> *Roots Above; Branches Below; It Is Called the Imperishable Asvattha, whose Leaves Are the Vedic Hymns; Whoever Knows It Knows the Veda. Above and below its branches are stretched. The sensory qualities fill it. Sense-objects are its shoots. And the roots continue below. Bound to karma in the world of humans. Above and below its branches are stretched. The sensory qualities fill it; sense-objects are its shoots; And the roots continue below, Bound to karma in the world of humans.No form of it can here be comprehended, No end and no beginning, no sure abiding-place: This fig-tree with its roots so fatly nourished - (Take) the stout axe of detachment and cut it down!* > [Bhagavad Gita Book 15 Verse 1-3; my own translation] --- Here, the world of humans is somehow below and the downward roots are the means to effect the ties of karma, whereby our intentional actions repeatedly bind us into a life of actions and consequences. Whereas earlier in [[KU-6.1]], the tree symbolised ultimate reality, now the tree is associated with our everyday experiences that fall short of such an ultimate reality. As the reality of consequentialist actions and karmic bondage is part of an erroneous or illusory world picture, we are now instructed to overcome it through the practice of mental detachment from such a consequentialist model. It has been suggested that this is an indication of the Buddhist influence on the Bhagavad Gita. As Zaehner explains in his commentary on the above - > “This joyous exultation in eternal life [in the Upanishads] belonged to a stage of Indian religion which as yet knew nothing of the Buddha and his teachings. To him the sap of life was hateful, and his use of this same simile of the tree and its destruction must surely have had its effect on the author of the Gita, who, though he borrows his first line from the Katha Upanishad, develops the theme on lines that are more Buddhistic than Upanishadic.”