3. The seven seas are the aqueducts at the foot of this forest, and the flowing rivers are its channels; and the fourteen worlds are so many regions of it, peopled with various kinds of beings.
4. This wilderness of the world, is beset by the wide spreading net of cupidity; which has overspread on the minds of people, as the creeping vine fills the vineyard ground.
5. Disease and death form the two branches of the arbor of the world (Sansára Mahíruha), yielding plentifully the fruits of our weal and woe; while our ignorance serves to water and nourish this tree to its full growth.
6. Now tell me, sir, what is seed that produced this tree, and what is the seed of that seed also. Thus tell me what is the original seed of the production of the mundane tree.
7. Explain to me all this in short, for the edification of my understanding; and also for my acquirement of the true knowledge with which you are best acquainted.
8. Vasishtha answered:—Know Ráma! the corporeal body to be the seed or cause of this arbour of the world. This seed is the desire which is concealed in the heart of the body, and shoots forth luxuriantly, in the sprouts of good and bad acts and deeds.
9. It is full of boughs and branches, and luxuriant in the growth of its fruits and flowers; and it thrives as thickly and fastly, as the paddy fields flourish in autumn.
10. The mind which is the seed of the body, is subject to and slave of all its desires. Its treasure house consists of alternate plenty and poverty, and its casket contains the gems of pleasure and pain.
11. It is the mind which spreads this net-work of reality and unreality; as it stretches the fretwork of truth and falsehood in dreams and visions.
12. As the dying man sees in his imagination, the messengers of death appearing before him; so doth the mind, present the figure of the unreal body as a reality.