Joe Rogan Experience #1430 - Raghunath Cappo

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   Three, two, one, boom.…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:01

      Three, two, one, boom. We're live. What's up, Ray? How are you, buddy?

   2. RCRaghunath Cappo0:07

      Pretty good. (laughs)

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:08

      Great to see you, man. It's been a while.

   4. RCRaghunath Cappo0:10

      It's been-

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:14

      10 years?

   6. RCRaghunath Cappo0:15

      No, more than that.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:16

      Really?

   8. RCRaghunath Cappo0:16

      2007, I moved out of LA.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:18

      Wow. Damn.

   10. RCRaghunath Cappo0:20

       Unbelievable.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:20

       That's weird.

   12. RCRaghunath Cappo0:20

       I know.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:21

       I've talked about you in the podcast several times, though.

   14. RCRaghunath Cappo0:22

       You know what? Uh, I never listened to the pod- podcast until recently. Um, someone told me the second time you said, I think three times you've mentioned me.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:32

       Probably.

   16. RCRaghunath Cappo0:32

       "Yoga Ray."

   17. JRJoe Rogan0:33

       Yoga Ray. (laughs)

   18. RCRaghunath Cappo0:34

       And all these kids are contacting me, "They mentioned Yoga Ray on the show."

   19. JRJoe Rogan0:37

       (laughs)

   20. RCRaghunath Cappo0:38

       Yeah. It was, it was cool. I appreciate it. I appreciate you.

   21. JRJoe Rogan0:41

       I appreciate you too, man.

   22. RCRaghunath Cappo0:41

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan0:42

       I-

   24. RCRaghunath Cappo0:42

       I always thought, truthfully, I always thought, "Joe Rogan's gonna do something good." I honestly, I can tell you that. And it, it may be embarrassing to say, but, um, what, I'm proud of you.

   25. JRJoe Rogan0:52

       Oh, thank you.

   26. RCRaghunath Cappo0:53

       I hope- I hope you don't mind me saying that.

   27. JRJoe Rogan0:54

       That's very nice. No, I don't-

   28. RCRaghunath Cappo0:55

       I'm proud of all you've done.

   29. JRJoe Rogan0:56

       That's, thank you. That's very nice. That's a funny thing to say though.

   30. RCRaghunath Cappo0:59

       And you've had great just at the Joe Rogan time, you've had, done some great stuff. First of all, standup comedian, that's a, that's a great gig.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Yeah. These are all,…

   1. JRJoe Rogan15:00

      as well because then that other person's gonna be very attached to what they've said. I mean, people dig their heels in. It's...

   2. RCRaghunath Cappo15:05

      Yeah. These are all, these are all points I'm working on in, uh, in my book I'm working on, which is sort of extracting all these teachings of ancient yoga-

   3. JRJoe Rogan15:15

      Mm-hmm.

   4. RCRaghunath Cappo15:16

      ... but not, not getting lost in just philosophical thought and not getting lost in, um, how to make it relevant and practical.

   5. JRJoe Rogan15:22

      Right.

   6. RCRaghunath Cappo15:22

      But it's exactly what you're saying.

   7. JRJoe Rogan15:23

      Yeah.

   8. RCRaghunath Cappo15:24

      Um-

   9. JRJoe Rogan15:24

      It's hard for people.

   10. RCRaghunath Cappo15:25

       It's hard. Independent thinking is-

   11. JRJoe Rogan15:27

       Yeah.

   12. RCRaghunath Cappo15:27

       ... is difficult nowadays 'cause it, it's e- it's not the easy way out.

   13. JRJoe Rogan15:31

       Right.

   14. RCRaghunath Cappo15:31

       It's eit- easy to have your clothes picked out for you-

   15. JRJoe Rogan15:34

       (laughs)

   16. RCRaghunath Cappo15:34

       ... and your ideology picked out for you.

   17. JRJoe Rogan15:36

       Yeah.

   18. RCRaghunath Cappo15:36

       How you're supposed to look and where you're supposed to... And if I'm a Democrat, I'm supposed to be like this-

   19. JRJoe Rogan15:40

       Yeah.

   20. RCRaghunath Cappo15:40

       ... and not like this.

   21. JRJoe Rogan15:41

       Do you remember Bud, Bud Bretzman? He was one of the-

   22. RCRaghunath Cappo15:44

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan15:44

       ... guys that trained with us at Jim Jocks. He was, um-

   24. RCRaghunath Cappo15:47

       Older guy? Younger guy?

   25. JRJoe Rogan15:48

       He was my age. At the time, you know, he was in his 30s. Anyway, uh, Bud only wears black. He's been on this podcast before. He's a good friend of mine. He, he lives down the street from me. He only wears black.

   26. RCRaghunath Cappo15:58

       Okay.

   27. JRJoe Rogan15:59

       He wears black shirts. He wears black pants. I go, "Why?"

   28. RCRaghunath Cappo16:01

       I remember him.

   29. JRJoe Rogan16:02

       I go, "Why do you only wear black?" And he goes, "I don't have to think about it this way."

   30. RCRaghunath Cappo16:05

       It is good i- it's a nice way to think.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   I don't know. (laughs)…

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      you to that?

   2. RCRaghunath Cappo30:00

      I don't know. (laughs)

   3. JRJoe Rogan30:01

      Really?

   4. RCRaghunath Cappo30:02

      I don't know.

   5. JRJoe Rogan30:03

      Really?

   6. RCRaghunath Cappo30:03

      I've always been interested in sp- my idea of a good time was, this was like '80s in New York City, was you'd find these like Easty-Westy bookstores that had books on yoga and metaphysics and reincarnation, and just plop it down and read books all afternoon by swamis and sadhus and weirdos and palm readers and stuff like that. That's my idea of what a good time was. And I always felt like life is meant for our self-edification. That's why we're here. We're here on a mission of growth. And when I h- when I read books by sages or mystics and things like that, I was always like, "I wanna be like that. That's what I wanna be. That's bigger than anything out there that I wanna be." So truthfully, the band, I never really want... I'm not a musician. I play a little bit of everything. I wrote all the songs, but it, I always looked at myself as more like a seeker and, uh, maybe a spokesperson. But then at a certain point in the success of that band, I started realizing, okay, now we're big and there's a lot of people who are following those sort of principles of controlling your senses, we don't drink, we don't smoke, we are, uh, we don't take drugs, uh, we're, uh, you know, we, we con- care about what we eat. But that's not the goal. That's like a doorway to something bigger. And so for me, I had to step away from that, even though it wasn't...... bad or a- anything. It, it wasn't what I wanted to become, and at th- uh, it was a certain point in my life. You know, y- you get to a certain end of a chapter in your life, and it w- for me, and at the time, it was the height of the band's career as well. We started touring internationally and stuff like that. But I realized there was no amount ... And, and by the way, this was '80s in New York, which is a very cool time. Run-DMC, Madonna, the Beastie Boys. Y- you never knew, like, what was about to, like, blow up, and you were with all these other people that they were your inspiration and they were your friends and stuff like that. So, uh, at that height in excitement, I just said, "There is no amount of, like, material success I want that's gonna fill sort of like a God-shaped hole in my heart." There's nothing out there that I want, and it wa- it was also a very precarious time in my life where, um ... not precarious, but, uh, a time where my father went into a coma for three years.

   7. JRJoe Rogan32:29

      Oh, Jesus.

   8. RCRaghunath Cappo32:30

      I know. It's hor- it's so horrible to even say, think about.

   9. JRJoe Rogan32:33

      What happened?

   10. RCRaghunath Cappo32:34

       What happened was he got some unknown lum- lung infection. He was young, 64. Y- unknown lung infection and there was some neglect in the hospital, and his lung collapsed. And so comas are one of these places where you don't ... "Is he do- dead? He's n- is he alive?" And it's so confusing for a person that loves that person-

   11. JRJoe Rogan32:57

       Hm.

   12. RCRaghunath Cappo32:57

       ... how to even react, and, uh, you know, in a, uh, I'll say in a humiliating way, I couldn't real- I couldn't deal with it, and I sort of shut myself off. And, um, I went and just started working on my music, something I could do, and then at his death when he'd finally left his body, I wa- I was cultivating a strong desire to go to India and, and study more. And I was, at that time, I was also studying yoga, Ayurvedic medicine.

   13. JRJoe Rogan33:28

       So he went into a coma for three years-

   14. RCRaghunath Cappo33:30

       Three years.

   15. JRJoe Rogan33:30

       ... and then he expired?

   16. RCRaghunath Cappo33:31

       And then when he died, I-

   17. JRJoe Rogan33:32

       At the end of the coma?

   18. RCRaghunath Cappo33:33

       At the, at-

   19. JRJoe Rogan33:33

       He never came out of the coma?

   20. RCRaghunath Cappo33:34

       He never came out of the coma. And when he, and when he left his body, I decided, "I'm going to India now." This was m- that was the sign for me, and I quit the band.

   21. JRJoe Rogan33:43

       And this is at the peak of the band.

   22. RCRaghunath Cappo33:46

       It was at the peak of Youth of Today, yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan33:48

       Was that hard to walk away from all that?

   24. RCRaghunath Cappo33:50

       You know what? I was at a point where I, I was saying ... A- and you've probably f- experienced this too in a lot of ... I'm, I'm sure Eddie probably does too. Sometimes when you become very successful at something, that same thing starts ... The s- the thing that you love sort of can eat away at you as well. Um, sometimes, sometimes the peop- ... I'll share w- I'll share with you how I, how I saw it. I remember sitting in an ashram on 24th Street, a Sivananda ashram. Sivananda was like a, uh, a swami. He came, he traveled the world, he taught the teachings of yoga outside, uh, India, and he wrote lots of books. And there's a library of books or s- bookstore up on 24th Street where he has an ashram in New York City, and I remember reading this one quote by him in the midst of, uh, my life as in a band and being a teenager living in New York City w- and it was ... Before you ... First o- the first one was really interesting. "Where is your happiness coming from? Is it coming from your day-to-day living, or is it just happiness from your ego?" And I thought, "Ah. Where is my happiness coming from? Is it from me being a person that I th- I wanna be? Is it from ..." Uh, uh, you know, people, people nowadays, they collect houses, they collect cars, they collect so many things. I collected records. I collected rare punk records. And in my brain I thought, "Oh, man. This ..." And you gotta understand what the music scene was like that if you're unfamiliar with it. There was a band that was great, and they put out 1,000 seven-inch records. And then the band broke up, yet the punk scene always grew, so these on- records you bought for two bucks are now worth ... people would pay $100 for that record. And so me and, um, uh, my guitar player, Purcell, we had like thousands of incredibly rare punk records that if you remember the world of records, no one played their records 'cause you could damage them. What you did was you would r- put everything on a cassette. And so I started thinking about this quote by this swami who said, "Man, where am I getting my pleasure from?" I'm thinking, "Well, my, my, my records are pleasurable." I was like, "Well, actually, the music's pleasurable. The records are only pleasurable when somebody comes over to my house and says, 'Oh my God, you got that record! That ra- record so impossible to get!'"

   25. JRJoe Rogan36:08

       Right. Okay.

   26. RCRaghunath Cappo36:09

       And so once I read that, it was the first shattering of my concept of self, and where, what is joy and what is pleasure based on my ego. And all those records that I really valued, and I had really valuable records, and we started our own record company at the time. So we would basically print limited editions of their ban- ... We put out all our friends' records, Sick of It All, Gorilla Biscuits, um, these were all bands that we grew up with, uh, our own band, Youth of Today. And so we'd put out these records. We'd make limited edition, and then we'd trade these. It's like printing your own currency basically. To make a long story short, after I read that one quote, my whole concept of pleasure changed, and I took all those records and I threw them out on stage to all fans, record collector fans.

   27. JRJoe Rogan36:56

       Wow.

   28. RCRaghunath Cappo36:56

       It was-

   29. JRJoe Rogan36:56

       So all the rare ones?

   30. RCRaghunath Cappo36:56

       But it was so ... All the rare ones. It was so liberating for me to do that. It was like the sh- it was like the- maybe like the first attempt of shedding my ego. That was a roundabout story, but the second part of what, that, that swami wrote was, um ... and I'm paraphrasing this, of course. Uh, um, "The diseases of the soul are not new. They're ancient. The soul is pure. The spirit is pure. But it gets covered by lust, greed, anger, and envy."... and I started thinking, "Well, not me. I'm lust- lusty. I'm not greedy, I'm not angry. I'm- I'm in a band, I have no money." You know? And if you've ever been in a band, it costs money to buy a guitar. Got a guitar, it costs money to buy strings. Got strings, it costs money to buy an amp. So it's- it's just like a- it's a money pit to be in a band. You get paid 50 bucks or whatever. So I'm thinking, "Not me." But as my band got more successful, I f- I realized, "Man, I do have... Uh, there is money out there that I- I want." And I remember I got- I got offered money for the first time being in a band. Wow, I can get money. I should get... You know, I wrote these songs, I should get more of that money. Then you get in a fight with the drummer. "No, I should get that money." "We should split it four ways." "No way, I do so much more, I book everything." And I realized, wow, I wasn't not greedy, I just had no money.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Wow. …

   1. RCRaghunath Cappo45:00

      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, my burning question. And, um, and I was still a New Yorker and I was still sort of like a, you know, New York in the '80s, so I was, like, a little street smart New Yorker. I'm actually from Connecticut, but I, uh-

   2. GCGuest (secondary questioner, likely in-room producer or companion)45:21

      Wow.

   3. RCRaghunath Cappo45:21

      ... 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, I'd visit them. But some... At the time I was 14, I used to just go to New York City and just hang out on the weekends. (sighs) And, uh, when I became a m- a monk or w- and went to India, I had saved about 25,000 bucks. Not a lot of money, not, n- n- 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 gonna go to India. I'm gonna meet a guru and the guru's gonna want all my money." This is how it works. (laughs) 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's kept on a tank on the (laughs) roof of the ashram. In the summer, that water's super hot because it's all kept on a tank on top of the ashram. There's no creature comforts whatsoever. You go to bed early, you wake up super early. You go to bed, you know, 8:30, you wake up 3:00 in the morning. There's nothing that... There's nothing to buy, there's nothing to purchase. All the fun things that we like to, to, like, ease the pain of existence are not there. Um, i- you know, there's no movies, there's no television, there's no comedy. There, there's nothing. W- and so two things happen when you strip everything away from a person. They lose it, they hop the fence, so to speak, and I've seen that happen, or they learn to find their pleasure from something more subtle. And so 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 wanna figure out how to be connected with nothing.

   4. GCGuest (secondary questioner, likely in-room producer or companion)47:26

      What did these guys do all day?

   5. RCRaghunath Cappo47:28

      (laughs) I don't know. They all did different stuff, I think.

   6. GCGuest (secondary questioner, likely in-room producer or companion)47:31

      Yeah?

   7. RCRaghunath Cappo47:31

      Everybody does... A- and every ashram's got their own thing. You know what I mean?

   8. GCGuest (secondary questioner, likely in-room producer or companion)47:34

      Did you have chores that you had to do to e- to earn your food? Like, did you have-

   9. RCRaghunath Cappo47:37

      Yeah. There... Every b-... You know, every ashram is gonna be different and every sp- uh, s- spiritual path. The- there's Christian monks and, you know, monks from different traditions around the world, I'm sure they all got their thing, different things. But later, I started doing my next band because the interesting thing about the Bhagavad Gita... The Bhagavad Gita is... you're familiar with.

   10. GCGuest (secondary questioner, likely in-room producer or companion)47:59

       Sure.

   11. RCRaghunath Cappo47:59

       It's one chapter of the biggest epic in the world, the Mahabharata. And it's a... it's the most studied and discussed and commented on by all the saints of ancient India. Um, people even bring it into politics and stuff. But it's a real conversation between the spirit and divo- divinity, and it's a conversation about, uh, (inhales) just about... it's just w-... it's just a- considered ancient wisdom for all people. So the... one of the ideas of the 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, like, wipe out your desires. It's not gonna happen. You take what you do and you do it in a way that is gonna assist you in your liberation and is gonna assist everybody else. So, um, even... I- 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 gonna just give me darker thoughts.

   12. GCGuest (secondary questioner, likely in-room producer or companion)49:07

       Like The Joker?

   13. RCRaghunath Cappo49:08

       I've, I've never seen it.

   14. GCGuest (secondary questioner, likely in-room producer or companion)49:09

       You didn't see it?

   15. RCRaghunath Cappo49:10

       I didn't. I, you k-... I'm... I wanna say that I live on a farm. (laughs) I live on a farm. We've ra-... I rarely watch anything except comedy. I love comedy, um, because I think laughing is important. Um, but I don't watch so much TV. Um, so I'm, I'm, I'm pretty...

   16. GCGuest (secondary questioner, likely in-room producer or companion)49:27

       Is it-

   17. RCRaghunath Cappo49:27

       If I do go to the movie, movies, it's out of, like... with my wife, "Let's just... we wanna get away from the kids, we wanna do something."

   18. GCGuest (secondary questioner, likely in-room producer or companion)49:33

       Right.

   19. RCRaghunath Cappo49:34

       Um, but it... there's no plan on what to watch.

   20. GCGuest (secondary questioner, likely in-room producer or companion)49:36

       S-

   21. RCRaghunath Cappo49:36

       But I'm open to good ideas.

   22. GCGuest (secondary questioner, likely in-room producer or companion)49:38

       The Joker is a really good movie, but it's really dark.

   23. RCRaghunath Cappo49:41

       It's really dark.

   24. GCGuest (secondary questioner, likely in-room producer or companion)49:41

       Like, you walk out of there feeling really confused.

   25. RCRaghunath Cappo49:44

       (laughs)

   26. GCGuest (secondary questioner, likely in-room producer or companion)49:44

       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, uh, (sighs) it's complicated. I mean, we could g- we could talk about the Joker for the next two hours, so-

   27. RCRaghunath Cappo49:58

       Y- you know-

   28. GCGuest (secondary questioner, likely in-room producer or companion)49:59

       ... I don't wanna get lost in the weeds.

   29. RCRaghunath Cappo50:00

       You know, the mind is like a garage and y- you become like what you store in that garage. So the thoughts-

   30. GCGuest (secondary questioner, likely in-room producer or companion)50:06

       Hm.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:10:36

   I wish that everybody…

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:00:00

      differently. It gave me gratitude. I had a connection to that animal. It made me think about it every ti- Every bite I took, I didn't take any of it for granted. It meant a lot.

   2. RCRaghunath Cappo1:00:11

      I wish that everybody that ate m- meat went out and hunted.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:00:14

      Yeah, it's just there's not enough animals and there's too many people, and it's just-

   4. RCRaghunath Cappo1:00:18

      (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:00:18

      We, we l- you know, like, we, we fucked it already. We fucked it already with cities. We fucked it already with large-scale agriculture. We fucked it already with monocropping. We fucked it already with you being able to buy food any way you want. This is the reason why there's so many of us.

   6. RCRaghunath Cappo1:00:30

      Isn't it like the end of the world, Joe? (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:00:32

      It's not the end of the world. It's a new world. It's, I mean, obviously right now, ready? Everything's fine. Feel it, feel that?

   8. RCRaghunath Cappo1:00:40

      (laughs)

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:00:40

      Everything's fine. We're in this room. It's sustainable. I mean, people look at it in terms of they extrapolate, like, "If this happens and that happens and we keep going, oh my God, it's gonna be awful in 10, 15 years." Guess what? They thought that when the car came out.

   10. RCRaghunath Cappo1:00:54

       Mm-hmm.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:00:54

       They thought that when the printing press was invented. They thought that i- when, when people stepped out of the caves and, and started building huts. This has always been the case with people. We're terrified of change, you know? I d- I'm not, I'm not terrified that the world is ending, uh, that it's unsustainable. We have problems. We have challenges, for sure. Um, but one of the big ones is that we're divorced from nature in a very, very, uh, strange way, and most people are, are urban population centers. Most people don't encounter nature. If you're in Manhattan, your best bet is Central Park, which is the most bastardized, zoo-like form of nature you're ever gonna find.

   12. RCRaghunath Cappo1:01:34

       Right.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:01:34

       It's not real nature. Like, where you live, you live in upstate?

   14. RCRaghunath Cappo1:01:38

       We got bears, we got foxes, we got-

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:01:39

       Yeah. You have real nature. (laughs)

   16. RCRaghunath Cappo1:01:41

       (laughs) Real nature.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:01:41

       That's real nature.

   18. RCRaghunath Cappo1:01:42

       I gotta cut you-

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:01:43

       Do you guys have ticks? Did you get, do you got Lyme disease?

   20. RCRaghunath Cappo1:01:44

       We got ticks. Uh-

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:01:45

       Have you got Lyme disease?

   22. RCRaghunath Cappo1:01:46

       I don't, I don't have Lyme disease, but it's a serious thing.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:01:48

       It's a huge thing.

   24. RCRaghunath Cappo1:01:49

       It's a huge thing, and I, uh, I've, I pulled off many ticks.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:01:52

       Oh, those fuckers.

   26. RCRaghunath Cappo1:01:52

       I've got bullseyes on my arms.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:01:54

       And did you get, uh, antibiotics right away?

   28. RCRaghunath Cappo1:01:57

       Um, yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:01:58

       Yeah. You gotta.

   30. RCRaghunath Cappo1:01:59

       Yeah.

Episode duration: 2:57:17