The Root of Sufferings – the Yoga Vasistha

11/1/2025

The book “The Supreme Yoga” is the teaching of the sage Vasistha imparted to Sri Rama. It contains true understanding about the creation of the world i.e. the world is nothing but the play of consciousness. the Yoga Vasistha is the greatest help to the spiritual awakening and direct experience of Truth. Vasistha demands direct observation of the mind, its motion, its notions, its reasoning, the assumed cause and the projected result. The book is a translation into English by Swami Venkatesananda of Divine Life Society, Rishikesh India. The article is primarily based on it.

All enjoyments in this world are delusion. All the hopes of man in this world are consistently destroyed by time. Time alone creates innumerable universes and in a very short time, Time destroys everything.

All beings in this world take birth but to die, and they die to be born; these phenomena are the roots of suffering and sin. Egotism is the sole cause of mental distress. Egotism eclipses self-control, destroys virtue and dissipates equanimity. Non-egotism alone is truth.
The notion ‘I am’ is the source of all distress. The absence of such a feeling is perfection. Realise ‘I am not that ego-sense’ and rest in pure awareness. When such pure awareness arises, all notions subside. When the ego-sense is non-existent, where is samsara (the cycle of birth and death)? When thus samsara does not exist, the supreme being alone remains.
Egotism promotes cravings; without it they perish. Craving is the root of sorrow. The cravings dry up the good and noble qualities of the mind and heart, like sweetness and gentleness of disposition, and makes hard and cruel. Man is caught in the wheel of craving. The characteristic of this craving is that it has no direction. Despite eyes, it makes blind; despite full of joy, it makes miserable.

One should abandon craving for pleasures (those that have been experienced in the past and others that have not yet been experienced but for which one craves) and thus gradually weaken the mind by the abandonment of taste for them. By the cultivation of the false relationship with what is not self (the body and those related to it such as wife, son, family etc.) the mind becomes gross. The notions of “I” and “mine” make the mind dense and ignorant. This is further aggravated by old age, sorrow, ambitions, psychological distress, efforts to acquire and to abandon, attachments, greed, lust for wealth and sex and by the enjoyment of sense-pleasures, all of which are based on ignorance and delusion.

Neither in childhood nor in youth nor in old age does one enjoy any happiness. He is happy who is free from egotism and who is not swayed by craving for sense-pleasure. Even though the busy overcomes all his earthy enemies and surrounds himself with wealth and luxury, and even when he boasts that he is happy, death creeps in upon him.

Renounce everything. “By ‘total’ is meant only the mind, for mind is the all. Renunciation of the mind is total renunciation”. Mind is the “I”. the ego-sense that arises within you is the mind.

The relationship between the mind and prana is that of a rider and the vehicle. When the mind and the prana function in harmony, the person engages himself in various activities. When there is disturbance there is disharmony. When both are at rest there is sleep. When the Nadi are clogged by food or when there is weakness of fatigue, there is sleep, because the prana is unable to move properly.

Body -
This tree which is the body is born in the forest known as Samsara, the restless monkey (mind) plays on it, it is the abode of worries, it is constantly eaten by the insects (of endless sufferings), it shelters the venomous serpents (of cravings), and the wild crow (of anger) dwells on it. On it are the flowers (of laughter), its fruits are good and evil, it appears to be animated by the wind (of life force), it supports the birds (of senses), it is resorted to be the traveller (lust or desire) for it provides the shade of pleasure, the formidable vulture (egotism) is seated on it and it is hollow and empty. It is certainly not meant to promote happiness. This body is home of illness, the field of mental distress and changing emotions and mental states. Unmindful of old age and death that are common to the rich and the poor, it seeks wealth and power.

This body passes through childhood, youth and old age. Helplessness, mishaps, inability, to express oneself, utter foolishness, playfulness, instability, weakness – all these characterise childhood. The child is easily offended, easily roused to anger, easily bursts into tears. He is at the mercy of others. Though the child may appear to be innocent, the truth is that all sorts of defects, sinful tendencies and neurotic behaviour lie hidden and dormant in it. The child’s mind is extremely restless which is the cause of unhappiness.

Leaving the period of childhood behind, the human being goes to the stage of youth, but he is unable to leave the unhappiness behind. Rather he progresses from misery to greater misery and embraces the terrible goblin known as lust that resides in his heart. His life is full of desire and anxiety. Though youthfulness appears to be very desirable to the body, it is destructive to the mind. In youth, the man is tempted by the mirage of happiness and in its pursuit, he falls into the well of sorrow. Alas, even when youth is about to leave the body, the passions that had been aroused by the youth burn the more fiercely and bring about one’s quick destruction. In his youth, man is a slave of sexual attraction.

Very soon the very flesh that contributed to the attractiveness, the charm and the beauty of the beloved is transformed first into the shrivelled ugliness of the old age, and later consumed by fire, or by worms, or by vultures.

Roots of Suffering –
Ignorant of the truth, we aimlessly wandering in this dense forest called the world. Equally useless is wealth which deludes the ignorant. Wealth gives birth to numerous worries and generates an insatiable craving for more. Both the good and the wicked can become wealthy. Wealth and happiness do not dwell together. Rare is that wealthy man who does not have rivals.

Egotism is the sole cause of mental distress. Egotism is foremost cause for evil; wisdom is weak; all actions lead to unpleasantness; and pleasure is sexually oriented. One’s intelligence is governed by egotism, instead of being other way round. Hence there is no peace nor happiness in one’s mind.
Indulgence in sense-pleasure poisons the mind in such a way that its effects last several life times. Only the man of self-knowledge is free from this.
The ego-sense is the source of endless sorrow, suffering and evil action. The anxiety caused by thoughts like ‘I have got this now.’ “I shall get that too” burns the ignorant. Such notions as This is’ and That is not’ cause restlessness in the egotist.

No-Mind State -
All beings in this world are tainted with evil; all relationships are bondage; all enjoyments are great diseases; and desire for happiness is only mirage. One’s own senses are one’s enemies; one’s own mind has become one’s worst enemy.
All these phenomena seem to have a transient reality, like dream experiences, visions in the state of delirium, hallucinations of a drunkard, optical illusions, psychosomatic illness, emotional disturbances and psychotic states. Lover suffers from the very imagination of his beloved’s separation. But, of course, this is not your fault; it is my fault that I still cling to the notion that you, my mind, are a real entity. When I realise that all these are illusory appearances, then you will become no-mind and all the memories of sense-experiences, etc. will come to an end.

When the mind perceives the body as distinct from it, abandons its own conditioning (the concepts) and recognises its own transient nature, it is victorious. The mind gives birth to the body through its own thought-force and throughout the body’s life-time the mind feeds it with its (the mind’s) own sorrow. Thus, tortured by sorrow the body wishes to destroy the mind, its own parent! There is no friend nor enemy in the world; that which gives us pleasure is considered our friend and that which causes pain is our enemy!
The body tries every day (in deep sleep) to destroy the mind. However, until self-knowledge is attained, one unwittingly promotes the strength of the other and they seem to function together for a common purpose – even as water and fire, though opposed to each other, work together for a common cause (e.g. cooking).
One should strive to kill the mind.
On account of the modification (thought), this consciousness is apparently veiled and is not realised. It is this self or consciousness that activates the mind even as wind rustles at leaves; it makes the senses function as the rider guides the horse.
Alas, on account of your identification with the embodiment, you O self-had, as it were, forgotten your own nature. Hence, you had to undergo endless suffering in repeated births, experiencing external perceptions without self-knowledge. You (self) dwell in ‘me’ in a state of equilibrium, as pure witness consciousness, without form and without the divisions of space and time.
He is fit to die who is sunk in ignorance and sorrow. Living is appropriate to one whose mind is well controlled by his self-knowledge and who is aware of the truth. He should live who does not entertain notions of egoism and who is unattached to anything, who is free from likes and dislikes and has a calm mind, whose mind has reached the state of no-mind.

Self-Knowledge -
Where there is self-knowledge there is neither mind nor the senses, nor the tendencies and habits (the concepts and precepts). The mind, body and senses are playthings. Purity, total fulfilment of all desires (hence, their absence), friendliness to all, truthfulness, wisdom, tranquillity and blissfulness, sweetness of speech, supreme magnanimity, lustrousness, one pointedness, realisation of cosmic unity, fearlessness, absence of divided consciousness, non-perversity – these are my constant companions.
The holy word OM which bestows the highest state. He intoned OM in such a way that is vibrations filled his while being right up to the crown of his head.

In the insentient rocks, consciousness remains immobile, having abandoned the thinking faculty but not having been able to reach the state of no-mind. It is like the state of deep sleep, far away from the state of liberation. But if they exist as in a state of deep sleep without any concepts or precepts, I think they are close to liberation.
Conditioning remains in the heart, even in their subtle state, it should be regarded as the deep sleep state; it gives rise to rebirth.
Where the seed of Vasana (self-conditioning or tendency) exists, that state is like deep sleep; it is not perfection. When all Vasana are destroyed and even the potentiality of the Vasana does not exist, that state is known as the fourth (beyond waking, dream and deep sleep) and transcendental state.
The modes of mind like attraction and repulsion and likes and dislikes have been conjured up in imagination. They have been destroyed by the absence of thoughts. How can they be magnified? When Brahman alone moves in all which Brahman, and Brahman alone unfolds as Brahman in all, what is joy and what is sorrow? Brahman is satisfied with Brahman; Brahman is established in Brahman. There is neither ‘I’ nor ‘another’.
All the objects in this world are Brahman. I am Brahman. Such being the case, both passion and dispassion, craving and aversion are but notions. Body is Brahman, death is Brahman, too; when they come together, as the real rope and the unreal imaginary snake come together, where is the cause of sorrow?
When the whirlpool dies in the water, nothing is dead! When the death-Brahman overtakes the body-Brahman, nothing is lost. It is the ignorance or delusion that divides the one into This is sentient Jiva, and “This is insentient matter.”

The world is not unreal (only the limiting adjunct, the mind, is false). Therefore, all this is the indivisible, illimitable, nameless and formless infinite consciousness. it is the self-reflection of the Brahman, which is the infinite forms, that appears to be the universe with its creation-dissolution cycle. It is this Brahman itself which knows itself for a moment as this universe and appears to be such. There is no mind.
Abandon all notions (Sankalpa). If you are attracted by anything here, you are bound; if you are not attracted at all you are free. Subdue the mind by the mind. Purify the mind by mind. Destroy the mind by the mind. The Jiva has three forms: the dense, the subtle and the supreme. The physical body is the dense form. The mind with its notions and limitations is the subtle body. Abandon these two and resort to the supreme which is the reality – pure, unmodified consciousness. This is the cosmic being. Remain established in it, having firmly rejected the former two.
One should constantly endeavour to educate the mind with purifying knowledge and nourish it with inner transformation brought about by the study of scriptures.
self, you enjoy pleasure and pain as if they were real, while you perceive and receive them through the consciousness of wise person, without ever abandoning the state of utter equanimity.
One who has transcended the notions of being and non-being. For in all conditions, he is firmly established in self-knowledge.
One attains self-knowledge through self-enquiry undertaken through self-effort; at times this self-effort manifests as devotion to Vishnu who is also the self, and thus one attains enlightenment. The foremost means for self-knowledge is self-enquiry; grace and such other factors are secondary means.
With an unattached mind you perform merely with the organs of action. The delight derived from sensual experience is fleeting. A repetition of that experience does not afford a repetition of the same delight. So, the pleasure belongs to the desire - hence give up desire.
Let hopes cease and let notions vanish, let the mind reach the state of no-mind, while you live unattached.
When you do not engage yourself in sense-experiences and also when you experience whatever comes to you unsought. You are in a state of equanimity and purity, free from latent tendencies and memories. In such a state, like the sky, you will not be tainted even by a thousand distractions.
Make the mind unwinking (free from movement of thought) by the restraint of the prana and also the latent tendencies (Vasana).
After living with such no-mind for some time, there arises the state known as turiya-atita (the state beyond the transcendental, or the turiya state).The Root of Sufferings – the Yoga Vasistha

The book “The Supreme Yoga” is the teaching of the sage Vasistha imparted to Sri Rama. It contains true understanding about the creation of the world i.e. the world is nothing but the play of consciousness. the Yoga Vasistha is the greatest help to the spiritual awakening and direct experience of Truth. Vasistha demands direct observation of the mind, its motion, its notions, its reasoning, the assumed cause and the projected result. The book is a translation into English by Swami Venkatesananda of Divine Life Society, Rishikesh India. The article is primarily based on it.

All enjoyments in this world are delusion. All the hopes of man in this world are consistently destroyed by time. Time alone creates innumerable universes and in a very short time, Time destroys everything.
All beings in this world take birth but to die, and they die to be born; these phenomena are the roots of suffering and sin. Egotism is the sole cause of mental distress. Egotism eclipses self-control, destroys virtue and dissipates equanimity. Non-egotism alone is truth.
The notion ‘I am’ is the source of all distress. The absence of such a feeling is perfection. Realise ‘I am not that ego-sense’ and rest in pure awareness. When such pure awareness arises, all notions subside. When the ego-sense is non-existent, where is samsara (the cycle of birth and death)? When thus samsara does not exist, the supreme being alone remains.
Egotism promotes cravings; without it they perish. Craving is the root of sorrow. The cravings dry up the good and noble qualities of the mind and heart, like sweetness and gentleness of disposition, and makes hard and cruel. Man is caught in the wheel of craving. The characteristic of this craving is that it has no direction. Despite eyes, it makes blind; despite full of joy, it makes miserable.
One should abandon craving for pleasures (those that have been experienced in the past and others that have not yet been experienced but for which one craves) and thus gradually weaken the mind by the abandonment of taste for them. By the cultivation of the false relationship with what is not self (the body and those related to it such as wife, son, family etc.) the mind becomes gross. The notions of “I” and “mine” make the mind dense and ignorant. This is further aggravated by old age, sorrow, ambitions, psychological distress, efforts to acquire and to abandon, attachments, greed, lust for wealth and sex and by the enjoyment of sense-pleasures, all of which are based on ignorance and delusion.
Neither in childhood nor in youth nor in old age does one enjoy any happiness. He is happy who is free from egotism and who is not swayed by craving for sense-pleasure. Even though the busy overcomes all his earthy enemies and surrounds himself with wealth and luxury, and even when he boasts that he is happy, death creeps in upon him.
Renounce everything. “By ‘total’ is meant only the mind, for mind is the all. Renunciation of the mind is total renunciation”. Mind is the “I”. the ego-sense that arises within you is the mind.
The relationship between the mind and prana is that of a rider and the vehicle. When the mind and the prana function in harmony, the person engages himself in various activities. When there is disturbance there is disharmony. When both are at rest there is sleep. When the Nadi are clogged by food or when there is weakness of fatigue, there is sleep, because the prana is unable to move properly.
Body -
This tree which is the body is born in the forest known as Samsara, the restless monkey (mind) plays on it, it is the abode of worries, it is constantly eaten by the insects (of endless sufferings), it shelters the venomous serpents (of cravings), and the wild crow (of anger) dwells on it. On it are the flowers (of laughter), its fruits are good and evil, it appears to be animated by the wind (of life force), it supports the birds (of senses), it is resorted to be the traveller (lust or desire) for it provides the shade of pleasure, the formidable vulture (egotism) is seated on it and it is hollow and empty. It is certainly not meant to promote happiness. This body is home of illness, the field of mental distress and changing emotions and mental states. Unmindful of old age and death that are common to the rich and the poor, it seeks wealth and power.
This body passes through childhood, youth and old age. Helplessness, mishaps, inability, to express oneself, utter foolishness, playfulness, instability, weakness – all these characterise childhood. The child is easily offended, easily roused to anger, easily bursts into tears. He is at the mercy of others. Though the child may appear to be innocent, the truth is that all sorts of defects, sinful tendencies and neurotic behaviour lie hidden and dormant in it. The child’s mind is extremely restless which is the cause of unhappiness.
Leaving the period of childhood behind, the human being goes to the stage of youth, but he is unable to leave the unhappiness behind. Rather he progresses from misery to greater misery and embraces the terrible goblin known as lust that resides in his heart. His life is full of desire and anxiety. Though youthfulness appears to be very desirable to the body, it is destructive to the mind. In youth, the man is tempted by the mirage of happiness and in its pursuit, he falls into the well of sorrow. Alas, even when youth is about to leave the body, the passions that had been aroused by the youth burn the more fiercely and bring about one’s quick destruction. In his youth, man is a slave of sexual attraction.
Very soon the very flesh that contributed to the attractiveness, the charm and the beauty of the beloved is transformed first into the shrivelled ugliness of the old age, and later consumed by fire, or by worms, or by vultures.
Roots of Suffering –
Ignorant of the truth, we aimlessly wandering in this dense forest called the world. Equally useless is wealth which deludes the ignorant. Wealth gives birth to numerous worries and generates an insatiable craving for more. Both the good and the wicked can become wealthy. Wealth and happiness do not dwell together. Rare is that wealthy man who does not have rivals.
Egotism is the sole cause of mental distress. Egotism is foremost cause for evil; wisdom is weak; all actions lead to unpleasantness; and pleasure is sexually oriented. One’s intelligence is governed by egotism, instead of being other way round. Hence there is no peace nor happiness in one’s mind.
Indulgence in sense-pleasure poisons the mind in such a way that its effects last several life times. Only the man of self-knowledge is free from this.
The ego-sense is the source of endless sorrow, suffering and evil action. The anxiety caused by thoughts like ‘I have got this now.’ “I shall get that too” burns the ignorant. Such notions as This is’ and That is not’ cause restlessness in the egotist.
No-Mind State -
All beings in this world are tainted with evil; all relationships are bondage; all enjoyments are great diseases; and desire for happiness is only mirage. One’s own senses are one’s enemies; one’s own mind has become one’s worst enemy.
All these phenomena seem to have a transient reality, like dream experiences, visions in the state of delirium, hallucinations of a drunkard, optical illusions, psychosomatic illness, emotional disturbances and psychotic states. Lover suffers from the very imagination of his beloved’s separation. But, of course, this is not your fault; it is my fault that I still cling to the notion that you, my mind, are a real entity. When I realise that all these are illusory appearances, then you will become no-mind and all the memories of sense-experiences, etc. will come to an end.
When the mind perceives the body as distinct from it, abandons its own conditioning (the concepts) and recognises its own transient nature, it is victorious. The mind gives birth to the body through its own thought-force and throughout the body’s life-time the mind feeds it with its (the mind’s) own sorrow. Thus, tortured by sorrow the body wishes to destroy the mind, its own parent! There is no friend nor enemy in the world; that which gives us pleasure is considered our friend and that which causes pain is our enemy!
The body tries every day (in deep sleep) to destroy the mind. However, until self-knowledge is attained, one unwittingly promotes the strength of the other and they seem to function together for a common purpose – even as water and fire, though opposed to each other, work together for a common cause (e.g. cooking).
One should strive to kill the mind.
On account of the modification (thought), this consciousness is apparently veiled and is not realised. It is this self or consciousness that activates the mind even as wind rustles at leaves; it makes the senses function as the rider guides the horse.
Alas, on account of your identification with the embodiment, you O self-had, as it were, forgotten your own nature. Hence, you had to undergo endless suffering in repeated births, experiencing external perceptions without self-knowledge. You (self) dwell in ‘me’ in a state of equilibrium, as pure witness consciousness, without form and without the divisions of space and time.
He is fit to die who is sunk in ignorance and sorrow. Living is appropriate to one whose mind is well controlled by his self-knowledge and who is aware of the truth. He should live who does not entertain notions of egoism and who is unattached to anything, who is free from likes and dislikes and has a calm mind, whose mind has reached the state of no-mind.
Self-Knowledge -
Where there is self-knowledge there is neither mind nor the senses, nor the tendencies and habits (the concepts and precepts). The mind, body and senses are playthings. Purity, total fulfilment of all desires (hence, their absence), friendliness to all, truthfulness, wisdom, tranquillity and blissfulness, sweetness of speech, supreme magnanimity, lustrousness, one pointedness, realisation of cosmic unity, fearlessness, absence of divided consciousness, non-perversity – these are my constant companions.
The holy word OM which bestows the highest state. He intoned OM in such a way that is vibrations filled his while being right up to the crown of his head.
In the insentient rocks, consciousness remains immobile, having abandoned the thinking faculty but not having been able to reach the state of no-mind. It is like the state of deep sleep, far away from the state of liberation. But if they exist as in a state of deep sleep without any concepts or precepts, I think they are close to liberation.
Conditioning remains in the heart, even in their subtle state, it should be regarded as the deep sleep state; it gives rise to rebirth.
Where the seed of Vasana (self-conditioning or tendency) exists, that state is like deep sleep; it is not perfection. When all Vasana are destroyed and even the potentiality of the Vasana does not exist, that state is known as the fourth (beyond waking, dream and deep sleep) and transcendental state.
The modes of mind like attraction and repulsion and likes and dislikes have been conjured up in imagination. They have been destroyed by the absence of thoughts. How can they be magnified? When Brahman alone moves in all which Brahman, and Brahman alone unfolds as Brahman in all, what is joy and what is sorrow? Brahman is satisfied with Brahman; Brahman is established in Brahman. There is neither ‘I’ nor ‘another’.
All the objects in this world are Brahman. I am Brahman. Such being the case, both passion and dispassion, craving and aversion are but notions. Body is Brahman, death is Brahman, too; when they come together, as the real rope and the unreal imaginary snake come together, where is the cause of sorrow?
When the whirlpool dies in the water, nothing is dead! When the death-Brahman overtakes the body-Brahman, nothing is lost. It is the ignorance or delusion that divides the one into This is sentient Jiva, and “This is insentient matter.”
The world is not unreal (only the limiting adjunct, the mind, is false). Therefore, all this is the indivisible, illimitable, nameless and formless infinite consciousness. it is the self-reflection of the Brahman, which is the infinite forms, that appears to be the universe with its creation-dissolution cycle. It is this Brahman itself which knows itself for a moment as this universe and appears to be such. There is no mind.
Abandon all notions (Sankalpa). If you are attracted by anything here, you are bound; if you are not attracted at all you are free. Subdue the mind by the mind. Purify the mind by mind. Destroy the mind by the mind. The Jiva has three forms: the dense, the subtle and the supreme. The physical body is the dense form. The mind with its notions and limitations is the subtle body. Abandon these two and resort to the supreme which is the reality – pure, unmodified consciousness. This is the cosmic being. Remain established in it, having firmly rejected the former two.
One should constantly endeavour to educate the mind with purifying knowledge and nourish it with inner transformation brought about by the study of scriptures.
self, you enjoy pleasure and pain as if they were real, while you perceive and receive them through the consciousness of wise person, without ever abandoning the state of utter equanimity.
One who has transcended the notions of being and non-being. For in all conditions, he is firmly established in self-knowledge.
One attains self-knowledge through self-enquiry undertaken through self-effort; at times this self-effort manifests as devotion to Vishnu who is also the self, and thus one attains enlightenment. The foremost means for self-knowledge is self-enquiry; grace and such other factors are secondary means.
With an unattached mind you perform merely with the organs of action. The delight derived from sensual experience is fleeting. A repetition of that experience does not afford a repetition of the same delight. So, the pleasure belongs to the desire - hence give up desire.
Let hopes cease and let notions vanish, let the mind reach the state of no-mind, while you live unattached.
When you do not engage yourself in sense-experiences and also when you experience whatever comes to you unsought. You are in a state of equanimity and purity, free from latent tendencies and memories. In such a state, like the sky, you will not be tainted even by a thousand distractions.
Make the mind unwinking (free from movement of thought) by the restraint of the prana and also the latent tendencies (Vasana).
After living with such no-mind for some time, there arises the state known as turiya-atita (the state beyond the transcendental, or the turiya state).

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The Root of Sufferings – the Yoga Vasistha

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