The Kleshas - Part 1

      Yoga is to grow one’s individual consciousness into universal consciousness, a unified state known as samadhi. What gets in the way of this growth? The mind.  Yet, it is the mind that we have to pass through to reach samadhi.  Samadhi is the state in which we find fulfillment and liberation in being. From this vantage point of samadhi the pain and suffering of this physical world do not exist.  Samadhi is not escapism but a real experience to inform us of our true nature.  Knowing our true nature we can come off the meditation cushion into the world retaining this awareness of our true Self and act from a newly informed body mind with greater peace, more contentment, and  a better relationship to oneself and to others.

      Yoga is the practice of disciplining the mind in order to clear the pathway to higher Self-realization. It’s like learning of a secret door in the back of a deep and overly cluttered closet.  To get to that secret door the closet needs to be de-cluttered.  In yoga it is said that the mind needs to be purified or de-cluttered to reach lasting fulfillment. What keeps the mind cluttered are the kleshas. The kleshas are the root of suffering and pain.  You think that you want a de-cluttered mind, but every time you open up the closet door to attempt the cleaning a fragrance arises of your favorite apple pie and you put the cleaning aside to enjoy the pie.  Or you have every intention that this is the day to de-clutter but your friend calls to tell you to turn on the news and to see some “a-holes” are stirring anarchy. Somehow the closet never gets de-clutter, in fact more clutter gets added!  You remain entrenched in a world of reacting to sensory bombardment and mental judgements.

     Kleshas is a Sanskrit word referring to the afflictions in the mind that do not allow us to clean the closet in order to get to the secret door that opens to the greater reality. When we can't declutter the mind we remain in a world in which the opportunity for suffering abounds. Unable to access the knowing of the greater reality that exists just on the other side of the secret door leaves us in ignorance.

     When we mistake our narrow daily experiences of ourselves as the ultimate reality we live in ignorance.  Our thoughts centered on what time is the best time to go to the Walmart store without getting caught up in traffic. We focus on whether the first lady of the United States should dress more appropriately in a dress than a pantsuit.  We cheer our favorite football team to the superball. We watch the stock market rise and fall.  We tell immigrants from south of the border that they are not welcome and separate them from their young children.  We argue against another who does not look or think like us. We are distracted by media, entertainment, food, drugs, sex, the list goes on. Ignorance turns to the world into an orgy for the our senses, and judgements.  We fight for what is ours. When death comes and the orgy is over, we are left asking, “Is that all there is? What have I left?"

     Do we wish to stop and know a deeper purpose of life? What is the intelligence and the impulse to make such a tiny acorn turn into a massive oak tree? What is the intelligence and impulse that created the relationship of planets to one another over eons? What is the intelligence and impulse behind a sperm and an egg to merge to make a multi-trillion cell adult human with functioning organs with the capability to compose great music, race on foot over 100 miles, or spontaneously remit from a terminal cancer? What is the intelligence and impulse behind creation and dissolution? What is my connection to that intelligence and impulse?

 We have knowledge through our senses and interaction with the outer world.  We hold knowledge about the distance from the earth to the sun, and knowledge about splitting atoms. We have knowledge of language, history, science, and numbers, but we do not have wisdom. With a few exceptions, over human history we have not displayed the wisdom from a higher knowing.

     Ignorance of the greater reality of which we belong is the first klesha. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali lists five kleshas.  They are avidya(ignorance), asmita( I-feeling), raga(likes/attraction), dvesha (dislike/repulsion/aversion); and abhinivesha (fear of death).  Some  of the other kleshas were inferred in this writing and more will be said about them in the next blog.