Achieving Moksha: An algorithmic approach.
Before we jump into discussing matters of life and death, let me clarify my background, I am just a twenty-five years old Indian guy who grew up in a Hindu household and has a degree in Computer Science. So if you are someone who is having existential thoughts, and looking for some life advice on how to die, it’s time you make that visit to the psychiatrist that you have been avoiding. Seriously, it helps and I am telling it from a first-person perspective.
I must add that anything below this line may have concepts unwarranted by Science.
Enough with the disclaimers. Let’s set some definitions here.
Karma: This is a concept ingrained in many Indic religions, as with the other concepts, it will not be prudent to list the nuances here. For us let us define it as, well anything you ‘do’, see that, too simple right?
Samsara: Another Indic concept, basically it’s the cycle of death and rebirth. It’s a trap!
Moksha: Liberation from Samsara. Why? because taking birth and dying again to take birth at some other place is too much suffering, yo.
Let us assume that we have a master table of actions and their corresponding reactions. The Karma Table! For every event E on the left side, the right column presents the resulting event, R(E). The last one may not be true every time.
In all seriousness, think of something like the left side is 2+2 and the right one is 4.
Also, for any person P, we have a corresponding Karma-Balance K(P). The Karma-Balance changes with what you do or by what people around you do. A thing to note is that the more people you interact with, the more your K(P) is sensitive to change. This partly explains why hermits sever bonds and tend to live a solitary life.
Now, Let’s say, just for the sake of example the president of the USA decides to bomb a country to exterminate an enemy organization. An unintended consequence of this can be that the nearby innocent civilians become refugees. As what happens many-a-times, a person can die due to the result of the events not triggered directly by him but is indeed a result of his past karma. This can somehow justify why bad things happen to good people.
Let us consider an event E, the corresponding Karmic-Change associated with it is ΔK(P, E); read as the change in karma for person P caused by event E. R(E) is the direct consequence, the corresponding RHS in the Karma Table. Assuming that during the time a person is going through R(E), he will not create another event on his freewill is fallacious. Think of it as adding another song to your Spotify playlist while already listening to one. Also, the resulting event R(E) may not be an immediate one in the timeline; you may do something now and reap the rewards later, in your present or subsequent lives.
Let us try to model the Karma-Samsara-Moksha pathway.
The Samsara part can be modeled as a loop whose break condition is Moksha. The primary condition however is that K(P) = 0. If you die when your K(P) is zilch, you break the loop of Samsara. The corollary of this is when you are born your Karma-Balance is non-zero and that part can be said to be one’s fate. As for when we are within the loop of Samsara, each action can be modeled as an asynchronous event, the result of which would reveal at a certain moment in the future. During the course, if the person dies due to some action, with past events still to deliver results, the balance is carried forward.
K(P) = Past lives balance K(P) (fate) + Present life Σ ΔK(P, E) (freewill)
The approach to reach Moksha as promised in the title then would be simply to empty your Karma-Balance in this life, which essentially implies we do no such action which has any future implication, which is practically impossible. Many monks try to isolate themselves and meditate trying to avoid any such action which may reap some result. The next best is to do morally ‘good’ deeds and increase your good Karma, although this is as futile as doing a morally ‘bad’ deed if you are trying to escape the endless loop. Morality aside what is being stated here is nothing but cause and effect, albeit spanning generations.
