tree.

 Advaita Vedanta states that we only suffer in life because we are bound by sansar. By being caught in the transmigration of karmas, we remain ignorant of God as our True Self within. How is it possible that we experience a life of limitations and sorrow when in truth we are God?

In verse 145 of Vivekachudamani, Adi Shankaracharya describes how sansar comes to exist by asking us to imagine a tree: “Ignorance is the seed for the tree of sansar. Body-identification is the sprout, desires are its tender leaves, work its water, body its trunk, pranas are its branches, the sense organs its twigs, the sense objects its flowers, different miseries born out of the varieties of actions are the fruits, and the individual jiva is the bird perched on top of it.”

Any tree manifests itself through a seed and it is this seed of ignorance that causes sansar. But ignorance of what exactly? Of forgetting that we are God and there is only Brahmn. We then become identified with the Anatman as everything which is not God: a physical body which creates our waking state, a subtle body that as the mind plays itself out in dreams and the causal body that exists due to vasanas. Such sprouts produce desires within us. Why? Because the body needs food to survive, the mind plays out its impressions in the waking and dream states and finally, the causal body needs to fulfil previous karmas.

Just as any tree, the physical body grows into adulthood giving the tree of sansar its deep grounding in Avidya. Its branches are made up of the five pranas that control its physiological functions. In order to become a fully egocentric agent in the world of Maya as pluralistic matter, the body starts transacting within duality through the sense organs and their respective objects. For example, the eyes perceive a world outside oneself, which is taken to be the only reality, “i see this world and in order to live, i need and want this.” We then run after sense objects seeking happiness in them, forgetting that in reality they don’t exist but are a construct of the mind.

However, it is already at this point that the fall into sansar cannot be stopped: By comparing the flux of our actions with water, Adi Shankara places the main culprit within sansar on selfish actions and their endless, unfulfilling results. We have become bound by the fruits of our doership and enjoyership.

The fall from Brahmn as the Supreme Reality into a separate jiva in life is complete. Through his tree simile, Adi Shankara shows us that while we live in this world of relativity, we cannot stop Maya and sansar being a part of our individuality. But where we can gain control is by going within – by taking the standpoint of the eternal sakshi as the Inner Witness to all – by affirming “I am God, never these thoughts and experiences.”

We suffer in life because we identify with an external world which is only relatively real. Therefore, cut down the tree of sansar by taking the position of the Observer and you will have gained an independent, inner freedom which defies words.