Vegetation Is One-Facultied

VEGETATIONS grow depending on the existence of the four great forming substances as the bases. Whenever the four substances combine with favourable Temperature (heat and cold), all kinds of plants start to grow then. After a plant grows up, its roots move at a snail's pace in the direction of fertilized and water-rich soil to nourish its branches. Some plants close their leaves immediately when they are touched. For instance, the plants growing up along the road, their leaves or branches frequently touched by travellers turn aside from the road. Of course, plants, i.e. coconut tree, growing nearby the house seem to grow and bear fruits badly whilst the landowner moves out. The Buddha after his Enlightenment abstained from damaging or destroying viable seedlings and plants (grass, liana…).

The reason why the Buddha abstained from eating uncooked grains, cutting grown tree, and uprooting grass and liana is that he had Wisdom-Eye which can clearly see that a plant was one-facultied life depending on a plant compounds the four substances the same as human being and animal, just only having no sense-organs. The consciousness element of the plant is extremely minuscule if compared with the human being’s, but bigger than the consciousness element of the four substances’ (i.e. earth’s, water’s, fire’s, and wind’s)—through the observation, we can see a plant is one-facultied.

Keeping their purity or believing in nature were possessed, they together engendered such a culture—before cutting, uprooting or picking traditional plants or flower to make medicine or sacred water, Cambodian people have to demand in advance efficacy of vegetations. They have understood the fact of such phenomena since the ancient time.

Mangalattha-dīpanī (The Manual of the Blessings) which was described about Mangala-sutta by Sirīmangalācāriya, the Cheangmese, it is said about the precept in term of person, “In the religion of Kassapa Buddha, there was one bhikkhu who practised monastic observances in jungle for twenty thousand years. He, one day, took a boat along the Ganges River. He handed a brand of one plant (Chrey Toek). While the boat was floating forward with fast speed, he still hand it, so the leaf was broken apart. He had thought, “This offence is petty”, and then he did not confess the offence to other priests. He, at the moment of death, imagined the leaf of the plant (Chrey Toek) was choked on his throat, he intended to confess to another bhikkhu, but he could not even find one there. He, hence, regretted that: “Morality of mine was impure”.

Accordingly, passing away, he was born as a king of the nāgas having body as an unfinished canoe”. This is the reason why people had created nature-worship cultures and believed in nature while the scientific technologies have not yet been found. From generation to other generation, those cultures, thus, become various religions and traditions.