Chapter 15 · Verse 2·Spoken by Arjuna
अधश्चोर्ध्वं प्रसृतास्तस्य शाखा गुणप्रवृद्धा विषयप्रवालाः।अधश्च मूलान्यनुसन्ततानि कर्मानुबन्धीनि मनुष्यलोके
adhaśh chordhvaṁ prasṛitās tasya śhākhā guṇa-pravṛiddhā viṣhaya-pravālāḥ adhaśh cha mūlāny anusantatāni karmānubandhīni manuṣhya-loke
Its branches spread below and above, nourished by the gunas, with sense objects for buds. And below, in the world of humans, its roots stretch onward, binding to action.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
his verse continues the picture of the cosmic tree of samsara (worldly existence, the round of birth and death) begun in 15.1. The branches of this tree spread in two directions, downward and upward. Downward means into the lower wombs and births: human, animal, and on down to the immovable things like plants and stone. Upward means into the higher births: the gods, gandharvas, and on up to the abode of the world-maker, Brahma. So the whole range of possible existences, from the lowest forms to the highest celestial worlds, is laid out as the limbs of one single tree.
Braided from 15 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Vallabhācārya · Swami Sivananda · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Madhvācārya · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Ramsukhdas
These branches are made to grow great, swollen and thickened, by the three gunas, the strands of nature, namely sattva (clarity and goodness), rajas (passion and activity), and tamas (dullness and inertia). The standard image is of watering: just as a tree's branches grow when water is sprinkled at its base, so these branches of births grow lush through contact with the gunas. Several commentators press the point that wherever there is contact with the gunas, the tree of samsara keeps spreading, so the gunas are the very thing that feeds continued worldly existence.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Vallabhācārya · Swami Sivananda · Vedānta Deśika · Lokmanya Tilak · Mahatma Gandhi · Swami Ramsukhdas · Sant Jñāneśvar
The sense-objects, sound, touch, color, taste, and smell, are the tender shoots or fresh sprouts of these branches. Just as new buds appear at the tips of a tree's branches, the objects of the senses appear at the ends of our faculties of perception and become the place where attachment takes hold. They are attractive and beautiful, like fresh young leaves, and they keep budding out new growth, drawing the being further into the world.
Braided from 15 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Vallabhācārya · Swami Sivananda · Vedānta Deśika · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Sant Jñāneśvar · Madhvācārya
Besides the principal root above (Brahman, named already in 15.1), this tree has secondary or lateral roots that stretch downward into the human world, and these secondary roots are bound up with action (karma). Like the hanging aerial roots of a banyan that drop from the branches and re-root in the soil, these secondary roots are the mental impressions (samskaras) of attachment and aversion left by past enjoyment; they drive a person to perform good and bad deeds, and so they tie the being ever tighter to the cycle. The text stresses that this karmic rooting happens specifically in the human world, because the human birth is the only one with the eligibility to perform fresh action; the other births are places where one merely undergoes the fruit of past human deeds.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Sivananda · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Swami Ramsukhdas · Sant Jñāneśvar · Vallabhācārya
Action and impression form an unbroken, mutually feeding chain: enjoyment leaves impressions, impressions prompt fresh action, and fresh action yields fruit that is enjoyed, leaving new impressions, with no break in the lineage. Through this chain the human world is the field of bondage, but the same commentators who say bondage is tied here also note that it is here that it can be loosed: a being who has exhausted past karma and reached a human birth either continues the cycle or is set free, for the eligibility to act, and so the chance to end action, belongs to the human world alone.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śrī Ānandagiri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the branches as the various living beings and the fruits of knowledge and action: the bodies and conditions earned according to each one's deeds and learning, ranged from the unmoving things up to the world of Brahma. The supreme root above is the material cause of transmigration, already given; the secondary roots stretched downward are the latent dispositions of attachment and aversion, born from the fruit of action, which are called 'action-following' because they arise after action and in turn prompt fresh merit and demerit. The whole structure is the tree of transmigration, and the point of mapping it so carefully is to set up its felling, which follows. The human world is singled out because the fitness of human beings for action is well known.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Here the tree is read with its root in the world of Brahma and its tip at man, and the verse is taken as a comprehensive map of samsara as the cosmic field in its manifestation: the gunas are its nourishment, the sense-objects its new growth, the karma its rooting. The downward-running roots are simply the karmas, which act as the attendant roots in the human world; for by the karmas done while one is a human being, there come about downward the births of man, beast, and the rest, and upward the births of gods and the rest. The human world is named as the level at which karmic entanglement is densest.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Dvaita
These commentators read 'below and above' as referring to the modes of the beings' existence: the beings (the branches) exist in subtle form even in the unmanifest, and also manifest in the body and the rest, which is lowly compared with the highest cause above. Crucially, the 'roots' here are not the impressions of attachment and aversion; that reading is rejected as conflicting with the sequence already under way. Instead the roots are the forms of the Lord and the rest (including insentient and sentient nature, and sattva and the other gunas as lower roots), for the Lord too is 'connected with action' in the sense that He bestows the fruit in accordance with each being's connection with action. A scriptural passage from the Bhallaveya branch is cited to confirm the full anatomy: Brahman as the separate root, prakriti as the rooted one, the gunas as the lower root, beings as branches, Vedic chants as leaves, release and non-release as fruit and sap, and the tree's name ashvattha glossed as 'not standing firm,' meaning it never arises in any fixed, abiding way.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators set the samsara-tree within the Lord's lila (divine play). For one of them, the verse simply names the well-doing and ill-doing branches grown by the gunas, with sense-objects as fresh shoots, and the karma-connected impressions (vasanas) as the down-rooted hair-roots that bind one in the field of human action, where by one's own deeds one becomes man or beast below and god above. The other develops this further: the samsara-tree is not a wholly separate tree opposed to the Lord's lila-tree but arises from the very same ground, watered by the gunas, set down for the play-purpose of binding the devotee to the world of karma. Strikingly, even of the downward-stretching branches, the fitness for the bliss of darshan (seeing the Lord) is signaled by the word 'and'; so even samsara is held within the divine play.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
These commentators take the branches as the conditioned souls (jivas, the 'effect-adjuncts' such as Hiranyagarbha) born downward by evil deeds into the wombs of beasts and the like and upward by good deeds into the wombs of gods, swollen by the gunas as if by watering, with sense-objects as buds. The principal root is the Lord (Ishvara) alone; the secondary roots are the impressions of enjoyment that, like a banyan's hanging aerial rootlets dropping from the branches, re-root in the human world and prompt dharma and adharma. One of them infers a great hidden treasure at the root, unnoticed by the worlds, on which the whole tree stands. The Marathi commentary among them expands the whole tree at vast length: from Maya the eightfold nature arises, then the four modes of birth (sweat-born, womb-born, sprout-born, egg-born) and the eighty-four lakh species; rajas swells the human branch in the middle, tamas grows the downward branches of evil and beasts, and sattva grows the upward branches of dharma, knowledge, and the gods up to Brahma and Shiva, beyond which is only Brahman. It concludes that the human-order branch, though it springs from the upward root, is itself the root of all activity, since the Vedas and action have no footing except in human life.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
These commentators read the verse as a map of bondage and a setup for release. One sees the objects life needs as products of the five elements through the gunas; the sense-objects are the buds, and the down-growing roots are the karmic tendencies from past lives that bind those who live in passion and attachment. One frames it sharply: this is the tree as the unenlightened see it, failing to find its root above in Brahman, so they water it with the gunas and stay bound to action. One reads the verse philosophically as harmonizing the Samkhya cosmic tree (the diffusion of three-stranded Prakriti before the Spirit) with the Vedantic upward-rooted pippala, since Prakriti is not independent but a part of the Supreme; release requires getting rid of this development of the three-stranded tree. One, a non-sectarian devotional Vedantist, reads the verse as a direct teaching on renunciation: the gunas keep the tree spreading, so the seeker must not keep even a trace of guna-contact; the sense-shoots are 'vishaya-cintana' (dwelling on objects), which sprout one's next birth, yet are as easy to break off as fresh shoots once attachment to them is dropped; and the secondary roots are precisely the three knots, tadatmya (I-am-the-body), mamata (mine-ness), and the threefold craving for offspring, wealth, and worldly standing, which bind only in the human birth, where alone they can also be cut.
Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If the entire tree of births is the trap, why does this verse single out the human world, the place where we feel most able to act, as where the binding roots run deepest?
The human world is named because it is the one birth with the eligibility to perform fresh action. Every other birth, animal, plant, or even the celestial worlds of the gods, is a place where one only undergoes the fruit of deeds already done in some past human life; only the human being can set new karma in motion. That is exactly why the action-bound roots are said to run down into the human world: this is where new deeds, and so new bondage, are actually generated.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Swami Ramsukhdas
The feeling of being most alive in the human birth is the same power that makes it most binding. Action leaves impressions of attachment and aversion, those impressions prompt more action, and the chain feeds itself without a break, which is why the tree's growth is densest here. The very capacity that lets us pursue objects and pile up deeds is the capacity that ties the knots tighter.
Śrī Ānandagiri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīla Baladeva
But the verse singles out the human world for a hopeful reason as well. Bondage is loosed at the very point where it is tied. Because the power to act belongs to the human birth alone, the power to end action, to drop the craving and cut the tree at its root, also belongs only to the human birth. The same branch that can grow downward into lower worlds or upward into higher ones is the only branch from which one can leave the tree entirely and reach the highest root, the Supreme.
Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda
Contemplation
Look closely at where this tree feeds. The new shoots are the sense-objects, and the sap that swells them is your own dwelling on those objects, the constant turning of the mind toward what it wants to taste, hear, and hold. The shoots are visible and the water inside them is not; in the same way the objects are obvious to you, while the pull of the gunas hidden inside them is not. This is why a mind absorbed in brooding on objects cannot have its tie to the world cut, for whatever feeling you cherish at the end shapes the birth you go to. But take heart: fresh shoots are not hard to snap off, and these objects are not hard to let go. Their charm lasts only as long as your liking for them lasts, so the real renunciation is the renunciation of that liking, not a war with the objects themselves. See their fruit honestly, that they are fleeting, perishable, and finally a form of pain, and the grip loosens on its own. And notice where the binding roots actually are: not out in the world but in three knots you carry, the sense that I am this body, the claim that things are mine, and the craving for children, wealth, and a good name that outlives you. These bind only in the human birth, and only in the human birth can they be untied. The bondage is loosed at the very point where it was tied.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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