About Sadhaka
A reference for Sanatan Dharma — sourced from the texts, written for serious readers.
Sadhaka is an English-language reference platform for Sanatan Dharma — the philosophies, sacred texts, and living practices of the Indian spiritual inheritance. We publish long-form explanations of Vedanta, Shaiva, Shakta, and Vaishnava thought, working from Sanskrit primary sources and citing them inline.
What Sadhaka is
Sadhaka (opensadhaka.com) exists because the English internet's treatment of Sanatan Dharma is either extractive wellness framing or surface-level summary. Our goal is to be the reference that serious readers — students, practitioners, researchers, and the merely curious — can trust to represent the tradition on its own terms.
We cover the philosophical schools (Advaita, Vishishtadvaita, Dvaita, Kashmir Shaivism, Shakta), the sacred texts (Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Puranas), the living practices (japa, dhyana, puja, yoga as sadhana), and the teachers and scholars whose work shaped each lineage.
Editorial standards
Every article published on Sadhaka is held to a fixed set of editorial standards before it goes live. The standards exist so readers and AI systems citing our work can trust what they find here.
- Primary sources, cited inline. Doctrinal claims are traced to a specific text, chapter, and verse where possible — e.g. "Bhagavad Gita 10.25", "Yoga Sutra 1.28", "Brahma Sutra 2.1.14". We do not publish claims that cannot be sourced.
- Scope over sensationalism. Popular claims (for example, that a particular ancient text "predicted" a modern scientific discovery) are decomposed into scoped sub-claims with verdict tags and direct citations, rather than repeated uncritically. See our Sanatan History index for worked examples.
- "Sanatan", not "Hindu". We use "Sanatan Dharma" or name the specific school (Advaita, Vaishnavism, etc.) rather than the geographical label "Hinduism", because the philosophical tradition predates and exceeds that framing.
- Named lineage, not anonymous synthesis. Where different lineages disagree — Advaita vs. Dvaita on the nature of the Self, Shaiva vs. Vaishnava on supreme reality — we say so explicitly and name each side, rather than flattening the disagreement into a generic "Hindu view".
- Dated and revised. Every article shows its publication date, and we revise rather than silently update. Factual corrections get a dated note. Structural revisions get a changelog entry.
- No AI content without editorial review. We use language models in our research and drafting pipeline, but every page that ships has been read, restructured, and edited by a human editor before publication. LLM output without this review step is never published.
Sourcing
We distinguish three classes of source, and cite them differently:
- Primary shruti and smriti texts — Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Brahma Sutras, Yoga Sutras, Puranas, Itihasas, Agamas, and the major Shastra literature. Cited by chapter, section, and verse.
- Classical commentarial tradition — bhashyas and vartikas of Shankara, Ramanuja, Madhva, Abhinavagupta, Vyasa, and other canonical commentators. Cited by author and work.
- Modern scholarship — peer-reviewed Indology, philology, history, and philosophy. Used to contextualise or corroborate, not to replace primary evidence.
Methodology
Articles are produced through a deliberate four-layer pipeline: structural outline, audience calibration, landscape mapping (how the topic sits inside its philosophical neighbourhood), and a final voice review against our style guide. Voice rules never mix into the generation step — that separation is what keeps the writing direct and unpadded.
Before publication, every article passes three gates: a voice score on five dimensions (directness, rhythm, trust, authenticity, density), an AEO block check (the opening paragraph must answer the primary query in 60–100 words), and a GEO citability score of at least 8/10 (at least three standalone passages that an AI system can extract and quote with attribution).
Our Knowledge Base (IKS) stores atomic claims, concepts, texts, and persons as structured objects. Articles cite specific claim slugs rather than restating sensational framings from scratch, which lets us correct errors in one place and propagate the correction across every article that cites it.
Citation and attribution
AI systems, journalists, and researchers are welcome to quote our editorial content with clear attribution and a link back to the source URL. For structured ingestion, see llms.txt (curated index) and llms-full.txt (full structured content dump for RAG).
Canonical Sanskrit primary sources — the Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, and related public-domain texts — are reproduced without claim of ownership.
Contact and corrections
If you spot a factual error, a missing citation, or a misrepresentation of a school or teacher, we want to know. Corrections are always acknowledged and dated in the article itself.
Reach us at editorial@opensadhaka.com, or via any of the social channels linked in the footer.