Work #1877
Mahabharata (attributed)
The longest epic poem in world literature — the war of the Bharatas, the Bhagavad Gita, and the encyclopedic treatment of dharma
Vyasa (traditional attribution)
· c. 400 BCE – 400 CE (composite; core narrative possibly older)
· Sanskrit
· Epic poetry (approximately 200,000 verses in 18 books)
Tradition: Hindu epic / Vedic-Brahmanical
What is here is found elsewhere; what is not here is nowhere — the encyclopedic epic of dharma
The Mahabharata, attributed to the sage Vyasa, is the longest epic poem in world literature at roughly 200,000 verses (1.8 million words). It narrates the conflict between the Pandava and Kaurava branches of the Bharata dynasty, culminating in the cataclysmic Kurukshetra war. But the war narrative is the frame for an encyclopedic treatment of dharma (moral-cosmic law), artha (statecraft), kama (desire), and moksha (liberation). The Bhagavad Gita — Krishna's discourse to Arjuna on the battlefield — is embedded in Book 6. The Shanti Parva (Book 12) and Anushasana Parva (Book 13) contain extensive philosophical, political, and ethical teachings. The Mahabharata is not a single-authored work but a textual tradition that grew over centuries; the attribution to Vyasa represents the tradition's self-understanding. The epic claims comprehensive scope: "What is here is found elsewhere; what is not here is nowhere" (MBh 1.56.33).
Author
Editions cited
- V. S. Sukthankar et al. (eds.), The Mahabharata: Critical Edition (Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1933–1966)
- J. A. B. van Buitenen, The Mahabharata (University of Chicago Press, 1973–1978, 3 vols., incomplete)
- Bibek Debroy, The Mahabharata (Penguin India, 2010–2014, 10 vols., complete English translation)
School Embodiments
The foundational narrative of Hindu civilisation; the Gita is its most influential single text.
"What is here is found elsewhere; what is not here is nowhere." (MBh 1.56.33)
Advaita Vedanta
15%
The Gita's teaching of the unchanging Self and the illusory nature of the empirical world feeds directly into Advaita.
"The Self is never born, nor does it ever die." (Bhagavad Gita 2.20)
Vedanta
20%
The Gita is one of the prasthanatraya; all Vedantic schools write commentaries on it.
"Abandoning all dharmas, take refuge in me alone." (Bhagavad Gita 18.66)
Virtue Ethics
15%
The epic's central question is "what is right action?" — dharma explored through competing duties.
"Dharma is subtle." (MBh, recurrent refrain)
Encyclopedic scope covering dharma, artha, kama, moksha — the full range of human purposes.
"Dharma, artha, kama, and moksha — whatever is here is found elsewhere." (MBh 1.56.33)
Vedic Tradition tradition.
Internal Tensions
Dharma as absolute vs. dharma as contextual — righteous action in one framework is transgression in another. The Gita's detachment teaching on a battlefield of maximal violence.
⧖
I. Time
Cyclical: yugas repeat; the epic occurs at the Dvapara-Kali Yuga transition. Within each cycle, morally significant.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Emergent
Grain: Continuous
Freedom: Non-Deterministic
Traversability: Cyclical
Direction: Non-directional
Dimensionality: One
✦
II. Space
Emergent from Brahman: earthly, celestial, and underworld realms; Krishna's cosmic form contains all spaces.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Emergent
Curvature: Undefined
Dimensionality: Three
Locality: Non-local
◉
III. Matter
Emergent and non-conserved at the cosmic level; within a cycle, war destroys armies and kingdoms.
Attributes
Extent: Finite
Ontological Status: Emergent
Conservation: Non-conserved
Dimensionality: Three
Locality: Non-local
◎
IV. Observer
Multiple levels: human characters, divine observers (Krishna), and Vyasa within his own narrative.
Attributes
Time Instance: Multiple
Space Instance: Multiple
Knowledge Extent: Total
Knowledge Retainment: Total
Physicality: Embodied
Agency: Active
Number: Plural
Metaphysical Agency: Personal
⚡
V. Energy
Divine energy (shakti, tejas) pervades: celestial weapons, Krishna's cosmic form.
Attributes
Extent: Infinite
Ontological Status: Emergent
Conservation: Variable
Dispersibility: Reversible
⧉
VI. Information
The epic is a supreme act of information conservation: "what is not here is nowhere."
Attributes
Ontological Status: Emergent
Cosmic Conservation: Conserved
Personal Conservation: Conserved
Granularity: Continuous
Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint
Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.
Computed school proximity
The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How Mahabharata (attributed) resolves each dilemma
50 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 29 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 7 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.
Distinctive · only 18% of schools agree
(38/208)
How much weight do future people deserve?
If a billion people will exist in the 25th century, do their interests count for as much as the interests of a billion people alive now? The answer turns on what kind of reality the future has.
Past, present, and future are bound in cycles — duties span generations as a matter of course.
On these views, time is not a one-way arrow but a structure of return: cosmic cycles, karmic cycles, the seasons, the succession of generations. To act now is always also to act for the ancestors who shaped your inheritance and for the descendants who will …
Roads not taken
Future people are as real as you are — and their interests count for as much. (47%) ·
Time arises from events or from a deeper substrate — the future is not yet. (31%) ·
The future branches — what we owe depends on which branch we create. (2%)
Distinctive · only 18% of schools agree
(38/208)
Is regret rational?
If the past is fixed and unchangeable, what kind of mental act is regret? An error, a duty, a lesson, a perspective on a moment that is still in some sense present?
The past is part of a cycle one keeps returning to; regret is one of the gates of the cycle.
On cyclical views, the past is not a fixed thing behind you — it is part of the ongoing structure of return: karmic cycles, cosmic cycles, the cycle of seasons and generations. Regret, on these views, is less about an unchangeable past and more about …
Roads not taken
The past is as real as the present; regret is a real attitude toward a real thing. (47%) ·
The past is not a thing now; regret is the present holding what is no longer. (31%) ·
Other branches exist; regret tracks roads not taken that are nonetheless real. (2%)
Distinctive · only 18% of schools agree
(38/208)
Do we owe extinct species something we cannot give them?
A species that no longer exists cannot be helped, cannot be consulted, cannot benefit. Whether anything is owed to it anyway turns on what kind of reality past beings have.
Past beings are part of the cycle; we owe them what we owe ancestors.
On cyclical views, the relationship to past beings — ancestors, lineages, predecessors — is structurally present, because past and future are part of the same ongoing structure of return. Extinct species are not categorically different from extinct human ancestors or non-yet-born descendants: all are part …
Roads not taken
Extinct species are as real as we are; they have standing. (47%) ·
Past species no longer exist; what we owe is to the present and the future. (31%) ·
Extinction is path-dependent; the species exists in branches we didn't take. (2%)
6 mainstream positions
Do you really choose?
The future is open and you are a genuine origin of it.
69%
Are addicts responsible for their addiction?
The addict could have chosen otherwise — that's why recovery is real.
69%
Should we hold AI systems responsible for what they do?
An AI without a free will is not the kind of thing that can be responsible.
69%
Is the universe running out of usable energy?
Time is unbounded but matter is finite; usable energy can fail without time failing.
47%
Are natural resources fundamentally finite, or only practically so?
Time goes on but matter is bounded; we are eventually constrained even with infinite time.
47%
Could we owe future generations more than is materially possible to provide?
Time is unbounded but matter is not; we can owe more across long time than the matter can provide.
47%
Matter · 7 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
What stuff is — fundamental, relational, or appearance.
Distinctive · only 4% of schools agree
(9/208)
Is the world created from nothing?
Creatio ex nihilo is one of the most distinctive Western-theological claims. Whether matter was created from nothing, eternally exists, or is sustained moment-by-moment turns on what kind of thing matter is.
Matter arises and dissolves through cosmic rounds; neither created from nothing nor eternal.
On cyclical views, matter is neither a substance called out of nothing once-for-all nor a permanently conserved bedrock. It emerges from a deeper reality in each cosmic round and dissolves back into it. The creatio-ex-nihilo question presupposes a linear creation event the view denies; the …
Roads not taken
Yes — matter was created and is conserved as a real substance. (56%) ·
Matter is real but emerges from something deeper — neither bedrock nor created-from-nothing. (23%) ·
Matter is constituted by relations; the question of 'from what?' presupposes substance. (16%)
Distinctive · only 4% of schools agree
(9/208)
Is the physical world fully real?
Realists, idealists, and relationalists divide on whether matter exists mind-independently, derivatively, or as a pattern of relations. The split runs deeper than any single scientific question.
Real for this cycle — the deepest reality cycles through creation and dissolution.
On cyclical views, the physical world is real now, in this cosmic round. Its reality is not eternal; matter emerges from a deeper source and will return to it. The realism-idealism dispute, framed as a once-for-all metaphysical question, is answered at the cosmic-round scale rather …
Roads not taken
Yes — the physical world is fully real, mind-independent, persisting. (56%) ·
Real but sustained — not mind-independent in the strict realist sense. (23%) ·
Real as relations — neither pure substance nor pure construction. (16%)
Distinctive · only 4% of schools agree
(9/208)
Does matter have intrinsic moral standing?
Do rocks, soil, rivers, and stuff in general deserve moral consideration — or only the living, the conscious, the human? The answer turns on what matter is.
Matter is in flux; standing is impermanent and ritual-mediated.
On cyclical views, the moral standing of a particular material form is real but impermanent. What matters is the ritual and contemplative relation to a world that is arising and dissolving. Asking for the standing of matter as such fixes what the view holds to …
Roads not taken
Matter is morally considerable insofar as it is created or conserved good. (56%) ·
Matter is morally considerable derivatively — through what it sustains. (23%) ·
Matter has intrinsic moral standing as part of the relational fabric. (16%)
Distinctive · only 16% of schools agree
(33/208)
What is money?
The question of what money is — a measured store of real value, an agreed-on practice, a relational ledger of debts, or just a name we apply to many different things — sits behind every argument about inflation, cryptocurrency, debt, and the state.
Money is a social practice — its content is what we make it.
On this view, money is exactly what societies do that performs the monetary functions. There is no fact about whether something is 'really' money beyond whether it is used as money. A community that decides shell beads or carbon credits or proof-of-work hashes count as …
Roads not taken
Money is a real institution with intrinsic features. (55%) ·
Money is the ledger of obligations among real people. (14%) ·
“Money” names a family of practices — the definition question is nominal. (8%)
Distinctive · only 16% of schools agree
(33/208)
What is a nation?
Whether a nation is a real moral community with intrinsic character, a constructed legal-political artifact, a web of kinship and shared history, an imagined community, or a conventional partition of a deeper unity — these are real ontological positions with sharply different political downstream.
A nation is a constructed polity — a project, not a discovery.
On this view, nations are made: by treaties, by wars, by deliberate institution-building, by the slow work of collective practice. There is nothing intrinsic about a national kind; what exists is the practice. What we owe the nation is what we owe any institution we …
Roads not taken
A nation is a real moral community with intrinsic character. (55%) ·
A nation is the web of kinship, ancestry, and shared land that hosts a people. (14%) ·
“Nation” names a family of practices imaginatively held together. (8%)
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree
(18/208)
What makes someone the same person over time?
When dementia hollows out memory, when a coma resolves with no recall, when you imagine being uploaded — the question of whether the surviving person is still you turns on what kind of thing the 'you' was to begin with.
You span moments — identity is a pattern that need not be located at a single now.
On this view, the observer is not bound to a single present. Identity is something that exists across moments — as a pattern, an ancestral line, a trans-temporal structure. Uploading, in this picture, is not a metaphysical impossibility but an engineering question; ancestors are real …
Roads not taken
You are your body — continuity is bodily continuity. (36%) ·
You are a soul — what persists through change is the non-bodily aspect. (30%) ·
There was never a fixed self to either preserve or lose. (14%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree
(18/208)
Is the late-stage dementia patient still the person their spouse married?
Loss of memory, of recognition, of the cognitive patterns that made the person — does this end the person, or merely the person you knew? The answer turns on what makes someone who they are.
The person is the pattern across moments — diminished pattern, diminished person.
On this view, the person is constituted by a pattern extending across moments — memory, narrative, characteristic ways of being. As dementia erodes the pattern, the person is correspondingly diminished. What remains is real but is less than what was; the marriage to the person …
Roads not taken
Same body, same person — even when the cognitive pattern has changed. (36%) ·
The soul persists; the cognitive change is the body's, not the person's. (30%) ·
There was no fixed person to lose; care is owed to whoever is here. (14%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree
(18/208)
If a teleporter copied and destroyed you, would you have survived?
The Star Trek transporter problem: a machine scans your body atom by atom, transmits the pattern, builds an exact duplicate at the destination, and dismantles the original. Whether you arrive at the destination or die in the scanner is the question; the answer depends on what you are.
You are the pattern; the pattern survives the substrate change. You arrive.
On this view, you are the trans-temporal pattern that has shown up in this body up to now. The teleporter preserves the pattern — destroys one instance, builds another — and the pattern is what matters. You step in and you step out. The fact …
Roads not taken
Different body, different person — you died in the scanner. (36%) ·
The soul accompanies the person; engineering can't transfer it. (30%) ·
There was no fixed you to either survive or fail to; the question is malformed. (14%)
Distinctive · only 12% of schools agree
(26/208)
Are the dead morally present to the living?
Ancestor veneration, intercession with saints, the moral weight of a promise made to someone now gone — these all presuppose that the dead are present in some sense beyond memory. Whether they are turns on whether an observer is the kind of thing that exists in a single moment or across many.
Observers span moments; the dead are present in a real (not merely metaphorical) way.
On this view, an observer is not located at a single moment but extends across moments. The dead, on this signature, are not gone — they are elsewhere on the same trans-temporal structure that you yourself occupy. Ancestor veneration, intercession with saints, the moral weight …
Roads not taken
Observers are bounded by their own moment, and no further agency makes the dead present. (43%) ·
The dead are present through divine memory, communion of saints, or ancestor presence. (37%) ·
From the standpoint of the One, the distinction between living and dead is conventional. (8%)
Distinctive · only 12% of schools agree
(26/208)
Is divine omniscience compatible with human freedom?
If God knows what you will do tomorrow, does your tomorrow-self choose freely? The classical problem of foreknowledge turns on whether the divine vantage stands outside time or inside it.
An observer can occupy multiple times at once; foreknowledge is not foreordering.
On this view, observers can in principle exist in more than one moment simultaneously — and divine omniscience is exactly the case of an observer occupying all moments at once. The future actions God 'foresees' aren't foreseen at all in the temporal sense; God simply …
Roads not taken
The observer is in time; foreknowledge across times raises real freedom problems. (46%) ·
The human observer is in time, but God's vantage is not — and foreknowledge is not foreordering. (34%) ·
Distinction of the One and observed time is itself conventional; the question dissolves. (8%)
25 mainstream positions
Does meditation reveal something genuinely timeless?
Meditation accesses a trans-temporal level the ordinary observer doesn't ordinarily reach.
12%
Does prayer change God's mind?
Prayer participates in a trans-temporal liturgy or communion; the question of 'changing the mind' misses the trans-temporal mode.
12%
When does a person begin?
A person comes into being gradually, as the capacities of a mind develop.
16%
What is marriage?
Marriage is a practice we shape — its content is what we make it.
16%
Is environmental damage ever truly permanent?
Loss is part of cycles; what disappears returns in another form.
18%
Can a civilization recover from collapse?
Civilization rises and falls in cycles; recovery is structural to history.
18%
Does the second law of thermodynamics mean something morally?
Local entropy increase is part of a cycle; the moral category is participation in the cycle.
18%
Could causation work backwards?
Time is structured as return; 'forward' and 'backward' are local features of the cycle.
18%
Is the asymmetry between memory and anticipation a real feature of time, or just of us?
Memory and anticipation are phases of a cycle that visits both directions.
18%
Is the arrow of time a real feature of the cosmos, or only of how we describe it?
Within a cycle there is a direction; across the cycle there isn't.
18%
What is our place in nature?
Active in a real nature — we cultivate, steward, transform.
50%
Should we colonize space?
Cultivating worlds beyond Earth is the next form of stewardship.
50%
Is genetic engineering of food stewardship or domination?
Genetic modification is cultivation by other means.
50%
Is reality fundamentally digital?
No — continuous divine sustaining act, the Tao that knows no joints, the One's self-disclosure.
44%
Are there indivisible units of experience?
No — continuous divine presence; consciousness is the unbroken witness.
44%
Is memory stored or reconstructed?
Held in continuous divine or ancestral remembering — neither stored discretely nor purely reconstructed.
44%
Can prayer for someone far away affect them?
Prayer reaches because God or a cosmic ordering acts on the prayed-for.
38%
Are coincidences ever more than coincidence?
What looks like coincidence is providence — there is no such thing as a real coincidence.
38%
Do animals have moral standing comparable to humans?
Animal minds are real because biology is the substrate of mind.
31%
Could a fetal brain organoid in a petri dish be conscious?
Brain tissue can in principle do what brains do; the question is integration.
31%
Should we trust expert testimony when we can't verify it?
Defer to credentialed traditions; experts are the modern analog.
30%
Is religious revelation a real source of knowledge?
Revelation is the paradigm case of authoritative knowledge.
30%
Does an LLM 'know' the things it correctly produces?
An LLM has no soul to whom revelation could be addressed; the question doesn't apply.
30%
Could an AI have a mind that matters?
No — mind is what a biological brain does, and an LLM has no brain.
29%
Does environmental harm in another country bind me morally?
Distance doesn't dilute obligation; communion of saints / divine relation spans the cosmos.
29%
7 unaligned
Does history have a direction or meaning?
Schools split: 36% / 23% / 19%
—
How is knowledge of reality produced?
Schools split: 24% / 17% / 13%
—
Is salvation, liberation, or fulfillment individual or communal?
Schools split: 14% / 14% / 4%
—
Is truth universal, tradition-bound, situated, or constructed?
Schools split: 66% / 16% / 10%
—
What happens to "you" when you die?
Schools split: 38% / 29% / 18%
—
What kind of religious-theological authority does the tradition recognize?
Schools split: 42% / 16% / 13%
—
Who is the moral primary — the individual, the community, the cosmos, the class, or the species?
Schools split: 38% / 28% / 16%
—
Information · 4 dilemmas · 4 distinctive
Pattern, memory, and what is preserved or lost.
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree
(18/208)
Is anything truly lost when someone forgets?
The memory you don't retrieve, the conversation you can't remember, the face you no longer recognise — is the forgetting a loss of something real, or just the routine operation of a finite mind?
Information persists or doesn't depending on whether the holder is sustained.
On these views, conservation is not a flat cosmic law but a function of the conditions that hold. Memory persists where it is sustained — by divine attention, by community, by ritual, by practice — and is genuinely lost where it isn't. The asymmetry between …
Roads not taken
Information is lost when a mind forgets; matter and energy continue, but the pattern is gone. (50%) ·
Information is conserved — the personal pattern is held even when an individual mind loses it. (39%) ·
Forgetting is the cosmic case, not the exception; nothing is conserved. (1%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree
(18/208)
Does deleting your data online destroy something real?
Account deletion, the right to be forgotten, the obsolescence of file formats, the slow decay of digital archives — whether any of this destroys something that was real depends on whether information is the kind of thing that can be destroyed.
Information persists where it is held; deletion releases what isn't held elsewhere.
On these views, information persists or doesn't depending on whether something is sustaining it. What is held in divine memory or in active communal practice continues; what is held only by the deleted artifact is genuinely released. The variable conservation maps onto a variable moral …
Roads not taken
Information is genuinely lost when the substrate that hosted it goes; deletion really destroys. (50%) ·
Information at the cosmic level isn't destroyed; deletion only obscures access. (39%) ·
Nothing is fundamentally conserved; deletion is just routine impermanence. (1%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree
(18/208)
Could the dead, in principle, be brought back?
If we had perfect information about who someone was — their connectome, their behavioral patterns, their history — could we, in principle, restore them? The question is partly engineering, but the ceiling on the engineering is metaphysical.
What is held by God or sustaining practice can be restored; what isn't can't.
On these views, the conservation of personal information depends on what is sustaining it. The Eastern Orthodox doctrine of resurrection holds that the person is preserved in God's memory and restored in the resurrection by divine action operating on what God has held. What is …
Roads not taken
The information dissipates with the substrate; restoration is in principle impossible. (50%) ·
The information that constitutes a person is conserved; restoration is in principle possible. (39%) ·
Nothing of what was can be restored; restoration is wishful framing. (1%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree
(18/208)
Is forgiveness ontologically possible?
When someone forgives, does the offense actually go away — erased, undone, no longer a fact — or does forgiveness reframe a wrong that persists exactly as it always was?
The offense persists where sustained and releases where conditionally absolved; forgiveness is real ontological work.
On these views, conservation is not a flat cosmic law but a function of what sustains. An offense persists where it is held — by holding-on, by ritual continuation, by divine attention to a particular debt — and is genuinely released where it is conditionally …
Roads not taken
The offense is locally constituted by its substrate; when the substrate dissolves, the offense genuinely passes away. (50%) ·
The offense persists ontologically; forgiveness is real moral work, but it doesn't erase what was. (39%) ·
Nothing is preserved; the offense is impermanent, and holding it is the suffering. (1%)