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## The Study of the Plant Body (Vanaspatikaya)
The principles of those who are not liberated from the beginning of the plant body are now being examined.
Grass and sprouts, green things are also living beings because it is seen that they grow by food, etc., and take on the form of a living being. Embryo, bud, muscle, fetus, birth, child, youth, middle age, and old age, etc., are the stages of a human being. Similarly, green paddy-rice, etc., also take on the stages of birth, new, born from sap, juicy, young-mature, old-dry, and dead, etc. Trees are also born when they sprout. Thus it is said. Then when they begin to grow in the form of root, trunk, branch, twig, etc., they are called young or saplings. Similarly, their remaining stages should also be arranged. It should be known that green grass, etc., also become living beings. In the roots, trunk, branches, leaves, flowers, etc., of trees, living beings reside separately. From the root to the leaves, there is not one living being in the whole tree, but many living beings. These living beings residing in the plant body are of three types: countable, uncountable, and infinite. Whoever cuts or cuts these living beings for the sake of food, drink, etc., for the growth of the body, or to heal a wound in the body, or for any of his own pleasure, destroys many living beings with arrogance and audacity. To destroy them mercilessly is neither Dharma nor self-happiness.
**Verse 9:**
> "They destroy the species and growth, the seeds, unrestrained, self-punishing. They say, in the world, those who are not of the noble path, those who harm the seeds, they punish themselves."
**Commentary:**
> "Destroying the species, the growth, the seeds, and their fruits, cutting the green things, the unrestrained householder, or the renunciate, or the householder who is the doer of that action, he punishes himself by cutting the green things. For he truly harms himself by harming others. The word 'they say' is a figure of speech in the sentence. It shows what they said: 'He who is cruel, who cuts green things, etc., is 'not of the noble path' in this world.' And who is such a person? He who harms the plant body for the sake of Dharma, or for his own happiness, because this is a symbol of that. He is a heretic or someone else who is not of the noble path."
**Now the ripening of the action of killing and cutting is described.**
**Commentary:**
> "The man who cuts the green plants, he destroys the birth, the sprout, the leaf, the root, the trunk, the branch, and the twig, the growth of other plants that come from it."