kleśa

Sanskrit Noun

kleśa

afflictive emotions

क्लेश

ཉོན་མོངས་

煩惱

Basic Meaning

Often referred to as poisons, these are a class of disturbing or disruptive emotional states that when aroused negatively affect or taint the mind.

On this topic

Article

Everything Is Buddhanature

Original sin vs. original goodness: Mahayana Buddhism offers a more hopeful view of human nature. Zen teacher Melissa Myozen Blacker reveals how nondual practice frees us from our temporary obscurations and reveals our true, awakened nature.

Blacker, Melissa Myozen. “Everything Is Buddhanature” Lion's Roar, November 28, 2018. https://www.lionsroar.com/everything-is-buddhanature/.

Blacker, Melissa Myozen. “Everything Is Buddhanature” Lion's Roar, November 28, 2018. https://www.lionsroar.com/everything-is-buddhanature/.;Everything is Buddhanature;Contemporary American Buddhist;Zen - Chan;Defining buddha-nature;kleśa;Buddha-nature of insentient things;Melissa Myozen Blacker;&nbsp

Article

Hōshōron no bonnōshōkisetsu

Sasaki, Shizuka. "Hōshōron no bonnōshōkisetsu" (The Explanation of the Origination of kleśa in the Ratnagotravibhāga). Indogaku Bukkyōgaku Kenkyū (Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies) 40, no. 1 (1991): 128–34.

Sasaki, Shizuka. "Hōshōron no bonnōshōkisetsu" (The Explanation of the Origination of kleśa in the Ratnagotravibhāga). Indogaku Bukkyōgaku Kenkyū (Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies) 40, no. 1 (1991): 128–34.

Sasaki, Shizuka. "Hōshōron no bonnōshōkisetsu" (The Explanation of the Origination of kleśa in the Ratnagotravibhāga). Indogaku Bukkyōgaku Kenkyū (Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies) 40, no. 1 (1991): 128–34.;Hōshōron no bonnōshōkisetsu;Ratnagotravibhāga Mahāyānottaratantraśāstra;Terminology;Textual study;kleśa;Shizuka Sasaki;&nbsp

Book

The Buddhist Unconscious

This is the story of fifth century CE India, when the Yogacarin Buddhists tested the awareness of unawareness, and became aware of human unawareness to an extraordinary degree. They not only explicitly differentiated this dimension of mental processes from conscious cognitive processes, but also offered reasoned arguments on behalf of this dimension of mind. This is the concept of the 'Buddhist unconscious', which arose just as philosophical discourse in other circles was fiercely debating the limits of conscious awareness, and these ideas in turn had developed as a systematisation of teachings from the Buddha himself. For us in the twenty-first century, these teachings connect in fascinating ways to the Western conceptions of the 'cognitive unconscious' which have been elaborated in the work of Jung and Freud.
This important study reveals how the Buddhist unconscious illuminates and draws out aspects of current western thinking on the unconscious mind. One of the most intriguing connections is the idea that there is in fact no substantial 'self' underlying all mental activity; 'the thoughts themselves are the thinker'. William S. Waldron considers the implications of this radical notion, which, despite only recently gaining plausibility, was in fact first posited 2,500 years ago. (Source: Routledge)

Waldron, William S. The Buddhist Unconscious: The Ālaya-Vijñāna in the Context of Indian Buddhist Thought. Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. http://abhidharma.ru/A/Raznoe/0061.pdf.

Waldron, William S. The Buddhist Unconscious: The Ālaya-Vijñāna in the Context of Indian Buddhist Thought. Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. http://abhidharma.ru/A/Raznoe/0061.pdf.;The Buddhist Unconscious;Yogācāra;ālayavijñāna;kleśa;bīja;pratītyasamutpāda;āgantukamala;Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra;William S. Waldron;The Buddhist Unconscious: The Ālaya-vijñāna in the Context of Indian Buddhist Thought

PhD Diss

Waldron, W.: The Ālayavijñāna in the Context of Indian Buddhist Thought: The Yogācāra Conception of an Unconscious

Abstract

The thesis focuses on the relations between mind and karma and the continuity of life in saṃsāra based upon a concept of mind, the ālayavijñāna, as presented in the texts of Asaṅga and Vasubandhu of the Yogācāra school of Indian Buddhism, A.D. 4-5th centuries. It has been the topic of many sectarian disputes as well as the springboard for several far-reaching doctrinal developments, so it is desirable to examine it within its early Indian Buddhist context.
      The first section presents the multivalent viññāṇa of the Pali Canon and related concepts. It demonstrates that the major characteristics later predicated of the ālayavijñāna were present in an unsystematized but implicit form in the viññāṇa of the early discourses.
      The next section describes the systematic psychological analysis developed by the Abhidharma and its consequent problematics. It argues that the incongruity of Abhidharmic analysis with the older unsystematized doctrines led to major theoretical problems concerning the key concepts of kleśa and karma, to which the Sautrāntika school offered the concept of seeds (bija).
      The third section, based primarily upon the texts translated herein, depicts the origination and gradual development of the ālayavijñāna within the Yogācāra school from a somatic "life principle", to an explicitly unconscious mind, to its final bifurcation into an unconscious afflicted mind (kliṣṭa-manas) and a passive respository of karmic seeds, the latent loci of kleśa and karma, respectively.
      The last section compares the ālayavijñāna systematically with Freud's and Jung's concepts of the unconscious, concluding that their respective philosophical milieus led both traditions to conceptions of unconscious mental processes as necessary compensations for strictly intentional epistemological models.
      In the appendix the major texts presenting the ālayavijñāna, Chaps. V and VIII.37 of the Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra, part of the Viniścaya-saṃgrahaṇī of the Yogācārabhūmi, and Ch. 1 of the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha, are translated and extensively annotated in order to contextualize the minutiae of this concept of mind with its canonical precursors and its Abhidharmic contemporaries. (Source: ProQuest)

Waldron, William S. "The Ālayavijñāna in the Context of Indian Buddhist Thought: The Yogācāra Conception of an Unconscious." PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1990.

Waldron, William S. "The Ālayavijñāna in the Context of Indian Buddhist Thought: The Yogācāra Conception of an Unconscious." PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1990.;The Ālayavijñāna in the Context of Indian Buddhist Thought: The Yogācāra Conception of an Unconscious;ālayavijñāna;Yogācāra;Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra;pratītyasamutpāda;kleśa;bīja;William S. Waldron;The Ālayavijñāna in the Context of Indian Buddhist Thought: The Yogācāra Conception of an Unconscious

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Term Variations
Key Term	kleśa
Topic Variation	kleśa
Tibetan	ཉོན་མོངས་ ( nyönmong)
Wylie Tibetan Transliteration	nyon mongs ( nyönmong)
Devanagari Sanskrit	क्लेश ( klesha)
Romanized Sanskrit	kleśa ( klesha)
Chinese	煩惱
Chinese Pinyin	fànnǎo
Japanese Transliteration	bonnō
Buddha-nature Site Standard English	afflictive emotions
Karl Brunnhölzl's English Term	affliction
Richard Barron's English Term	afflictive emotion, emotionally tainted, afflictive state
Jeffrey Hopkin's English Term	affliction, afflictive emotions
Dan Martin's English Term	afflictive emotion
Gyurme Dorje's English Term	dissonant mental states
Ives Waldo's English Term	emotional defilement
Term Information
Source Language	Sanskrit
Basic Meaning	Often referred to as poisons, these are a class of disturbing or disruptive emotional states that when aroused negatively affect or taint the mind.
Related Terms	triviṣa
Term Type	Noun
Definitions
Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism	See page 438: In Sanskrit, “afflictions,” or “defilements”; mental factors that disturb the mind and incite unwholesome (akuśala) deeds of body, speech, and/or mind. In order to be liberated from rebirth, the kleśa and the actions they incite must be controlled and finally eliminated. A typical Standard list of kleśa includes the so-called three poisons (trjviṣa) of greed or sensuality (rāga or lobha), hatred or aversion (dveṣa), and delusion (moha).
Tshig mdzod Chen mo	(kleshaH) lus sems gdung ba'i dka' las sam ngal dub dang/ mi dge ba'i las bskul bas rang rgyud rab tu ma zhi bar byed pa'i sems byung/