Kleshas (Buddhism)

• 1. Introduction

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  Kleshas are the mental states that, according to Buddhist teaching, cloud the mind and push a person toward unwholesome action. The word itself arrives in English trailing a long list of possible translations: afflictions, defilements, destructive emotions, disturbing emotions, negative emotions, mind poisons, neuroses. That plurality of names is not confusion. It reflects how thoroughly the concept resists a single English equivalent.

  At the core of the tradition sits a shorter list. Across both the Mahayana and Theravada schools, three kleshas are identified as the root of all the others: ignorance, attachment, and aversion. Mahayana teachers call them the three poisons. Theravada teachers call them the three unwholesome roots. Both names point at the same problem.

  What does it mean for a mental state to be a poison? And how did Buddhist thinkers, across centuries and traditions, map the territory of a troubled mind so precisely? Those are the questions this documentary will trace.

• 2. The Three Poisons

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  Ignorance, in Sanskrit moha or avidya, is described in the tradition as a lack of discernment: not understanding the way of things. Attachment, raga in Sanskrit, is the pull toward what we like, what we desire, what we crave. Aversion, dvesha, runs in the opposite direction: a pushing away of what we dislike, or of whatever stands between us and what we want.

  These three conditions are considered the root of all other kleshas. Any further negative predisposition, teachers across traditions affirm, is produced on the basis of these three. Chögyam Trungpa described them plainly as passion, aggression, and ignorance.

  In the Mahayana tradition, two additional kleshas join these three to form the five poisons. Pride, Sanskrit mana, is defined as having an inflated opinion of oneself and a disrespectful attitude toward others. Envy, irshya in Sanskrit, is the inability to bear the accomplishments or good fortune of others. Together, these five cover the main categories of mental disturbance the tradition sets out to address.

• 3. The Pali Canon's Accounting

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  In the Pali Canon's Sutta Pitaka, the term kilesa appears regularly alongside desire-passion, or chanda-rago. A passage from the Samyutta Nikaya spells out the relationship directly: any desire-passion directed toward the eye, the ear, the nose, the tongue, the body, or the intellect is identified as a defilement of the mind. Six sense bases, six corresponding sources of defilement.

  The same texts link kilesa to the five hindrances, those familiar obstacles to meditation practice: sensual desire, anger, sloth-torpor, restlessness-worry, and doubt. A passage collected in the Pali Canon describes all the awakened ones as having first abandoned these five hindrances, calling them defilements of the mind that weaken wisdom.

  The Khuddaka Nikaya's Niddesa takes the association further still, treating kilesa as a component of or synonymous with craving and lust, the Pali term raga. The Abhidhamma Pitaka then moves toward the most detailed accounting. Its Dhammasangani and Vibhanga enumerate ten defilements: greed, hatred, delusion, conceit, wrong views, doubt, torpor, restlessness, shamelessness, and recklessness. The Vibhanga also preserves a shorter eightfold list drawn from the first eight of those ten.

• 4. The Wheel of Becoming

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  The fifth-century commentator Buddhaghosa, working in the Visuddhimagga, introduced a powerful framework for understanding how kleshas operate within the broader teaching of Dependent Origination. He divided the twelve factors of Dependent Origination into three rounds: the round of defilements, the round of kamma, and the round of results.

  The mechanism works like a wheel. Kilesa in the form of ignorance conditions karma in the form of formations. Those formations condition results. Those results, in turn, condition kilesa again, in the form of craving and clinging. Clinging conditions further karma, and the cycle continues. Buddhaghosa states it plainly at Vsm. XVII, 298: "So this Wheel of Becoming, having a triple round with these three rounds, should be understood to spin, revolving again and again, forever; for the conditions are not cut off as long as the round of defilements is not cut off."

  In this scheme the round of defilements consists specifically of ignorance, craving, and clinging. The Visuddhimagga also refers elsewhere to the complete eradication of what it calls "the defilements that are the root of the round" as the precursor to the attainment of nibbana.

• 5. Mahayana Elaborations

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  Sanskrit Mahayana literature expanded the taxonomy considerably. The Abhidharma-kosa identifies six root kleshas: attachment, anger, ignorance, pride, doubt, and wrong view. In the context of the Yogacara school, scholar Muller, writing in 2004, noted that these six kleshas arise due to the reification of an imagined self.

  The Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra offers the most expansive list, cataloguing approximately fifty kleshas. These range from the familiar trio through attachment to pleasure, to sleep, to eating, and to yawning; through ill-will, quarrelsomeness, wrong livelihood, deceit, consorting with immoral friends, and a tendency toward excessive talking and uttering lies.

  Mahayana literature also developed the concept of two obscurations. The first is the obscuration of conflicting emotions, Sanskrit klesha-avarana. The second is the obscuration concerning the knowable, Sanskrit jneya-avarana. The first blocks liberation; the second blocks full understanding of reality. This distinction between emotional and cognitive obstruction became central to Mahayana discussions of the path to buddhahood.

• 6. Modern Translations

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  Contemporary Buddhist teachers working in English have offered a range of definitions that illuminate different facets of the term. Joseph Goldstein described afflictive emotions as those mind states that cause suffering, noting that the list is long. The Dalai Lama, in a dialogue recorded by Daniel Goleman, offered a definition focused on epistemology: a destructive emotion is something that prevents the mind from ascertaining reality as it is, and with such an emotion there will always be a gap between how things appear and how things are.

  Mark Epstein placed emphasis on behavioral compulsion: certain powerful reactions have the capacity to take hold of us and drive our behavior. Pema Chodron highlighted the escalating quality of kleshas, describing them as strong conflicting emotions that spin off and heighten when we get caught by aversion and attraction.

  A Tibetan-tradition gloss offered by Thrangu Rinpoche distinguishes kleshas as emotional obscurations, in contrast to intellectual obscurations, while Ajahn Sucitto, working from the Theravada side, described defilements as unskilful factors led by greed, hate, and delusion. The breadth of this interpretive tradition reflects a genuine debate about whether kleshas are primarily emotional, cognitive, behavioral, or some irreducible combination of all three.

• 7. Overcoming Defilements

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  All Buddhist schools agree on a two-stage approach. Tranquility meditation, known in Pali as Samatha, pacifies the kleshas, though it does not eradicate them. Insight meditation, Vipassana, goes further by illuminating the true nature of the kleshas and of the mind itself.

  The logic of eradication runs as follows. When the empty nature of the self and the mind is fully understood, there is no longer a root for the disturbing emotions to attach to. Without that root, the kleshas lose their power to distract the mind. The teaching is not that difficult emotions will no longer arise, but that they will no longer find purchase.

  This distinction between pacification and eradication runs through all the classical literature, from the Visuddhimagga's description of vatta-mula-kilesa, the defilements that are the root of the round, to the Abhidhamma's enumeration of ten. The goal across traditions is the same: not suppression, but the removal of the conditions that allow kleshas to take hold. The Visuddhimagga places the complete eradication of those root defilements as the final step before nibbana itself.