Practical dharma

One of the most misunderstood concepts these days is the idea of dharma (and other related terms like karma). Dharma is variously translated as "duty", "righteousness", "ethics", "divine law", and even "religion"-- all of which, are incorrect definitions. 

Dharma is the most fundamental of the four "drivers" or purusharthas of human behaviour: dharma, artha, kama, and moksha. The most accurate translation I can give for these terms respectively, are: sustainability, capability, agency, and liberation. 

The term dharma comes from the root dhrt- which means something that sustains or prevails. Dharma refers to the property of a system of being, that remains invariant through the life cycle of the system.  Dharma is what gives us our resilience to prevail across varying, adverse conditions and not be consumed by causal forces. 

Dharma is not just a property of "living" beings-- it is a characteristic of all systems of being. The field of statistical mechanics in physics uses a postulate very centrally in its inquiry, which says that, every bounded system has one or more "stable" states which represent low energy or low stress states in its neighbourhood, into which, it settles down, when left alone. For instance, electrons in an atom settle down into specific orbits. If we excite an electron with some energy, it moves to a higher orbit-- but also becomes unstable. It would quickly discard the excess energy and come back to its stable state of being. 

As complex living beings, these stable states of being are what constitutes our dharma. The principle of dharma holds whether we are talking about human societies, or the formation of crystals, or states of matter, or the climate, or the solar system, etc. 

One of the tests I use to see if someone has understood the concept of dharma, is to ask them whether dharma exists as of now, on Jupiter or Pluto. If their understanding of dharma is only in social terms like duty or religion, they would say that dharma is not applicable on Pluto. 

The most frustrating error of course, is to equate dharma with religion. Recently, I was listening to a talk where the speaker clarified the difference. Religion (or "faith" as understood in the dominant Western narrative today), is something personal and subjective, while dharma is an objective entity. The speaker gave an analogy of toothbrush and toothpaste. While we can share a tube of toothpaste, our toothbrush is personal. Dharma is something that is shared and depends on all of us, while religion or faith, is personal. 

Dharma is not righteousness either. But protecting and upholding dharma helps in righteousness and civility to prevail. Dharma is not our duty as well. But protecting and upholding dharma helps us in performing our duties. Dharma is not ethics either. But protecting and upholding dharma helps empower ethical practices. 

So how do we protect and uphold dharma? To do so, we need to understand the system of being that we are inquiring about and the environment (Vidhi) in which it is operating. As individuals, we are a system of being ourselves; and our family, work, society and even the physical environment around us represents the Vidhi in which we operate. Similarly, an institution could be the system of being whose dharma we are interested in, and its Vidhi represents the economic, cultural, social and physical environment in which it operates. 

We need to then understand what is the set of invariant properties that characterise our system of being. What is it about us that remains constant across time and the various interactions that we perform? Similarly, for institutions, we ask what is it that needs to prevail, that makes the institution what it is. 

Once we understand this, we then need to understand the "game" of interaction between the system and its Vidhi. Our Vidhi places lots of demands on us, for which we need to provide our best response. 

A being operating in its Vidhi (under certain conditions) is guaranteed to have at least one state of equilibrium. This can actually be proven mathematically! The state of equilibrium represents the "mutual best response" function-- meaning, this is the best that the being can do given the demands of its Vidhi, and this is also the best that the Vidhi can demand, given how the being is operating. 

Let us call the state of dharma of the being as 'd' and the state of equilibrium with the Vidhi as 'e'. The difference between 'd' and 'e' is our existential stress-- it is the difference between what sustains us and what is demanded of us. This formulation of existential stress remains the same, regardless of whether we are talking about individuals or institutions or communities or families or countries. 

To uphold our dharma, we can adopt various strategies. We can improve our capabilities (artha) to find a different stable state of being which is closer to 'e'. Or we can change our Vidhi to find a different environment whose equilibrium state 'e' is closer to our state of sustainability 'd'. Or we could change the "game" or the nature of our interaction with our Vidhi so that it forms a game whose equilibrium state 'e' is closer to our 'd'. 

All these are very different from doing our duties, or complying with orders, or upholding righteousness. We can do our duties or uphold righteousness these only after we can uphold our dharma in our Vidhi.