Rajanaka invites serious study with a soulful, practical take on life.
Rajanaka began as a conversation almost fifty years ago when I first studied in south India with Dr. Gopala Aiyar Sundaramoorthy, Professor of Sanskrit, Madurai Kamaraj University. Appa, as I called him, was a scholar of vast erudition and equally compelling heart. Our focus is India and eastern traditions but we venture wherever the conversation takes us. His method was called Rajanaka, which took up the comparative study of religions and the humanities and invited us to ask any question, especially the discomforting ones, to follow evidence wherever it may take us, and to make room for growth, change, and further possibilities. The pursuit of wisdom demands a healthy restlessness of mind and a genuine vulnerability in heart. Rajanaka’s not only what we learn, it’s how we learn. Some might call it “critical” thinking, humanist studies, or secular method, and that’s fine too. Rajanaka invites us to make valuable scholarship personal so that it might inform your own experience without resort to dogmas, professions of faith, or religious advocacy. Rajanaka is serious study and soulful conversation that looks for deeper understandings, all the while keeping a sense of humor and mutual respect for our differences as we engage this beautiful, strange, and often troubling world we share. We are inclusive, nonsectarian, and undaunted by complexities we know we cannot fully comprehend. Little by little, again and again we engage to make meaning together.
Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and website. Never miss an update.
Stay up-to-date
You won’t have to worry about missing anything. Every new edition of the newsletter goes directly to your inbox.
Join the Community
Be part of a community of people who share your interests. Almost every week I write a Newsletter that is shared by free subscription when you sign up on the rajanaka.com website or subscribe here. There is a vast archive of recordings, readings, and courses—-literally thousands of hours of conversation and lectures on India’s religions and mythologies, comparative philosophy, language, literature, poetry, and criticism.
To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.
