Mental Habitats: Five Afflictions of Mind

[Exploring Life] Mental Afflictions- The Origin of Discontent: The purpose of yoga is to provide a pathway out of suffering. All suffering originates in the mind. The mind and body are intimately interconnected, meaning that the intentions of our thoughts manifest themselves throughout the physical structure of our body. An acute painful thought creates a temporary uncomfortable presence in the body; a chronic painful thought creates a lasting painful physical presence in the body. Mental anguish seems to effortlessly transform into physical anguish and take residence in our body. Pantanjali recognized that to move through our afflictions and discontent in life, we must learn to change the quality and character of our mind. The heart of yoga is an investigation into the nature of our own discontent in order to find a pathway to a higher state of mind. More simply, we need to understand the cause and source of our discontent before we can begin to heal it.

Pantanjali’s insights into the nature of the human mind remain relevant and valuable today. Under the pressure of impressive technological innovation, we live in the midst of an environment that places unique challenges on our thought processes. There is great benefit in our modern technologies, however, our minds also feel the strain of the increased speed and intensity of information and communication. Distraction and mental fatigue are significant and growing problems today. We subscribe to delusional and harmful notions such as multitasking. One of Pantanjali’s most important contributions was identifying problematic qualities of mind that lie at the root of our fear, anxiety, and insecurity. He describes five mental afflictions, or “klesas,” that he proposed to be the root cause of our suffering. In restraining, or learning to control, the five afflictions we free ourselves from the suffering they impose upon our lives.

Mental Afflictions: An affliction is any chronic thought pattern that causes us distress, grief, or misery in our lives. An affliction presenting a feeling of anguish over an extended time is not normal; acute or temporary anguish resulting from adversity in life is normal. In other words, our distress can be brief and transitory, or habitual and addictive. Pantanjali hypothesized that learning to restrain the afflictions in our mind is a pathway out of suffering. Yoga is therefore a method to help us identify, comprehend, and retrain the presence of physical, mental, and spiritual toxicity in our lives.

Pantanjali describes five “klesas” (from the Sanskrit root “klis” meaning to torment or to cause distress) that form the foundation for a psychology of yoga. Klesa is derived from the Sanskrit root “klis” meaning to torment or to cause distress. In Buddhism, a klesa is described as a poison, defilement, or impurity of the mind. Buddhists also believe that the root cause of suffering originates in ignorance and selfish craving. The five afflictions of the mind described by Pantanjali are:

1. Nescience [Ignorance]: Nescience is literally “not science” or “ignorance,” that is to say, an inability to discern fact from fiction through direct observation. We fail to see things as they really are. In this state, the mind is not engaged in the present moment, which breeds a lack of clarity in life. We live life in a state of ignorance because we are not seeing things as they truly are. Nescience is self-deception. We are not living in an authentic manner. In Pantanjali’s psychology, this is the most basic cause of our suffering and provides a breeding ground for next four afflictions.
2. Egoism: This is the internal realm of “I, me, and mine.” Our personal narratives create isolation and separation in our lives by making our own existence the focal point of all existence. Our identification with “me” can block us from experiencing what is really happening in the present moment as we remain caught up in our own ceaseless self-narrative. Egoism inhibits belonging and therefore stunts personal growth.
3. Attachment: Our desire is often to repeat pleasurable experience. This, however, confines us to reactive patterns of wanting and avoiding. The result is the loss of the present moment as we mentally cling to our attachment.
4. Aversion: The opposite of attachment is aversion, or the avoidance of experiences we deem to be pleasurable. The result is also losing touch with the present moment as it really is.
5. Fear of Letting Go: Impermanence is a universal reality for every human being. It is also a reality that we tend to avoid contemplating since it tends to invoke fear and anxiety. Impermanence means the loss of Until we embrace our own impermanence we remain closed, isolated, separated, and afflicted by the fear of losing “I, me, and mine.”

Cause and Effect: The five afflictions breed toxicity in the mind. They may be thought of as a kind of poison or enemy of the mind, which inevitably begins to influence the way we think, feel, behave, and interpret our experience. Our perception of the world around us becomes troubling and anxious. The afflictions create an improvisatory dance of anger, fear, envy, sloth, greed, grief, anxiety, want, hatred, or arrogance that creatively expresses our underlying suffering. These uncomfortable and highly personal expressions reveal the effects of the five afflictions.

Nescience is the field for the others [i.e. egoism, attachment, aversion, fear of letting go], whether dormant, tenuous, alternated, or fully operative.
- Yoga Sutras 2:4

In Pantanjali’s description of yoga, negative emotions are symptoms or expressions of an underlying cause; emotions are not the cause of our suffering. Nescience, or ignorance of reality as it really is, is the first and most significant of the five afflictions; nescience creates the space for the other four afflictions to emerge. Nescience is a breeding ground for confusion, mindlessness, boredom, distraction, inattentiveness, obsession, and indifference. It is the primary and dominant klesa, and the origin and source of our discontent. This is a critical understanding to embrace since everything else in yoga flows out of this essential presupposition. If yoga is truly a path out of suffering, then there is no yoga that does not originate in healing the nescience klesa.

The Presence of Mental Anguish: The presence of nescience, or ignorance, means that my mind lacks clarity. According to Pantanjali, it also means that my mind is not in its natural state, but has been “modified” in some manner. “Yoga is the restraint of mental modifications.” [1:2] Pantanjali assumed that the natural and normal state of mind (i.e. an “unmodified” mind) is one of pure effortless contemplation. The natural state of mind he describes is a very powerful way of being fully present and actively participating in the confluence of our everyday lives. If the mind has been “modified” then our ability to be fully present and actively participate in our lives is impaired in some manner.

Then the seer stands in his own nature.
- Yoga Sutras 1:3

Restraint is a potent and strong word. When we restrain something we engage in an act of suppression or confinement. The Latin restringere means to bind. When we pursue the restraint of mental modifications, we strive to confine and suppress the five afflictions of nescience, egoism, attachment, aversion, and fear of letting go. The afflictions cause an undesirable change in our mental environment, and restraining them or not permitting them to influence us is a primary objective in yoga. Ironically, the means to restraining the afflictions is subtle and gentle, but this is a discussion for the next article in this series. My purpose here is only to focus on the nature of the five afflictions.

A Glance at the Nature of Affliction: If we do not believe that Pantanjali’s five afflictions present the underlying cause of suffering, then the Yoga Sutras are not relevant to us. How do we make this decision? There is clearly only one answer to this question, and this is to explore our own unique and individual experience for their presence in our lives today. This kind of self-exploration is, however, alien to us. We have become conditioned to believe that information, knowledge and insight comes to us through external expertise. In other words, we sometimes do not view our own experience as a critical source of information, knowledge and insight unto itself. Each of us is in fact an expert, and while exploring the thought of others is both important and helpful, it is not primary.

Pantanjali asks us to become our own expert and to discover our own information, knowledge and insight into life. Self-discovery is the adventure embraced in yoga. Is it possible that nescience, egoism, attachment, aversion, and fear of letting go, are influencing the quality of our lives to our own detriment? I have found it difficult not to find these five afflictions within my own experience. An obvious example is attachment. Each of us to some degree is bound by the presence of attachment in our minds. In extreme circumstances, attachment reveals itself as perverse materialism and the commodification of the planet. Collectively, the affliction of attachment has created the delusion that humankind actually “owns” the planet. While these are extreme and perverse forms of attachment, its presence in our world is undeniable.

Attachment is one of the root causes of environmental degradation. Aversion in this example would be the avoidance of doing anything about it because the requirements of repairing the environment are deemed to be unpleasant with respect to lifestyle and economy. Both attachment and aversion clearly embrace egoism, that is, the story of “I” supersedes any other possible story, such as, the story of the planet. The fear of letting go is a denial of the impermanence of all things, and is therefore a denial of reality. The behaviour of humankind on the planet is clearly delusional in the sense that we believe we can continue to destroy the environment while still expecting it to provide us with the basis for life.

Lying at the base of these afflictions is nescience, or ignorance. More simply, we fail to discern things as they really and instead we embrace our own fragile social norms, cultural conditioning, religious notions, economic wants, or technological clothing, in the absence of clarity of thought. Nescience does not mean our beliefs about what is right and wrong are weak, just misguided. The story of the five afflictions I have portrayed here may seem reasonable but it is only a hypothetical example to quickly illustrate the nature of the five afflictions. Yoga does not ask us to look externally and create narrations about the presence of the five afflictions within the story of humankind; yoga does ask us to embrace an inward look and use our powers of discernment to reveal the nature of the five afflictions within. In this sense, each of our stories will be unique and authentic.