Vedic Frameworks
What dharma and karma mean for a family holding a business, and what Jyotisha, Vastu Shastra and Sankhya Shastra are used for.
The advisory work draws on classical Indian knowledge systems. This page sets out which ones they are, what each is used for, and where each one stops. The page runs in that order. First where the material is written down. Then the two ideas the advisory work rests on, then the three applied disciplines and the limits on all of them. Nothing here predicts. Nothing here is sold on its own, and no family is asked to use any of it.
Where this is written down
Shruti means what was heard. The Vedas and the Upanishads, held as revealed rather than composed by anybody, and unchanged for that reason. Smriti means what was remembered. Texts written down by named people, and they include the Dharma Sutras, the epics, and the Bhagavad Gita. That distinction matters for a family. Smriti was authored for a place and a period, and it was always understood to be revisable.
Dharma is particular to a person
Dharma is not one code that everybody follows. It attaches to a particular person in a particular position, and it differs from the person standing beside him. The Dharma Sutras address the householder directly. What a man owes those who depend on him, what passes to whom, and when a position should be handed on. Two brothers in the same business do not carry the same dharma. Neither do a founder and the son who will follow him.
It changes as a man ages
The tradition divides a life into stages. What is asked of a man in one stage is not what is asked of him in the next. The man who was right to build at forty is not wrong to step back at seventy. He is being asked for something different. A good deal of succession trouble sits exactly there. A founder is measured, by himself and by everybody around him, against the stage he has already left.
Wealth is one of four aims
The tradition names four aims for a life. Dharma, then artha, which is wealth and security, then kama, which is family life and pleasure, and then moksha. Artha is not a compromise and it is not something to apologise for. It is legitimate, provided it is pursued inside dharma rather than instead of it. Moksha is the fourth. It asks what remains of a person once his roles and his holdings are set aside. A family that has built for forty years usually meets that question late.
Karma is an account, not a verdict
Karma is action and what follows from action. The tradition treats it as an account rather than as a sentence passed on anybody. Part of that account came down from before a man was born. Part of it is in play in the life he is living now, and part of it he is adding to today. The Gita sets out the division of labour inside it. A man answers for how he acts, and he does not command what follows.
A family shares one account
A family shares an account in the way it shares a name. What one person did does not stay with him. A decision taken two generations ago is still being paid for by people who were not born when it was taken. Nobody now in the room chose it, and everybody in the room is inside it. This is why the work is done with a family and not with one man in it. The part of it that can be settled is settled by the people currently holding it.
All of it belongs to one tradition
All of it belongs to the Sanatana Dharma tradition. It is named because leaving it unnamed would misstate where the thinking came from. No family is asked to hold it. Families of every faith are advised, and nothing in the work requires a belief of any kind.
Three disciplines came out of this
Alongside those texts sits a parallel body, the Agama Shastras. Construction, iconography, consecration and procedure, rather than enquiry. Three applied disciplines come out of the Vedanga and the Agama material. Jyotisha, Vastu Shastra and Sankhya Shastra, which is numerology. Each is set out below, with what its principles are used for and where they stop.
What a person is carrying
Jyotisha is one of the six Vedangas and among the oldest of the classical Indian sciences. Its principles are used to understand a person, and not to foretell an event. They set out the role he holds in a family and the nature he was born with. They show which part of the account above is in play in the life he is living now. They also show where a life has gone out of step with itself. What a man keeps repeating, and where his position and his nature pull apart.
The charts of a family, together
What the principles produce for one person is a direction of travel. The most workable way to settle what is unsettled, and to spend a life on what that life is for. Every member of a family has a chart of his own, and each is worked through on its own terms. Taken together, they set out the road map for the family as a whole. What one person carries is rarely his alone, and it usually explains somebody else in the room. The map shows where the obligations of a family and the natures of the people in it run together, and where they do not.
Where a person sits, and why
Vastu Shastra is orientation, placement, approach and light. A house, a plant, an office, a room where eleven people have to sit and be heard. It is used when something is being built or rearranged. Where the head of a family sits in a room changes who speaks in it. It is not used to explain a business result. A bad quarter has causes, and they are in the business.
A company that does not exist yet
Sankhya Shastra is used for things being named for the first time. A new entity, a demerger, a trust, a company formed for the next generation. It is brought in when the name and the date are open and somebody has to choose. It is one input among several. A name does not carry a business. Nothing has been decided by it and nothing is claimed for it.
Where all three stop
None of them predicts. No outcome is forecast, no result is guaranteed, and no event is placed in the future by any of them. None of them decides a commercial matter. Price, structure, valuation and strategy are settled where they are always settled. And none of them overrides a family. Where a family's own view and a framework disagree, the family's view is what is followed.
Nothing here is sold separately
There is no separate engagement for any of this and no fee attached to it. It is not a product and it is not an add-on. A family that wants none of it is advised without it. Most of the work on this site involves none of it at all.
Where to go from here
Praveen Saanker. Where the study came from, and under whom.
How He Works. What happens in the room, and what the counsel rests on.
Succession. The decision a timing question is usually sitting inside.