Читать книгу Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - Литагент HarperCollins USD - Страница 25

Klesas (sufferings or afflictions) have five causes: ignorance, or lack of wisdom and understanding (avidya), pride or egoism (asmita), attachment (raga), aversion (dvesa), and fear of death and clinging to life (abhinivessa). The first two are intellectual defects, the next two emotional, and the last instinctual. They may be hidden, latent, attenuated or highly active.

Avidya, ignorance, or lack of wisdom, is a fertile ground in which afflications can grow, making one’s life a hell. Mistaking the transient for the eternal, the impure for the pure, pain for pleasure, and the pleasures of the world for the bliss of the spirit constitutes avidya.

Identifying the individual ego (the ‘I’) with the real soul is asmita. It is the false identification of the ego with the seer.

Encouraging and gratifying desires is raga. When desires are not gratified, frustration and sorrow give rise to alienation or hate. This is dvesa, aversion.

The desire to live forever and to preserve one’s individual self is abhinivesa. Freedom from such attachment to life is very difficult for even a wise, erudite and scholarly person to achieve. If avidya is the mother of afflictions, abhinivesa is its offspring.

All our past actions exert their influence and mould our present and future lives: as you sow, so shall you reap. This is the law of karma, the universal law of cause and effect. If our actions are good and virtuous, afflictions will be minimized; wrong actions will bring sorrow and pain. Actions may bear fruit immediately, later in life or in lives to come. They determine one’s birth, span of life and the types of experiences to be undergone. When spiritual wisdom dawns, one perceives the tinge of sorrow attached even to pleasure, and from then on shuns both pleasure and pain. However, the fruits of actions continue to entrap ordinary beings.