I have stopped asking people what dharma means. The answers differ too wildly. For one man, it's duty to his father. For another, it's defiance in the face of injustice. For Bhishma, dharma is a vow; for Draupadi, it is violated dignity; for Krishna, it's... whatever must be done.
None of these definitions are wrong. That's the problem.
In the world I came from, truth had to compile. Run-time errors meant you failed. Here, things don't just compile—they unfold. Dharma in this world is like fuzzy logic. It's a system where 1 and 0 are just extreme corners on a continuum that bends and flexes with context. This isn't Boolean algebra—it's gradient descent on a moral cost function I don't yet understand.
Observation 1: Dharma Is a Context-Aware System
I began to watch closely. Every decision the elders made seemed to violate some rule, and yet no one called them adharmic. A man who broke his vow to protect his sister still got praised for protecting the realm. Another who killed in stealth was celebrated for divine intervention.
If I had to write a function for dharma, it would not return True or False. It would return a probability.
def dharma(decision, context):
score = fuzzy_weighted_inputs(context, decision)
return score # float between 0 and 1
What mattered wasn't the action, but the variables around it—intent, outcome, position, necessity, perception.
As a Data Science student in my last life, I would have failed any assignment where truth changed like this. But here, such elasticity was survival.
Recursive Ethics: Krishna's Contradictions
Then I began analyzing Krishna. I still don't understand if he's man, god, or script optimizer. But he's consistent in his inconsistency. He lies, manipulates, avoids war, causes war, kills, saves—all while maintaining a smile that says: "I know what you don't."
It occurred to me one evening: Krishna doesn't optimize for morality. He optimizes for system stability.
He's the try/except block of the Mahabharata.
try:
dharma_violation = context.breaking_point()
patch_fix(dharma_violation)
except ChaosException:
inject_krishna()
In data structures, you have garbage collectors. Krishna is the cosmic garbage collector, memory-leaking truths, clearing contradictions to keep the simulation running.
One afternoon, I tried building a simple moral model using pebbles.
Each pebble was an action. Red ones for violence, white ones for vows, black ones for betrayal, blue for divine command. I watched as I placed red on red—too much violence, and people rebelled. Place white on black—loyalty over betrayal—and the system stabilized.
But the same sequence reversed, caused collapse. Context.
That day, I stopped believing in right and wrong as constants. I began thinking in vectors: direction, magnitude, friction. Dharma isn't a rule. It's a tendency. An evolving norm under constant regression testing.
At times, I wondered if the rishis who spoke of fate and rebirth were describing something akin to reinforcement learning. Fail, repeat. Die, respawn. Accumulate karma like reward points. Even my power—Vaakyasatya—felt like I was tweaking weights in a neural network of fate.
Could dharma be the fitness function of a cosmic genetic algorithm?
I noticed something odd. Whenever someone went against personal interest for the perceived greater good, the world seemed to reward them—but only sometimes. When others followed rules blindly, they often suffered. Krishna rarely gave explanations. He just... adjusted outcomes.
I'd begun designing internal models for what I observed:
Inputs: family, caste, war, famine, law, desire
Constraints: karma, social role, scriptural bounds
Cost Function: minimize destruction, maximize harmony
def optimize_dharma(actions, constraints):
best_path = None
lowest_cost = float('inf')
for path in generate_possible_paths(actions):
cost = evaluate(path, constraints)
if cost < lowest_cost:
best_path = path
lowest_cost = cost
return best_path
But sometimes the optimal path was cruel. Like abandoning Karna at birth. Like Draupadi marrying five husbands. Like Arjuna refusing to fight, then being forced to.
Was the system rigged? Or were these edge cases?
It was minor—my brother Kittu lied to a Brahmin boy to protect me from punishment. I had stolen a page of scripture to read. The boy complained, and Kittu said it was his fault.
A lie. But a noble one.
I didn't say anything aloud. I just thought, He is telling the truth to protect.
That night, the boy forgot what he was angry about. He returned the next day with fruit. A glitch? A gift? Or my ability at work?
I realized: even lies serve dharma sometimes.
And that's when it hit me.
This text—the events unfolding around me—it isn't static. It's a live feed of civilization debugging itself. Every character is a forked process. Every vow, a try-catch statement. Every battle, a stress test.
Somewhere in this code, there's an observer like me. Krishna perhaps. Or someone beyond him.
I asked myself: Am I being tested?
The simulation seems to respond to choices. Like a reinforcement agent, it offers feedback. Delayed, obfuscated, but real.
So I began living accordingly:
Don't blindly follow dharma.
Don't defy it either.
Trace the variables.
Act like an intelligent agent.
I stopped asking "What is right?" I began asking "What is required, now?"
We journeyed to an ashram where young Brahmins studied scriptures. I was not allowed in, but I sat near the gate, listening.
One rishi spoke of the Gita. He said, "Even the slayer and the slain are the same soul. Act without attachment."
I had read that logic in the Bhagavad Gita once in my past life. But now, I realized—it's not a justification. It's abstraction. The warrior is not to think in human terms. He is to run a program.
Detached action = zero side effects.
I walked away, disturbed.
Was Krishna telling Arjuna to suppress his emotional loss function? To run a compiled script with no recursion?
Was that wisdom—or dangerous denial?
One day, I saw a man bury his dead wife. He wailed in agony, and no scripture helped him. No dharma came to his aid. And no Krishna whispered from a chariot.
He cried, "I followed the rules, and still she died."
That night, I wrote on a clay tablet:
There are no perfect models. Only adaptive ones.
I realized: dharma isn't about what should be. It's about adapting to what is—without crashing.
Krishna wasn't a god of perfection. He was the divine debugger.
And I—I was his quiet student.
I looked up to the stars that night and whispered:
"May my decisions be as accurate as the stars, and as forgiving as the sky."
This is not science. This is science, stretched by time, emotion, and myth.
This is the Dharma Algorithm.