
What is the Core of Sanatana Dharma
What is the unchanging core of Sanatana Dharma - an idea, an institution, a worldview, or a value system? Bodha's most foundational research question.
#indian knowledge systems
We often hear the phrase – “the core of Sanatana dharma”. But we also get conflicting explanations about what is that core. Some say that the core is an institution like varnashrama dharma. Some say that the core is an idea like satya or ahimsa. Sometimes the views are not just different but also conflicting. The scholars who study the great texts of Sanatana dharma see core differently than the practitioners who know Sanatana dharma only in practice. Some see a historical arc as its defining feature and some see its core only in its ahistoricity.
So the big question is - what is the core of Sanatana dharma? An idea? A philosophy? An institution? A worldview? A value system? A belief system? A manual of dos and don’ts? Or a varying mixture of all or many of these? This big question explores all this in depth and range.
Also See
blog
A Dharmic Lens to Civilizational Theory
A redefinition of civilization and its pursuit, rooted in a dharmic way of things.
blog
How to Build a Civilization
Understanding the emic Hindu view of civilization, its purpose, design, and challenges, by playing a civilization builder game with Sanskrit dhatus as the building blocks.
blog
A Dharmika Frame for Sustainability and Technology
The Samudra Manthana as an ancient framework for thinking about technology, resource extraction, and sustainable cooperation - a Dhārmika alternative to both extractivist capitalism and romantic environmentalism.
blog
The Difference Between Us - on One-life vs. Multiple-life Metaphysics
What actually separates the Hindu and Abrahamic worldviews at the deepest level is not ritual, theistic dimensions, or scripture but the one-life versus multiple-life metaphysical foundation - and the implications of that single difference ramify through everything.
blog
Ram Ayenge | Ayodhya Rama Temple Devotion and Hindu Awakening
A first-person account of the devotional groundswell preceding the 2024 Ayodhyā pratiṣṭhā - what a spontaneous civilizational awakening looks and feels like from the inside - and what it reveals about the living roots of Hindu consciousness.
blog
Culture and Warfare - Finding Balance Through Dharma
Drawing on H. G. Wells, the Mahābhārata, and dhārmika philosophy to argue that the collapse of the distinction between culture and barbarism is a civilizational crisis - and that dharma is the only framework adequate to it.
blog
Turners of Time - How Hindu Festivals Rotate the Year
Holi and Hindu festivals as turners of time - how the festival calendar structures experience, transmits ecological wisdom, and keeps alive the felt relationship between human life and cosmic rhythm across generations.
blog
Indic Environmentalism - A Balance between Tradition and Innovation
Sanātana Dharma's environmental ethic is central to it - an argument that the dhārmika relationship with nature provides a more coherent ecological framework than either Western environmentalism or techno-optimism.
blog
The Dharmika Gene | Dharma, Culture, and Civilizational Consciousness
A fundamental re-articulation of Dharma as a civilizational inheritance - the genetic-level encoding that tells Bhāratīya culture how to understand itself, its cosmos, and its obligations across generations.
blog
Svayambodha and Śatrubodha - Two Wheels of Civilization
Hindu civilizational discourse has entered its sophisticated phase - an argument that Svayambodha (self-knowledge) and Shatrubodha (knowledge of the adversary) now constitute a canonical framework.
blog
Ratha as a Bīja of Civilizational DNA, a Fractal Maṇḍala Essay
The ratha (chariot) as a bīja - a seed form that contains the entire Dhārmika worldview in compressed symbolic code - an essay in reading Hindu iconography as philosophical argument embedded in form.
blog
Kṣetra, Śāstra, Utsava
On the axis connecting festival (utsava), sacred geography (kṣetra), and scripture (śāstra) - how Hindu festivals are to time what temples are to space - gradients of divine access that structure both the year and the land.
blog
Quest for Harmony | Indian Culture, Dharma, and Civilizational Balance
Bodha's founding essay - why India's cultural redemption requires recovering its civilizational orientation toward harmony - and why this is not a sentimental project but a rigorous civilizational imperative with practical stakes.
external-article
On What is a Hindu Temple
Dr. R. Nagaswamy on the essential nature of the Hindu temple — what it actually is, why its origins predate Buddhism, and how the Western academic genealogy that credits Buddhism with inventing the temple form gets the history exactly backward.
book
How I Became a Hindu
Personal and polemical reflection on religious identity, conviction, and civilizational self-understanding.
book
Essential Coomaraswamy
General overview of Hindu tradition, covering its beliefs, practices, social vision, and intellectual foundations.
book
Hindu Dharma
General account of Hindu dharma, its philosophical foundations, social vision, and practical disciplines.
book
The Secret of the Veda
Sri Aurobindo’s symbolic interpretation of the Vedic hymns as spiritual and psychological texts rather than merely ritual documents.
book
Wisdom of the Ancient Seers
Introductory reflections on Vedic and Upanishadic insight framed for modern readers.
