I don’t write about faith here, but I’ll make an exception. This is more philosophy than faith anyway, and some of the oldest writings known to humankind might have something to say about a trend I’m noticing on how fragile we are making our relationships and our vocations.
Consider the checklist floating on social media: a true Sanatani wears a specific thread on the wrist, greets only with “Jai Shri Ram,” eats no meat, and adds “Sanatani” to their bio as a badge. Or the politician who defends Sanatan Dharma loudly in public while practicing caste discrimination in private. Or the influencer who packages ayurvedic routines as “reclaiming our Sanatan roots” for a price. Claiming that a true Sanatani needs a thread on a wrist for their identity is like saying gravity needs a permit to work.
To take a step back, Sanatan is the eternal order that holds reality together, before any human institution, without a founding moment, needing no symbol of belonging. Any tradition or any pursuit that genuinely seeks truth is participating in Sanatan Dharma.
The word dharma is not to be confused with “religion” in the Western sense of a faith community, but as the underlying principle that holds reality together, literally as “the way things actually are.”
It’s a self-inquiry into the nature of existence that the tradition considers eternal and discovered rather than invented. It was expressed through centuries of competing commentaries on the subcontinent, and stubbornly resistant to being frozen into any single answer.
I find myself questioning this all the time. Why do we reduce our own traditions through artificial exclusions (like treating a thread as the identity of a Sanatan) when those who articulated them took every care to make them universal?
I find it incredible that practices like Sanatan survived thousands of years when every generation would have had its share of “hijackers” who twist and mould these concepts for their own gain.
Maybe, because true dharma is as impersonal as gravity, or apauruseya, self-evident and authorless. And what is not invented needs no revival.
And that’s where I pivot to the struggles we face in our most important relationships or what we seek in our careers.
Without knowing “what is”, we invent things we need to posture to the world around us. The more we “invent” things about ourselves and our intentions, the more “revival” they need. If we root our relationships and work in truths about ourselves, the less fragile they become.
And you won’t need to carry no burden of any symbols.