Kleśas
Mental afflictions, the three unskillful roots, and a Tibetan Buddhist account of six root afflictions.
What are kleśas?
Sanskrit: kleśa · Pāli: kilesa. Often translated as mental afflictions or defilements.
“Mental qualities that obscure the clarity of the mind.”
Glossary to An Unentangled Knowing
Three unskillful roots
In MN 9, Sāriputta names the roots of the unskillful:
“Greed, hate, and delusion.”
MN 9 · Right View · translated by Bhikkhu Sujato
The discourse places understanding unskillful and skillful states, together with their roots, within the development of right view.
Six root afflictions
Thubten Chodron’s Tibetan Buddhist presentation identifies six root afflictions. The names follow her list; the explanations below paraphrase her definitions.
- Attachment — Exaggerating something’s appeal and strongly wanting it.
- Anger (hostility) — Agitation in response to harm, suffering, or its cause, expressed as resistance or an intention to injure.
- Conceit (arrogance) — Elevating oneself above others through grasping at an inherently existing self.
- Ignorance — Not understanding such matters as the four truths, actions and their consequences, and the Three Jewels.
- Afflictive doubt — Wavering about central teachings in a way that leans toward mistaken conclusions.
- Afflictive views (mistaken views) — Treating body and mind as an inherently existing “I” or “mine,” or forming further mistaken beliefs on that basis.
Thubten Chodron · Buddhist psychology: Mind and mental factors
Related reading & listening
Recordings
Sources & notes
Sources & terminology
- An Unentangled Knowing · Glossary — the quoted definition of “Defilement (kilesa).” The book contains Upāsikā Kee Nanayon’s teachings, translated from Thai by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu.
- MN 9 · Right View — Bhikkhu Sujato’s translation for SuttaCentral, segment MN 9:5.2 (CC0 1.0). Source of the three-root quotation.
- Thubten Chodron · Buddhist psychology: Mind and mental factors — source of the category names and the definitions summarized above. This Tibetan Buddhist presentation also describes secondary afflictions.
- Alexander Berzin · Nirvana in the Different Buddhist Systems — Sanskrit kleśa and Pāli kilesa, translated by Berzin as disturbing emotions.