and a half years. Where did you live? I lived in ashrams in India and in America and I traveled all over the world actually. Wow. But it was, I'll tell you what brought me to that place. After being very materially frustrated and I said those two main factors were some type of material success. I wasn't the Beatles when I wasn't you know Michael Jackson but I had some materials, I had fans. And then realizing how life can get taken away from you in a moment with that precarious place my father was at. It just made me start thinking what the hell am I doing in this short life? What am I supposed to do? Give me some GPS. Give me some where do I go from here? What do I want out of life? What is the, what is a home run? Is it to be very famous? Is that the home run? Is it to be collect tons of stuff? Is that a home run? Is to live a natural life? Is that a home run? Is to learn some art? You know some type of art. Is that a home run? And so this was my burning question. And now I was still a New Yorker. I was still sort of like you know New York in the 80s. I was like a little street smart New Yorker. I'm actually from Connecticut but I started hanging out in New York City. My parents were New Yorkers and so we used to, my older brothers lived in the city so I'd visit them. But some of the time I was 14 I used to just go to New York City and just hang out on the weekends. And when I became a monk and went to India I had saved about 25,000 bucks. Not a lot of money. Not tons of money but it was you know some money I made. And I thought in my brain okay this is my cynical self. I'm going to go to India. I'm going to meet a guru. The guru is going to want all my money. This is how it works. But when I actually lived with the monks in India, especially India then 1988, there is no central AC and it's hot. There is no heat and it's cold. In the winter the showers are freezing because all the water is kept on a tank on the roof of the ashram. In the summer that water is super hot because it's all kept on a tank on top of the ashram. There is no creature comforts whatsoever. You go to bed early, you wake up super early. You go to bed 8.30. You wake up 3 o'clock in the morning. There is nothing to buy. There is nothing to purchase. All the fun things that we like to ease the pain of existence are not there. There is no movies. There is no television. There is no comedy. There is nothing. Two things happen when you strip everything away from a person. They lose it. They hop the fence so to speak. I've seen that happen. Or they learn to find their pleasure from something more subtle. When I first went there and saw the joy of the monks, I realized they don't want my money. They don't want anything I have to offer them. I want what they have. That was sort of a game changer moment for me. I want to figure out how to be connected with nothing. What did these guys do all day? I don't know. They all did different stuff. Every ashram has their own thing. Did you have chores to earn your food? Every ashram is going to be different. Every spiritual path, there are Christian monks and monks from different traditions around the world. I'm sure they all got their thing. Later I started doing my next band. The interesting thing about the Bhagavad Gita is one chapter of the biggest epic in the world, the Mahabharata. It's the most studied, discussed and commented on by all the saints of ancient India. People even bring it into politics and stuff. It's a real conversation between the spirit and divinity. It's a conversation about...it's just considered ancient wisdom for all people. One of the ideas of the Bhagavad Gita is you don't give up what you're born to do. You do what you do, but in a spiritual way. You don't try to wipe out your desires. It's not going to happen. You take what you do and you do it in a way that is going to assist you in your liberation and is going to assist everybody else. I'll say I love comedy, but I want comedy that uplifts me and not doesn't degrade me. I like entertainment, that when I walk away from it, I learn something. I feel like I'm growing. I feel connected. I don't want stuff that's going to just give me darker thoughts. Like the Joker? I've never seen it. You didn't see it? I want to say that I live on a farm. I rarely watch anything except comedy. I love comedy because I think laughing is important. But I don't watch so much TV. So I'm pretty... If I do go to the movies, it's out of like with my wife. Let's just...we want to get away from the kids. We want to do something. But there's no plan on what to watch, but I'm open to good ideas. The Joker is a really good movie, but it's really dark. He's really dark. Like you walk out of there feeling really confused. Like, you're like, did I like that? I don't know if I liked that. I know it was awesome. I know it was really well done. But did I like that? And it's just...it's complicated. I mean, we could talk about the Joker for the next two hours. You know, the mind is like a garage, and you become like what you store in that garage. So the thoughts that we put in the mind, we've got to be careful with. The words. Just we were talking about mantras before. The mantras are like repetitive sounds, but they're considered transcendental sounds. So I chant the Hare Krishna mantra. So the Krishna mantra, you might have known it from the soundtrack of Hare. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. It's considered a transcendental sound for the mind. And it sort of connects the soul with divinity. It doesn't matter what religion you are. It's considered a mantra, a sound vibration that is a potency on the mind. That's where they get the word mantra from. It delivers the mind. So what we store in the mind starts to create our external being. And if you don't believe in it, it's one of those things. We have mantras in our mind anyway. I have things on loop running through my mind that have been handed to me from parents, from elementary school teachers, from a crazy uncle, from whatever. We get things handed to us and we play them on repeat. And sometimes they're mantras of self-deprecation, self-loathing. You're not good enough. And these are the mantras running through the mind. So the yoga system says, notice those mantras. That's part of self-edification or self-realization. You notice what's playing in the mind. And you replace those mantras with transcendental sound. Or at the very least, training the mind to see greatness in people. That's a big thing. Because the mind, the material mind wants to see, what are Joe's shortcomings? Because if I find your shortcomings, it makes me feel better about myself. That's crazy thinking. If you've got thousands of shortcomings, that doesn't make me better at all. So the material mind, which sees one as so insecure that I have to lash out at other people to make myself feel whole. And it's just crazy thinking, stinking thinking. Whereas the yogi trains, I specifically teach Bhakti Yoga, which is called the Yoga of Connection or the Yoga of the Heart. And it starts to deal with all the essence of the teachings of the Gita, which is you train yourself to see greatness in other people. And if I start to note, it's good. You could take this from a micro, like my relationship with you. I want to notice all of Joe's great qualities. Now, when you hear that, you might think, well, he doesn't really know me. I got some bad qualities. It immediately makes you a little vulnerable. And you start to think, well, but you appreciate it. And anybody in our life who appreciates us, sometimes they even see things in us we can't see in ourselves. We want to become like that. That's why this idea of changing the world really starts with your self-connection is I am a spiritual being. Joe is a spiritual being. And I start to train myself in not seeing what Joe does wrong, seeing everything he does right. And it's a great exercise for the brain. What does that person do right? What is the good in this person that I'm overlooking? Because I've got this lens. It's a lens that we wear. I'm trying to find shortcomings in people. And it screws people up tremendously, even so-called spiritual people. I just had to roll. You can quirk me any time you want. So you spent six and a half years living like this in the Sashram, just trying to sort things out. No sex, no masturbation. What are you eating? None of it. What kind of food they serve you? A strict vegetarian diet. And not only that, the I... And this is an interesting point, too. And it's debated about, especially... You know, I was a raw foodist, so these raw foods, they're all... Everyone's got their take on medicine and healing. Let me share the yogi perspective of it. Okay. The missing ingredient in food, the vitamin, the superfood that is never spoken about is love. Food is supposed to be grown, prepared, and then offered. And the offering is not even to a human. The offering is to God. That's called prashad. Food is first called bhoga. Bhoga means it's for enjoyment. And then you take that enjoyment, but before you enjoy it, you're offering it first back, like in sacrifice. The idea is that everything in this world is not for me. Everything is... I'm not the center. I'm here to serve the center. So all the food takes on the consciousness of the preparer of the food. So to eat junk food or to have people in very low consciousness cooking your food, you're taking that into your body. You're taking the consciousness of the preparer of the food. Do you believe that? I definitely believe it. Yeah. I definitely would feel a tangible effect. If I walked outside that line. So for years, I'd only eat food cooked by Brahmins, like the priests of the ashram, or I would cook it myself, or later... I have a very weird story, which was I became a bunch of my friends that were monks. We started our own band, and we started a second record label in the ashram. I kid you not. It's almost an unbelievable story. And perhaps the first time, historically, there was a celibate rock and roll band. But this band ended up becoming bigger than the second band. This was my band Shelter. So what happened was, this band, when we started, though, we were all monks. And we would take a candy stove on tour with us, and we'd pull over the side of the road, and we'd make kitchery with rice and dal, and fenugreek, and coriander, and cumin. And we'd just cook, because we wouldn't eat outside food, because if you did, you would feel it. You would feel it affect your mind. Really? I kid you not. That I can say... There's certain things like, I don't know. There's certain things that they speak about in ancient Indian literature that I can say, maybe. I don't know. So you think most people are just numb to that? But there are certain things I can say I know. I definitely experienced that. I think most people are just numb to that, numb to the effect of taking in the consciousness of someone who's on a low vibration who's cooking your food, you're just numb to it, you just eat the food because you're hungry. Or people... Yeah, are numb to it. People that aren't aware of that concept. Yeah, people that aren't aware of the concept. For example, a home-cooked meal definitely tastes better, tastes different, or feels different, as opposed to some guy just making burgers at White Castle or whatever. Yeah. So I don't know. It depends on the individual. Is this a perception, or is it an actual energy? And does it matter? I think it's both. It's almost like fire is going to burn, whether I believe it or not. But there is a concept of once you get that food, you don't eat the food, you honor the food. So it's not going to be like me shoving stuff in my mouth, which I do occasionally, if you see my eating habits. But the eating itself should be a meditation. And it's been proven... I'm not one of these guys. There's a thing that's... There's a similarity that's going to seem like it's not... Like it's not a parallel. But in hunting, when you hunt an animal, and you kill that animal, and you butcher that animal, and then you feed it to your family, it sounds almost hypocritical. It's not like there's no way that would be a spiritual feeling. But there's a connection to your food that's very, very different. Well, we've divorced ourselves from killing animals, for the most part. For the most part. Most people hire people. Most people have no clue where their fruits come from, their vegetables come from. What do Brussels sprouts look like when they grow? What do bananas look like when they grow? What is ground round? So we've divorced ourselves from our food. www.mooji.org