Robert Raddock introduces politics to the study of India's spiritual roots. His dissertation in Southeast Asian Studies, How to Read like a Renunciant: Shankaracarya's Commentary on the Brhad Aranyaka Upanishad, reevaluates the reception of the oldest Sanskrit text seminal to Hinduism. Compiled in the 5th century BCE, the Brhad Aranyaka Upanishad was interpreted in a radical manner in the 9th century by Shankaracarya, the most famous exponent of Advaita Vedanta philosophy. Shankara urged the male Brahman reader to renounce village life and go into the forest to contemplate the oneness of the self and world spirit. Shankara's message, Raddock explains, has made him into an icon of Hinduism and India in the sense he is seen as "world-renouncing, apolitical, and idealist." Raddock revises this image by pointing out the existentialist and political content of Shankara's commentary, arguing that he shares with ancient Roman and Greek philosophers (especially Socrates) the view that philosophical discourse cannot be divorced from philosophy as a way of life.