by Dalai Lama
The Order in Which Afflictions Arise
The way the order in which afflictions arise is presented depends on whether ignorance and view of a personal identity are regarded as separate. Seeing them as different mental factors, the two Knowledges say that ignorance is mental obscuration that cannot see things clearly. On the basis of ignorance, view of a personal identity mistakenly believes the aggregates to be a self-sufficient substantially existent person. All other afflictions follow from this. This is analogous to not being able to see clearly in a dark room (ignorance) and mistaking a rope to be a snake (view of a personal identity). Attachment, anger, and other afflictions swiftly follow. Vasubandhu lays out their sequential development in the Treasury of Knowledge: ignorance, doubt, wrong views, view of a personal identity, view of extremes, view of rules and practices, view holding wrong views as supreme, arrogance, attachment, hatred.
Initially from ignorance regarding the meaning of the [four] truths, doubt arises, wondering whether there is or is not duḥkha.
From that, by relying on an inferior spiritual friend, one engages in erroneous teachings and learning, which produce the wrong view that duḥkha does not exist.
From that arises the view of a personal identity that grasps the aggregates as I and mine.
From that arises the view of extremes that grasps the permanence or annihilation of the aggregates [that is, that the I exists as an eternal, immutable soul or that it ceases to exist after death].
From that arises the view of rules and practices that grasps the belief that there is purification from holding those extreme [views].
From that arises the view holding wrong views as supreme, because what was believed to provide purification [is held as a supreme view].
From that arise arrogance and attachment for one’s own views and hatred that despises the views of others.
Sages such as Dharmakīrti and Candrakīrti and their followers, who assert that view of a personal identity is ignorance, present another sequence as outlined by Dharmakīrti in his Commentary on Reliable Cognition (LC 1:300).
Once there is a self, there is an idea of an other.
Discriminating self and other, attachment and animosity arise.
All of the faults come about
in association with these.
Tsongkhapa expands on this (LC 1:300):
When the view of a personal identity [which is ignorance] apprehends the self, discrimination arises between self and other.
Once you have made that distinction, you become attached to what is associated with yourself and hostile toward that which pertains to others.
As you observe the self, your mind becomes inflated [with arrogance].
You develop a belief that this very self is either eternal or subject to annihilation [view of extremes].
You come to believe in the supremacy of a view of the self and the like [view holding wrong views as supreme], and you also come to believe in the supremacy of the detrimental practices associated with such views [view of rules and practices]. Similarly, you develop the wrong view that denies the existence of things such as the Teacher [Buddha], who taught selflessness and that which he taught — karma and its effects, the truths of the āryas, the Three Jewels, and so forth; or else you become doubtful as to whether such things exist or are real.
It is interesting to note that the Vaibhāṣika version of Vasubandhu places doubt and the various afflictive views before the disturbing emotions of attachment, anger, and arrogance, whereas in Dharmakīrti’s version the disturbing emotions arise before the afflictive views and doubt.
Factors Causing Afflictions to Arise
Some people assert that afflictions are an inherent part of human nature and, as such, are hardwired in our nervous system or genes. Although we may be able to modify their effects, we can never be free of them. From a Buddhist viewpoint, this is a narrow view of human potential that offers little hope for the improvement of humanity. As described in volumes 1 and 2 of the Library of Wisdom and Compassion, the Buddhist view is that although coarse levels of consciousness and the brain are interdependent, they are not the same nature. Thus the subtlest minds are not bound by the physical limitations of our bodies and brains. In addition, as conscious phenomena, afflictions can be eliminated from the mindstream by applying their counterforces. They are not our inherent nature and liberation from afflictions is possible, as demonstrated by many highly realized practitioners throughout history.
The arising of afflictions in ordinary beings is to some extent related to our bodies. When we are physically weak or deprived of physical necessities, we are more susceptible to anger. We are more inclined toward attachment, especially sexual desire, when we are healthy and our bodies are comfortable. When we get angry, when we are hungry, or when we are depressed as a result of chemical imbalance in the brain, two factors are at work: one is our present physical situation, the other is the seed of afflictions in our mindstreams. Some people believe that scientists may one day be able to stop all disturbing emotions through medicines that regulate body chemistry and techniques that alter genetic makeup. However, as long as the seeds of afflictions are still present, afflictions will arise when suitable conditions come together. Afflictions can only be fully overcome through spiritual practice.
What are the principal factors that cause manifest afflictions to arise in our minds? Six conditions or a combination of them play a role.
(1) The seeds of afflictions are a prominent cause. Because they remain on our mindstreams and go from one life to the next, we are not free from afflictions. An external or internal factor can stimulate these seeds to give rise to manifest afflictions.
(2) Contact with certain objects can stimulate afflictions to erupt. Attachment arises when good food or an attractive person is in front of us; anger springs up when we are around people who disagree with our ideas or challenge our opinions.
(3) Detrimental influences such as bad friends have a strong influence on our way of thinking and behaving. Adults recognize the strong influence of peer pressure on children, but they seldom take stock of the extent to which their own emotions and behavior are affected by the wish to be part of a group and the desire not to be seen as strange or different from others. Seeking the approval or praise of people we care about or respect can make us compromise our ethical values if we are not mindful. If a close friend is upset with someone, we tend to get angry at that person as well. If a family member is strongly attached to a particular political view, our attachment — or anger — toward it will easily arise.
(4) Verbal stimuli — news, books, TV, Internet, radio, magazines, films, social media, and so forth — impact our thoughts and emotions. In recent years the media has become a prominent conditioning force in our lives as we are exposed to hundreds, if not thousands, of advertisements each day. The daily news influences our thoughts and can easily provoke strong emotions. With the constant display of sexual images and violent pictures that we are exposed to from childhood, it is no wonder that attachment and hostility flare up so easily and frequently that we stop noticing them.
(5) Habitual ways of thinking and habitual emotions self-replicate in the future. The more familiar we are with certain afflictions and wrong views, the more we see them as true and reinforce them. Someone accustomed to concealing his or her faults and misdeeds will continue this mindset, making it more difficult to change. Resentment and belligerence arise easily in someone who is familiar with anger and has never applied counterforces to it. For this reason, it’s advisable to learn and apply antidotes to our habitual afflictions and behaviors, because they are the most troublesome.
(6) Distorted attention (ayoniśo manaskāra) or distorted conceptions misinterpret events, superimpose attractive and unattractive qualities onto people and objects, and project motivations and meanings on other people’s words and activities. This establishes the perfect setting for afflictions that haven’t arisen to arise and for those that have arisen to increase. How
ever, when we train our minds to observe sense objects with mindfulness and wisdom, afflictions that haven’t arisen do not arise, and the ones that have arisen subside.
For example, based on seeing a car as inherently existent, we see its marvelous qualities as existing in the car itself. In fact, distorted attention has exaggerated the car’s good qualities and ignored its faults, making the car appear 100 percent desirable in our eyes. Our attachment for it explodes and we must buy it. By pausing to do some analysis, we will begin to see that distorted attention is fabricating the car’s qualities and desirability and our life will be fine without buying that car.
The surroundings in which we live may contain many of the objects, detrimental social influences, and verbal stimuli that trigger our afflictions. For this reason, the great masters advise avoiding environments that trigger our afflictions. This is done not because those objects or people are bad, but because our afflictions are as yet uncontrolled. Living in an environment where distractions and commotion are minimal enables us to focus on developing counterforces to afflictions. Once these are strong, our external surroundings will not affect us as much.
REFLECTION
1. What kind of media are you exposed to throughout your day — Internet, TV, news, movies, smartphone, computer, advertising, billboards, magazines, and so forth.
2. How does each of these influence your thoughts and the decisions you make? Do they have a deleterious effect? For example, how do the sex and violence in movies influence your mind? Do you compare your body with the pictures in magazines and other media and feel that you’re not attractive? Does watching people fighting in movies rev up your adrenaline and provoke hostility in your mind?
3. What would a healthy relationship with the media look like in your life? What do you need to do to bring that about?
Feelings That Accompany Afflictions
Previously we discussed one way in which feelings and afflictions are related: polluted feelings easily provoke afflictions to arise; when we are unhappy, anger and malice may soon follow. Here feelings are causes for afflictions. For this reason, we are advised to maintain a happy mind. In the second way, they are simultaneous — that is, feelings accompany afflictive mental states. Attachment in the desire realm is accompanied by pleasant feeling; anger and animosity are accompanied by unpleasant feeling. This may be one reason why we are less willing to apply the antidotes to attachment. Any of the three feelings — pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral — may accompany ignorance.
Mental happiness or unhappiness may accompany wrong views. If someone believes nonvirtuous actions have no result, he is happy; but if he thinks virtuous actions bring no result, he is unhappy. Mental unhappiness accompanies doubt; being indecisive is unpleasant. A happy feeling accompanies arrogance and the other four afflictive views. However, if the mind of a person in the desire realm is unclear, all ten root afflictions are accompanied by a neutral feeling.
The Pāli Abhidhamma says that all consciousnesses rooted in anger are accompanied by mental unhappiness. That means that whenever our minds are unhappy, anger is present even at a subtle level, and this mental state is nonvirtuous.
To the contrary, virtuous mental states are accompanied by either a happy feeling or equanimity. Consciously steering our thoughts so that they are constructive brings not only happiness or equanimity but also creates virtuous karma. When we act with genuine generosity or ethical restraint, our mind is happy here and now and we create the cause for happiness in the future. Of course when training in these practices we may not be continually happy because afflictions sometimes interfere, but as we continue to practice, afflictions will wane and virtue and joy will increase.
Of the auxiliary afflictions and variable mental factors that become nonvirtuous, regret, jealousy, belligerence, harmfulness, resentment, and spite are accompanied by mental unhappiness. Miserliness, being an aspect of attachment, is accompanied by a pleasant feeling. Either mental happiness or unhappiness may accompany deceit, pretension, concealment, and sleep because when those four mental factors do not accomplish the purpose that is their object, the mind becomes unhappy.
Haughtiness is usually accompanied by happiness, although above the third dhyāna (P. jhāna), neutral feeling is present. Lack of integrity, inconsideration for others, lethargy, and restlessness may be accompanied by any of the five feelings — physical and mental happiness, physical and mental unhappiness, and neutral feeling. Neutral feeling may accompany any of the afflictions.
There is no physical or mental unhappiness in the form and formless realms, and their afflictions are ethically neutral because they are weak. Of the dhyānas, the first three are accompanied by the feeling of bliss (a type of happy feeling) and the fourth by a neutral feeling. Formless realm absorptions are accompanied by only neutral feeling.
REFLECTION
1. Practice identifying the various virtuous and nonvirtuous mental factors as they arise in your mind.
2. Observe the feeling that accompanies each one.
3. How does the feeling of happiness that arises with attachment to sensual objects differ from the happiness that accompanies generosity or genuine affection?
The Ethical Dimension of Afflictions
Not all afflictions are nonvirtuous; by themselves, ignorance, view of a personal identity, and view of extremes are neutral. They are not nonvirtuous because by themselves they lack the capacity to produce pain. In addition, these three do not always give rise to nonvirtuous mental states.38
The Treasury of Knowledge speaks of mixed and unmixed ignorance. Mixed ignorance assists and accompanies the other five root afflictions and shares five similarities with them: they depend on the same cognitive faculty, have the same object, are generated in the same aspect, occur at the same time, and have the same entity.39 Ignorance shares the same primary consciousness with all of the root and auxiliary afflictions. An example is the ignorance that shares a primary consciousness with attachment. This ignorance, as well as the primary consciousness and other mental factors accompanying it, become nonvirtuous by the power of attachment being nonvirtuous.
Unmixed ignorance doesn’t share five similarities with any of the nonvirtuous afflictions and is ethically neutral. Examples of unmixed ignorance are the ignorance accompanying the view of a personal identity and the view of extremes, and the ignorance mistaking a pen for a stick.
The ignorance that is the first of the twelve links of dependent origination is unmixed ignorance. When it gives rise to anger, greed, or any other nonvirtuous mental factors, this new mental state is no longer the first link. This new mental state is accompanied by ignorance and is nonvirtuous due to the power of the other affliction that accompanies it. It leads to a nonvirtuous formative action that is the actual second link.
All afflictions of the desire realm are nonvirtuous, except unmixed ignorance, view of a personal identity, and view of extremes, which are neutral. All afflictions of the upper realms — the form and formless realms — are neutral. A degree of intensity is needed for an affliction to be nonvirtuous. Since the afflictions of beings in the upper realms are refined, they lack the intensity required to create nonvirtuous karma that ripens into painful experiences.
To apply this to the Prāsaṅgika view, the first-link ignorance that precedes a virtuous formative karma such as generosity is unmixed ignorance that grasps the agent, object, and action as inherently existent. It is ethically neutral. This ignorance gives rise to a virtuous mental state, such as compassion, that motivates the constructive karma of generosity, which is the second link. During the time of giving the gift, grasping inherent existence may continue, or we may simply apprehend ourselves, the offering, and the recipient without grasping them as either inherently existent or non-inherently existent. In the former case, the mental state grasping inherent existence is neutral and is a different mental state than the one that is generous, which is virtuous. Although the two mental states are closely related in time, they do not occur simulta
neously.
Counterforces to the Afflictions
Whether we follow a religion or not, we can see that afflictions interfere with our personal happiness as well as the well-being of society in general. Most harmful events among individuals, groups, or nations are rooted in ignorance and motivated by hatred, greed, arrogance, jealousy, and so forth. These afflictions are the causes of killing, robbery, sexual abuse, political and financial scandals, prejudice, injustice, and inequality. Problems in society — including in our institutional structures — are rooted in people’s afflictive mental states. Although this is the case, when we face personal or societal problems, we seldom look in our minds for the source of the problem. It is time that we do.
The law of the land punishes people engaged in harmful actions in an effort to stop such behavior. Although punishment may make someone so uncomfortable or fearful that they temporarily stop a certain behavior, it does not bring about lasting change. That comes only from changing our mental attitude. Unless the deeper source of harmful activities is eliminated, they will continue in one form or another. We need to identify the source of problems — which lies in the unsubdued mind — and employ preventative and remedial measures to tame our minds. This involves learning about the faults of afflictions and techniques to counteract them, applying these to our own minds, and sharing them with others. This can be done without using Buddhist vocabulary or religious concepts; it is common sense.
The first step in counteracting the afflictions is to notice when they manifest in our minds. While we may believe that we know ourselves well, our thoughts and emotions often go unnoticed. One factor contributing to this is the lack of mindfulness and introspective awareness — we neglect to focus our minds on what is beneficial and to monitor our minds’ activities with wisdom. Sometimes we are distracted by sense objects and do not pay attention to our inner thoughts and emotions. Some people grew up in families where emotions and thoughts were not labeled or discussed, so they did not learn the vocabulary necessary to discuss the workings of their minds.