From the Ṛta of Veda to karmic residue & moksha

By the druid Finn

A procedural genealogy of “order → carry-over → release,” illustrated by a wall, a gap, and a heap of stones

1) The scene as a diagram, not a story

Treat the Connemara wall as an ontology-model. Nothing “means” anything until it functions.

· A dry-stone wall is a constraint-satisfaction machine.

· Stones are not symbols; they are units of fit.

· Stability is not a belief; it is an achieved configuration under gravity, friction, and geometry.

In the image, the crucial feature is not either man, but the gaping hole: a visibly unresolved constraint in an otherwise coherent structure. The adjacent heap of stones is stored potential that has not yet been integrated. This is the whole druidic thought experiment in one glance:

· Wall standing = achieved order

· Gap = unachieved order

· Heap = the backlog of potential that remains because the gap remains

The conversation is therefore a diagnostic exchange about procedural state.

2) Ṛta: order as operational coherence

In the early Vedic register, Ṛta (i.e. Rita) can be read (without piety) as a name for reliability: the fact that the world has repeatable regularities and that aligned procedures produce stable outcomes.

Procedurally, Ṛta is not “law” in the modern juridical sense. It is closer to:

· the invariant constraints of a system, and

· the coherence conditions under which events remain stable enough to be identifiable.

Examples that match the Ṛta-intuition without importing morality:

· Fire: combustion is reliable under certain conditions.

· Seasonal recurrence: ecological rhythms repeat with high regularity.

· Ritual as technique: not “pleasing a god,” but performing a sequence believed to couple correctly to predictable outcomes (rain, fertility, social cohesion).

In the druid’s Procedure Monism language: Ṛta is the procedural grammar of emergence. The world is not first “things,” then “rules.” It is “rules-as-consistent interactions,” from which things—stable tokens—appear.

So: Ṛta = the system’s successful self-consistency.

3) The key transition: from cosmic regularity to carried state

Once “order” is seen as procedural coherence, the next discovery is unavoidable:

A system can be locally coherent and still contain unresolved constraints.

That is exactly what the wall shows: long stretches stand perfectly, yet a gap remains. This matters because it forces a conceptual upgrade beyond “order” toward “history.”

A standing wall is not merely present structure; it is stored past fitting.
A gap is not merely absence; it is an unmet requirement.
A heap is not merely matter; it is state held in reserve due to mismatch.

This is the bridge (so to speak) from Ṛta to karma: the recognition that procedures leave remnants—carry-over—when not fully resolved.

4) Karma, procedurally: carry-over of unresolved alignment

In the operational register the druid has been building, karma is not cosmic morality. It is persistence of constraint-load across iterations.

Define karma (non-mystically) as:

· Karma = state that remains because a constraint remains.

· Residue = the physically/psychologically/socially stored trace of incomplete resolution.

Three simple examples at increasing levels of abstraction:

(A) Mechanical example (your preferred register):
A car with a misaligned component “runs,” but inefficiently. Heat, vibration, and wear are not punishments; they are signatures of misfit. The system carries forward the misalignment until corrected. The “consequence” is simply the next iteration encountering the same unresolved constraint under new conditions.

(B) Cognitive example:
An unresolved decision (“I should leave / I should stay”) is not moral stain. It is an unstable attractor in a predictive system. It consumes attention, biases perception, repeats. Residue here is rumination, avoidance, compulsive rehearsal—system memory of a not-yet-closed loop.

(C) Social example:
A badly designed policy creates downstream distortions: black markets, resentment, avoidance strategies. Again: not punishment, just carry-over. The system must now spend energy to manage the residue it generated.

Across all three: what persists is not “sin,” but unfinished fitting.

5) Why “residue” is the right word

Residue is what remains when a process reaches a local stopping point without completing its full objective.

· In chemistry: residue remains after reaction or evaporation.

· In computation: residue is leftover state—cached values, unhandled exceptions, technical debt.

· In construction: residue is literal—rubble, offcuts, spare material, misfits.

The wall makes this literal. Dry-stone work has a known procedural truth:

You can’t place every stone anywhere.
Some stones fit only specific roles.
Misfits accumulate until the right placement is found.

Thus the heap is not “bad.” It is selection pressure made visible.

This is why the labourer’s line works: “Karmic residue” is not an insult. It is a taxonomy.

6) The Brahmin as abstraction-layer, the labourer as state-aware operator

The image stages a collision between two epistemic positions:

· The labourer: inside the procedure, embedded, dealing with constraints directly.

· The Brahmin: above the procedure, conceptual, classically trained, seeking meaning-objects.

The Brahmin points to the heap and asks “What’s that?”—which is structurally the metaphysician’s move: reify the remainder into a named entity within a theory.

The labourer answers “Karmic residue” in the only language that is actually accurate at the worksite level: this is what’s left because the wall is not finished.

Notice the non-judgemental logic:

· The heap is not “evil.”

· The labourer is not “guilty.”

· The Brahmin is not “wrong.”

They are operating at different levels of description.

The druid’s thought experiment claims: later metaphysics often mistakes procedural leftovers for moral ontology.

7) How Vedānta enters: internalising Ṛta and relocating the problem

Vedānta (very broadly) performs a major relocation:

· From external order (world coherence)

· to internal order (self coherence)

· and then to ultimate order (what is invariant across all states).

In procedural terms, this is a legitimate move: what is asked is what remains stable when everything transient is bracketed.

But the thought experiment flags a common by-product of that move:

When residue becomes primarily conceptual, it can detach from its original operational meaning.

In other words: the heap turns from “worksite backlog” into “metaphysical burden,” and the gap turns from “unfinished fitting” into “bondage.” A practical description becomes a spiritual commodity.

The image resists that by keeping the residue literal: stones, gap, gravity, fatigue.

8) Moksha, procedurally: release as closure, not escape

In the druid Finn’s register, moksha (i.e. liberation) is not supernatural exit. It is release from constraint, meaning: the system no longer carries the burden of the unresolved loop.

Translated into the wall-diagram:

· Moksha is not “leaving the field.”

· Moksha is the moment the wall no longer requires a heap.

When the constraint is satisfied, the residue is consumed (integrated) or discarded (no longer required). In either case: the system is no longer shaped by the unfinished demand.

Examples in the same three tiers:

(A) Mechanical moksha:
The repaired car no longer vibrates. Not because it has become holy, but because misalignment is gone.

(B) Cognitive moksha:
A decision is made, acted upon, integrated. Rumination drops. Attention frees. The organism reclaims bandwidth.

(C) Social moksha:
A structural fix removes the need for endless enforcement workarounds. The “administrative residue” evaporates.

So moksha = closure of a loop, yielding energy release and expanded degrees of freedom. In the druid’s terms: release is a natural feedback of successful resolution (i.e. perfect accomplishment) whereby the actual content of the accomplished function is contingent.

9) Why rebirth becomes thinkable (without asking you to believe it)

Once residue is framed as carried state, the question arises: how far can carry-over extend?

In purely naturalistic systems, carry-over occurs across:

· seconds (neural states),

· years (habits),

· generations (institutions),

· evolutionary timescales (selected traits),

· and cultural memory (texts, rituals, law).

The doctrine of rebirth is one historical way of extending the carry-over horizon to its maximum: the idea that residue does not “reset” at bodily death.

You don’t need to adopt that claim for the thought experiment to work. The point is structural:

A carry-over model invites a long-horizon accounting scheme.

The wall already contains the minimal form of it: what you didn’t finish yesterday is waiting today (or tomorrow), in a heap, by the gap.

10) The decisive claim of the druid’s thought experiment

The thought experiment does not say “karma is false.” It says:

Karma is best understood first as a procedural category, not a moral one.

· “Karmic residue” = leftover constraint-load.

· “Punishment/reward” = later narrativisation of the same mechanism for social control, pedagogy, or metaphysical completeness.

The image forces the issue: you can watch residue accumulate without invoking ethics.

Conclusion: the wall as compressed Vedic-to-Vedāntic genealogy

The Connemara wall is a better teacher than a thousand sermons.

· Ṛta is the fact that the wall can stand when built in alignment with constraints.

· Karma is the fact that misfits and incompletions persist as carried state.

· Residue is the visible heap: stored potential + unresolved fitting.

· Moksha is the end-condition: the loop closes; the heap ceases to be required.

So when the Brahmin asks, “What’s that?” the labourer’s answer is not mystical at all.

It is the only answer that respects the system:

“Karmic residue.”

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