Thematic studies drawing from Ashtavakra Gita, Vivekachudamani, and Mandukya Karika together — examining what they collectively reveal about the self, bondage, action, and law.
Eight posts. Eight foundational assumptions of criminal law subjected to Advaitic scrutiny. Each presupposition — the self, freedom, the doer, the act, karma, liberation, dharma — shown to be philosophically untenable in the form law requires it. Post 8 asks the question that framed the entire series from the beginning: if all of those assumptions fail, what remains? What is justice — not as procedure, not as doctrine, but as the ultimate aim of any ordering of human conduct?
Read manuscript →Posts 1–6 cleared the ground. Post 7 begins to build. After the ego that followed rules has dissolved, what guides action? The answer across all three texts is dharma — but dharma understood in a way almost unrecognisable to modern jurisprudence. Not a rule imposed from outside. The natural expression of action from a mind freed of ignorance and ego.
Read manuscript →Five posts dismantled the self, the freedom, the doer, the act, and the causal chain that criminal law presupposes. Post 6 asks what the philosophy that performed this dismantling offers instead. The answer is mokṣa — liberation. Not as spiritual aspiration. As the most precise account of what rehabilitation actually means, and the horizon toward which every decision in a just system should face.
Read manuscript →Four posts have dismantled the self, the freedom, the doer, and the act that criminal law presupposes. Post 5 reaches the causal chain itself. Law traces causation from harm to act to actor — and stops there. Karma theory asks the prior question: what caused the actor to be the kind of person who would perform that act in those circumstances? That question reaches a depth law has never touched.
Read manuscript →Three posts dismantled the self, the freedom, and the doer that criminal law presupposes. Post 4 reaches the last pillar — the act itself. If there is no free doer, what exactly makes something an act rather than a mere happening? And if there is no act in the sense law requires, what exactly is actus reus grounding?
Read manuscript →Post 1 argued that the Self is pure witness-consciousness — not what law assumes. Post 2 showed that the freedom law presupposes is deeply conditioned. Post 3 reaches the sharpest collision: if the Self does not act and the ahamkāra is a construction, who, if anyone, really commits a crime — and what exactly is criminal law punishing when it convicts someone?
Read manuscript →Post 1 established that the Self is pure witness-consciousness — already free. This post asks the only question that follows: if the Self is already free, why does it not feel that way? The answer each tradition gives destroys the foundations of criminal punishment in a different way.
Read manuscript →Before law can punish anyone, philosophy must locate the person being punished. Ashtavakra says the self is already free. Shankara says it is hidden under five sheaths and must be uncovered. Gaudapada says it was never born. All three are dynamite under the foundations of criminal liability.
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