Latent Impressions and Tendencies (Saṃskāra & Vāsanā)
Every act leaves a trace; the traces become tendencies — the hidden grooves that shape character and rebirth.
Every experience and action, the tradition holds, leaves a subtle imprint on the mind — a saṃskāra. These traces accumulate into vāsanās, the ingrained dispositions and cravings that quietly shape how one perceives, reacts, and chooses, often without one's knowing. They are the mechanism behind habit and character, and, on a longer arc, behind rebirth: the unspent traces of past lives sprout as the tendencies of the next. Liberation requires not only right knowledge but the wearing-away of these deep-laid impressions.
How it traveled
- VivekacūḍāmaṇiŚṛṅgeri (Sringeri) · 1400explains
Key passages(20)
Vivekacūḍāmaṇi · Śaṅkara (traditionally ascribed; authorship doubted)
Vivekacūḍāmaṇi · Śaṅkara (traditionally ascribed; authorship doubted)
Remembering whatever object, at the end, he leaves the body, that alone is reached by him, O son of Kunti, (because) of his constant thought of that object.
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'Memory (smara) is better than ether. Therefore where many are assembled together, if they have no memory, they would hear no one, they would not perceive, they would not understand. Through memory we
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'There is this verse, "He who sees this, does not see death, nor illness, nor pain; he who sees this, sees everything, and obtains everything everywhere. '"He is one (before creation), he becomes thre
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There he is united with the intelligence acquired in his former body, and strives more than before, for perfection, O son of the Kurus.
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'That Self is indeed Brahman, consisting of knowledge, mind, life, sight, hearing, earth, water, wind, ether, light and no light, desire and no desire, anger and no anger, right or wrong, and all thin
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