Monday, September 19, 2011

Kleshas

II, 3 avidya asmita raga dvesa abhinivesah klesha

There are five
primal causes of suffering:
ignorance
of your true Self
and the value of Spirituality;
egoism
and its self-centeredness;
attachment
to pleasure;
aversion
to pain;
and clinging to life
out of fear of death.

All life is suffering, and this sutra seems to proide support for that notion. Though I am incredibly behind on our reading in "How Yoga Works," I can see he application of this sutra in a global context. All of these Kleshas, to me, seem to be innate. In essence, the primal aim is looking out for self; (self-preservation). As Dr. Schultz stated in class, the list tends to be structured in rank order, with the most "important" of items being listed first. Ignorance of true self and value of spirituality is listed first. Yet again, an overall awareness is an occuring theme. The question is if after being made aware of how these Kleshas rear their ugly head in our lives, how do you stop their effect when they are in fact "primal," innate, a natural tendency? Pleasure is by definition appetitive, egoism, and clinging to life promotes survival and self-wellbeing. However, those things are so temporally mediated. Control, practice, discipline; are these the methods with which one circumvents the blinders of immediate gratification to a more prolonged, multifaceted well-being.

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