by Dalai Lama
Relinquishing attachment to our bodies doesn’t mean we ignore our health and neglect to go to the doctor and dentist. Our bodies are the physical support of our precious human lives that we use to practice the Dharma, so we must care for the body and keep it healthy. Caring for our bodies in a practical way is very different from indulging in sensual pleasures with attachment.
With all of this talk about duḥkha, we may mistakenly believe that Dharma practitioners must relinquish all of the usual activities that bring them happiness and instead practice extreme asceticism and self-denial. We may fear that there is no happiness to be experienced until we reach nirvāṇa. This is not the case at all. In fact, it is important to have a happy mind while practicing the Dharma. As we go deeper into practice, we realize that there are many types and levels of happiness and pleasure. Having food, shelter, clothing, medicine, and friends bring us some well-being — enough that we can practice the Dharma without being in dire suffering, which would make practice difficult. As we practice more, we discover the internal peace arising from living ethically and the pleasant, relaxed feeling that comes from improving our concentration. As we lessen our attachment and open our hearts to others, the joy derived from connecting with others on a heart level and acting with kindness toward them brings us a sense of fulfillment that is greatly superior to any sense pleasure that money and possessions can afford.
Although most people in the world have intimate emotional and sexual relationships, some people choose not to have them. This is a valid lifestyle choice, whether people are Buddhist or not, whether they are monastics or lay practitioners. They are not avoiding intimacy; they prefer to use their life energy doing other things that are more important to them. In short, giving up our addiction to pleasure derived from external objects and people opens the door to experience other types of happiness.
Some people wonder if it’s possible to become attached to the Dharma and crave liberation. Attachment is based on projecting or exaggerating qualities and then clinging to an object. In general it is not possible to exaggerate the excellent qualities of the Three Jewels, liberation, and full awakening. Furthermore, appreciation of the Dharma’s excellent qualities and the aspiration to attain liberation are very different from being attached to them with obsessive longing or possessiveness.
If someone perchance builds an ego-identity, thinking, “I am a Buddhist and my religion is the best,” he has not understood Buddhism very well. His attitude is not one of attachment to Buddhism; rather his mind is afflicted with self-grasping and arrogance.
3
True Origins of Duḥkha
WE LIVE AMIDST true duḥkha day in and day out. It is our close companion, never letting us be peaceful in our own hearts or with others. Since we do not like duḥkha and want to be free from it, we must seek out its causes, examine whether they can be eliminated, and if so, learn the path to do so. The Buddha identified afflictions and karma as the true origins of duḥkha. Karma arises from afflictions, the chief of which is ignorance. In this chapter we will examine the defilements that are the origins of duḥkha. These mental factors keep us bound in cyclic existence and prevent our attainment of nirvāṇa and awakening.
Buddhist psychology is profound and reveals parts of our minds that we may have been oblivious to. Virtuous and variable mental factors were described in chapter 3 of the previous volume, The Foundation of Buddhist Practice. The following afflictive mental factors are explained in the context of factors that produce duḥkha and interfere with attaining liberation and full awakening.
It’s important to approach the topic of afflictions with the correct attitude. Avoid using the various lists of defilements to criticize yourself, thinking, “I have so much anger. I’m also so jealous. What a bad person I am!” Remember that gaining knowledge about mental defilements gives us the power to free ourselves from them and arrive at a state of true peace. We have the potential to do this. Chapters 12–14 will discuss the possibility to attain liberation and our buddha nature that makes that possible.
Describing afflictions is similar to identifying the thieves in our house who have been masquerading as our friends while all the time stealing our happiness. When we know their characteristics, we can catch them, evict them, and lock the door behind them so they can never return. But unlike living thieves who can regroup later, once evicted, afflictions vanish completely.
Like all other phenomena, mental defilements are empty of inherent existence. They are transient like bubbles that quickly burst; they have no essence like the trunk of a plantain tree. Rather than think of anger, or any other affliction, as a solid emotion that is always lurking under the surface of your mind, ready to explode, spewing its vitriol, recognize that it exists by being merely designated: in dependence on some moments of mind that share some common characteristics, we designate “anger.” That’s all anger is. It’s not a monster that is an inherent part of us; it is not who we are. We need to view our afflictions from two perspectives: on the one hand they are the source of our misery; on the other they lack essence and can be completely eradicated from our mindstreams. There are many ways of classifying mental defilements; we will begin with the six root afflictions, the most prominent group in the Sanskrit tradition.
The Six Root Afflictions
Studying the laboratory that is our own mind, we notice that we can have radically different emotions at different times. We can be loving one moment and irritated the next. Some emotions arise more easily or are more habitual than others: our anger surges in a moment; fortitude is difficult to cultivate. Some emotions bring peace, others disturb our mental tranquility. The later are called afflictions. Asaṅga identifies these in his Compendium of Knowledge (LC 1:298):
An affliction is defined as a phenomenon that, when it arises, is disturbing in character and that, through arising, disturbs the mindstream.
Afflictions are distinct mental factors that, when they arise in our minds, cause our minds to be unpeaceful and unsubdued. Afflictions may be emotions, attitudes, or views, and they usually arise without our choice. The three principal afflictions are ignorance, anger, and attachment. Although compassion may disturb our minds, it isn’t an affliction. Genuine compassion — as opposed to pity, or personal distress when seeing others suffer — is deliberately cultivated for a good purpose and is supported by reasoning. Unable to ignore sentient beings’ duḥkha, compassion wishes them to be free of it. Our minds may be temporarily disturbed because our apathy has been challenged, but this type of mental disturbance spurs us to be more tolerant and kind; it makes our minds strong and determined to aid others and brings benefit to ourselves and others.
Afflictions, on the other hand, arise without good reasons and lack foundation in reality. Because we are habituated with afflictions, they arise easily when we encounter certain conditions. They disturb the tranquility of the mind and have the long-term effect of increasing our problems and unhappiness. Unlike virtuous mental states such as integrity and compassion, afflictions lack mental clarity, and we often find ourselves justifying their presence: “I have a right to be angry because he criticized me unfairly.” But think about it: Why must we be angry when someone criticizes us? Is anger the only possible response to this situation? Does anger increase our ability to communicate well or destroy it? Questioning ourselves in this way clears away confusion and enables us to see the faulty “logic” behind the afflictions and thus to dispel them.
Afflictions give rise to actions that are considered destructive in all cultures — such as killing, stealing, and lying. These actions perpetuate the cycle of misery. Because they bring our ruin, we need to be aware of their nature, causes, functions, and disadvantages. If a country has an enemy that is destroying its well-being, it tries to learn everything it can about that enemy in order to combat it and prevent it from devastating the country. Similarly, we need to know everything we can about the enemy — the afflictions that destroy our own and others’ happiness. But simply l
earning about the afflictions is not sufficient; we must also combat them by hearing, thinking, and meditating on their counterforces as described in the Buddha’s teachings. Doing this is the crux of Dharma practice.
The Buddha listed eighty-four thousand afflictions, the most prominent of which are the root afflictions (mūlakleśa) and auxiliary afflictions (upakleśa). In the Treasury of Knowledge, Vasubandhu spoke of six root afflictions, the last one being afflictive views, which in turn is subdivided into five. In the Compendium of Knowledge, his older brother Asaṅga listed ten root afflictions — the first five that Vasubandhu listed plus the five afflictive views. Although the two lists come to the same point, there are some differences in how a few of the afflictions are described because the Treasury of Knowledge was written from the Vaibhāṣika viewpoint while the Compendium of Knowledge is from the Cittamātra viewpoint. In general we will follow the latter, except when the Prāsaṅgika presentation differs. This occurs mainly in the descriptions of ignorance and the view of a personal identity. The six root afflictions are attachment (rāga), anger (pratigha), arrogance (māna), ignorance (avidyā), deluded doubt (vicikitsā), and afflictive views (kliṣṭadṛṣṭi).
Attachment
Attachment is a mental factor that, based on distorted attention that exaggerates the attractiveness of a polluted object (an object under the influence of ignorance), wishes for and takes a strong interest in it. The object could be a material object, a person or a place, or it could be praise or an idea. Attachment functions to produce discontent and to perpetuate the cycle of existence. Looking at our own experiences, we can see how true this is.
This is a general description of attachment; there are many degrees and variations of attachment. Some instances of attachment that arise in daily life are greed that wants more than our fair share, attachment to our ideas that leads to stubborn insistence on being right, attachment to reputation, praise, pleasing sensory experiences, and so on. We also become attached to people, which leads to having unrealistic expectations of them or of our relationships with them. This in turn leads to disappointment and friction in those relationships, and feelings of bitterness or betrayal when the relationships don’t continue as expected.
Covetousness is a coarse form of attachment. As one of the ten nonvirtues, covetousness easily leads to actions that directly harm others, such as stealing or unwise sexual relationships. Other afflictions derived from attachment are miserliness that doesn’t want to share our possessions, haughtiness that is attached to our good fortune, and restlessness that distracts the mind to desirable objects during meditation.
Attachment and aspiration are distinct mental factors with different functions. Although both are attracted to their object, attachment is based on distorted attention that exaggerates its attractiveness or projects good qualities that are not there. Seeing the object inaccurately, attachment clings to it and does not want to be separated from it. We become attached to people, money and possessions, love and approval, good food and other pleasurable sensory experiences, and so on, and are certain that the good qualities we see inhere in that person or thing. If our perception were accurate, everyone should see the person or thing as attractive as we do and desire it as much as we do. Clearly that is not the case.
Aspiration focuses on its intended object and takes a strong interest in it, but it is not necessarily based on exaggerating or projecting the object’s good qualities. The aspirations seeking a good rebirth, liberation, and full awakening are based on realistically seeing beneficial qualities that are present. In his Abhidharma text, the Tibetan scholar Chim Jampelyang (ca. 1245–1325) clarified that the aspirations for a fortunate rebirth, liberation, or awakening are virtuous; they are not attachment.
Furthermore, Vasubandhu said that objects giving rise to afflictions are polluted. Since buddhahood and the Three Jewels are unpolluted, they cannot induce afflictions in others’ minds. If someone thinks, “When I’m a buddha, everyone will respect me,” he suffers from attachment to reputation, not attachment to buddhahood.
Craving is a form of attachment and is usually seen as nonvirtuous. However, “craving” can refer to other forms of attachment that may be temporarily useful. For example, in the case of someone who is miserly and doesn’t want to part with his possessions, the craving to be wealthy in a future life can motivate him to counteract his stinginess and become generous in this life. Even though this craving seeks happiness in saṃsāra, it is a step up from craving the happiness of only this life and thus is considered virtuous. For someone who lives an ethically corrupt life, desire to be reborn as a deva can induce him to relinquish harmful behaviors and keep precepts. Craving for the bliss of samādhi in the form and formless realms can inspire someone to cultivate concentration in order to be reborn in those realms. These types of attachment are useful in those specific situations. However, for someone intent on liberation, those same cravings are hindrances because they are enamored with saṃsāric pleasures.
Ānanda says that based on the craving for liberation — our highest spiritual aspiration, which is certainly virtuous — the unwanted forms of craving can be eliminated (AN 4.159, AN 2.145). The postcanonical Pāli text Nettippakaraṇa speaks of virtuous and nonvirtuous forms of craving and confirms that virtuous craving leads to the end of craving. For example, one monastic learns that another has become an arhat, and with the desire to attain arhatship too, she practices diligently and becomes an arhat, one who has abandoned craving. Similarly, a monastic motivated by arrogance thinks, “I am as capable as that person who attained arhatship.” This propels him to make effort and he becomes an arhat, someone who has abandoned arrogance. This is similar to the idea of taking attachment on the path in Tantrayāna. Here attachment is employed to make manifest the subtlest mind and use it to realize emptiness and destroy all obscurations, including attachment.
How do we reconcile these examples with a statement of Nāgārjuna, the great second-century Indian sage who spread the Madhyamaka (Middle Way) view (RA 20ab)?
Attachment, anger, confusion,
and the karma that arises from them are nonvirtuous.
“Attachment” here refers to selfish desire for material possessions, praise, good reputation, and pleasant sensory experiences. Such attachment often leads to nonvirtuous actions, while aspiration for the happiness of future lives can lead to virtuous actions. Anger and hatred, however, can never be the motivating factors for virtue; they always lead to nonvirtue. Here confusion refers not to the self-grasping ignorance that is the root of saṃsāra, but to the ignorance that does not understand karma and its effects. While self-grasping ignorance can also precede virtuous actions, the ignorance that has a skewed view of ethical conduct will lead to mental, verbal, and physical nonvirtuous paths of action.
Similarly, there are different ways to be “attached” to a beautiful statue of the Buddha. One person wants a beautiful statue to inspire his daily meditation practice. Another person wants the same statue to show off to his friends or to sell for a profit. These different motivations will bring different results in the present life and in future lives.
In short, “attachment” may have diverse meanings in different contexts. This is illustrated by the four types of clinging mentioned in the teaching Parting from the Four Clingings that Mañjuśrī gave to the great Sakya lama Sachen Kunga Nyingpo:
If you cling to this life, you are not a true spiritual practitioner.
If you cling to saṃsāra, you do not have renunciation.
If you cling to your own self-interest, you have no bodhicitta.
If there is grasping, you do not have the view.
The first line indicates clinging to the happiness of this life, which is invariably an obstacle for Dharma practice. The presence or absence of this type of attachment is the demarcation between an action that is Dharma and one that is not. The second, clinging to cyclic existence, prevents us from embarking on the path to liberation, although it could lead to happi
ness within saṃsāra, as exemplified by the person who is attached to the bliss of samādhi and is born in the form or formless realms.
Clinging to our self-interest prevents us from entering the bodhisattva path, although it could support the attainment of arhatship — for example, by a person who clings to be free of saṃsāra and seeks his own liberation alone. The most deeply ingrained attachment is grasping inherent existence, which prevents the attainment of both liberation and full awakening.
The Tibetan term chags pa may also be translated as “attachment” and is sometimes used to indicate strong affection and care. In this sense, buddhas are “attached” to sentient beings, indicating that because of their strong compassion, they will never abandon sentient beings and will continuously work to lead them to temporal and ultimate happiness. This feeling of closeness and care that buddhas have for sentient beings is very different from attachment in the minds of sentient beings.
Anger
Anger is a mental factor that, referring to one of three objects, agitates the mind by being unable to bear or through wanting to harm the object or person. The three objects can be expanded to nine: (1–3) he harmed me in the past, he is harming me now, he will harm me in the future; (4–6) she harmed my dear friend or relative, is harming them, will harm them; (7–9) he helped my enemies, is helping them now, will help them in the future. Here enemy includes people we don’t like or disagree with as well as those who harm us or interfere with our happiness. Anger functions to disturb our minds. As the basis for harming ourselves and others, it involves us in destructive actions and increases suffering in the world.