Karma & maya

            "In the forest of this world this body is like a tree born of seed of karma.  Hands and feet are leaves.  Blood, breath (prana or vitality) and vasanas are juice.  Happiness and sufferings are flowers.  Impression of actions of waking state makes spring season.  Ignorance rejoices in it.  Unwanted action of sleeping stage is summer season.  It dries down in it.  Youth and teen-agers are new green twigs.  Looks beautiful but only for a few moments.  Old age is dry leaves and monkey of love and hate keeps jumping and shaking this tree all the time.

            Waking state is spring which creates ice and freezes life into sleeping state.  This tree grows green through juices of passionate hankering.  Family members are like grass and creepers.  Five senses of perception are five main branches from the trunk which is mind.  Desires are vines.  Five pranas and passion are juices.  The root of this tree is soul.  The seed of soulhood is pure consciousness.  The seed of that is Bramha.  As long as the root is connected with the trunk the tree grows, karma grows association the sanga grows.  When root is separated from seed and seed alone remains that is asanga.  The rise of I-ness, the vibrant my-ness, me-ness, you-ness and he-ness is the cause of the tree of life the nature of which is actionism, workoholism.  United with anti Self this becomes soul and causes the world problem."

 Yama, or the God Of Death says in the Katha upanishad:

 "The good is one thing; the pleasant, another. Both of these, serving different needs, bind a man. It goes well with him who, of the two, takes the good; but he who chooses the pleasant misses the end.

 Both the good and the pleasant present themselves to a man. The calm soul examines them well and discriminates. Yea, he prefers the good to the pleasant; but the fool chooses the pleasant out of greed and avarice.

 After pondering well the pleasures that are or seem to he delightful, you have renounced them all. You have not taken the road abounding in wealth, where many men sink.

 Wide apart and leading to different ends are these two: ignorance and what is known as Knowledge. I regard you, O Nachiketa, to be one who desires Knowledge; for even many pleasures could not tempt you away.

 Fools dwelling in darkness, but thinking themselves wise and erudite, go round and round, by various tortuous paths, like the blind led by the blind.

 The Hereafter never reveals itself to a person devoid of discrimination, heedless, and perplexed by the delusion of wealth. "This world alone exists," he thinks, "and there is no other." Again and again he comes under my sway.

 Many there are who do not even hear of Atman; though hearing of Him, many do not comprehend. Wonderful is the expounder and rare the hearer; rare indeed is the experiencer of Atman taught by an able preceptor.

 Atman, when taught by an inferior person, is not easily comprehended, because It is diversely regarded by disputants. But when It is taught by him who has become one with Atman, there can remain no more doubt about It. Atman is subtler than the subtlest and not to be known through argument.

 This Knowledge cannot be attained by reasoning. Atman become easy of comprehension, O dearest, when taught by another. You have attained this Knowledge now. You are, indeed, a man of true resolve. May we always have an inquirer like you!

 Yama said: I know that the treasure resulting from action is not eternal; for what is eternal cannot be obtained by the non-eternal. Yet I have performed the Nachiketa sacrifice with the help of non-eternal things and attained this position which is [only relatively] eternal.

 The fulfilment of desires, the foundation of the universe, the rewards of sacrifices, the shore where there is no fear, that which adorable and great, the wide abode, and the goal—all this you have seen; and being wise, you have with firm resolve discarded everything.

 The wise man who, by means of concentration on the Self, realises that ancient, effulgent One, who is hard to be seen, unmanifest, hidden, and who dwells in the buddhi and rests in the body—he, indeed, leaves joy and sorrow far behind."