Mark 11:20 · World English Bible
Mark 11:20 Meaning As They Passed by in the Morning
As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away from the roots.
What does Mark 11:20 mean?
Asāra: Without heartwood Asāra names a thing with no core inside. The leaves were showy enough to be spotted from a distance on the road in from Bethany, and they advertised early figs that were never on the branch.
From the Buddhism reading below.
Mark 11:20 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Buddhism
BUDDHISM
Buddhism
Asāra: Without heartwood Asāra names a thing with no core inside. The leaves were showy enough to be spotted from a distance on the road in from Bethany, and they advertised early figs that were never on the branch. Hunger walked up to that display and found nothing to eat, the way a drum is loud because there is nothing inside it.
Anicca: Impermanence Anicca is the passing character of anything that has been put together. The day before, the tree stood green in full leaf; by this morning it was dry wood standing in the same spot. That overnight distance between the two sights is the ordinary speed of things, and it only registers when the change moves fast enough to be walked past twice in two days.
Akusalamūla: The unwholesome roots Greed, hatred, and delusion are called roots because they feed everything standing above the ground. The drying here ran upward from the roots, so nothing was left in the soil to push out a shoot next spring or the spring after. Trimming branches and stripping leaves, which is most of what we do about our habits, leaves the feeding part alive underground, and the same tree comes back wearing the same leaves.
Samuccheda: Cutting off for good Samuccheda is the abandoning that finishes a thing off. Cut a tree at the trunk and the stump keeps its grip in the soil and sends up green shoots by summer; withered from the roots, this one had no such return left in it. Restraint can hold a craving flat for years and still be holding it, while the root going dead is what ends the coming back.
Saṃvega: Urgency Saṃvega is the jolt that turns a person toward practice. Walking the same road a second time and stopping short at dead wood is that jolt arriving, and a thing seen with your own eyes lands harder than any warning spoken about it. Bodies, plans, and the people we love stand in full leaf just as convincingly this morning, and a sight like that one is an opening to start living as if this were known.
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Live Mark 11:20 today
- Pick one habit you keep trimming back and ask what feeds it. The late scrolling, the sharp tone, the second drink. The feeding is usually somewhere else entirely.
- Ask someone who knows you well what they think the root of a thing is that you keep fixing at the surface. Then let them talk without explaining yourself.
- When a project is all slides and no substance, say so once, plainly and early, instead of helping it look greener. Leaves nobody can eat cost everyone later.
Where in your life does the display outrun what is actually there?
The same truth in other traditions
Tao Te Ching
The tree that is full grown is already on its way back to the root, and the Tao Te Ching says returning to the root is the real work. What you tend underground decides what shows above it.
Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius
Marcus said to look at the thing itself and ask what it is made of, stripping off the story around it, because most of what impresses us turns out to be a surface with very little behind it.
Hinduism · Upanishads
The Katha Upanishad speaks of a tree with its roots above and branches below, pointing to a life whose visible part depends entirely on a source most people never look at.
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