Saṃyukta-āgama (283), Part Two

Original text: 如人种树。初小软弱。爱护令安。壅以粪土。随时溉灌。冷暖调适。以是因缘。然后彼树。得增长大。如是比丘。结所系法。味着将养。则生恩爱。爱缘取。取缘有。有缘生。生缘老病死忧悲恼苦。如是如是纯大苦聚集。

Explanation: The Buddha said: Just like people planting a tree, when a sapling is first planted it is still weak and tender; with the slightest carelessness it will die. It needs constant human care and protection—piling soil around it, watering it, fertilizing it, and adjusting the temperature at all times so that it grows healthily. Only when all the conditions for normal growth are complete can the sapling gradually grow large. Bhikṣus, the principle is the same as the growth of a sapling: with the dharma to which the fetters bind, if when it first arises you crave it, cherish it, protect it, and nurture it, affection and craving will arise in the mind. With craving, grasping arises; with unceasing grasping, the three-realm world is produced. When the conditions of the three realms are complete, the five-aggregate body will be born, and after the five-aggregate body is born, old age, sickness, death, sorrow, grief, suffering, and distress—this entire mass of great suffering—will gather together.

The Buddha used the sapling as a metaphor for sentient beings' afflictive fetters. When the afflictive fetters have just arisen, sentient beings not only fail to pinch them off and extinguish them, but instead cultivate them, making the afflictions ever more solid, and thus they sink ever deeper into the cycle of birth and death. Practice should consist of constantly introspecting on one's own mind: upon discovering that one has afflictions, one should subdue and extinguish them, not nurture, cultivate, cherish, and protect them. Those who have not awakened, those whose power of awareness is insufficient, and those who have grown accustomed to their afflictions find it difficult to discover their own afflictive fetters, and often act in accordance with their afflictions. If one always follows one's afflictions, the afflictions will grow heavier and heavier, and one will sink ever deeper into birth and death. When afflictions first arise, if there is neither awakening nor restraint, the afflictions will grow heavier and heavier; once deeply rooted afflictive habits have been formed, in the end they will be very hard to eradicate.