The Ten Primary and Twenty Secondary Defilements of Mind by the Venerable Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche

From the second in a series of five talks given in 2001 at Maitripa Contemplative Centre.

In order to understand Buddhism, we have to understand Buddhist philosophy and psychology. It is important to become familiar with certain concepts. When Buddhists talk about 'defilements of the mind,' they are referring to the primary and secondary causes. If you have read books on Buddhism, you will have heard about the five poisons (excessive desire, anger, jealousy, pride and ignorance), or the three poisons (passion, aggression and ignorance) etcetera. However, in Buddhism, if we are to understand how the delusions have arisen, we have to understand the primary and secondary causes and the contributing factors. If we understand the causes and conditions of defilements, we will know what we need to do to work with those causes and conditions.

'Defilement,' according to Buddhism, is any state of mind that will prevent us from gaining knowledge and insight. Defilement is a direct translation of drib pa in Tibetan, which literally means 'veil.' There is something between you and insight/knowledge that you have to remove. Actually 'veil' is a better translation, because 'defilement' suggests that we have been tainted, but there is actually no real connotation of that in Buddhist thinking.

Most of our problems as human beings have their origin in our emotional tendencies and dispositions and in the way that we think about the world and ourselves. This is summed up in what are called the 'ten obscurations of the mind.' The Buddhist psychological texts, known as the Abhidharma, lists ten primary mental delusions and twenty subsidiary mental delusions.

The ten primary mental delusions

The ten primary obscurations of the mind are divided into five that are emotionally based and five that are based upon conceptual confusion. The five states of defilement that are emotional in nature are known as the root defilements. These are ignorance, excessive desire, hostility, self-centredness and sceptical doubt. The five conceptually based delusions are known as the five 'wrong views.'

For example, if we are in the throes of excessive desire about something that we possess, we will be unable to see things from a proper perspective. If we are unable to obtain what we desire, on the other hand, we will never be happy. We are constantly trying to get whatever it is that we want, whether it is some kind of inanimate object, a person, situation, lifestyle or any number of other things. As a result of this, we can never be at rest.

Another example of these root defilements is sceptical doubt. This does not mean that we should not question things. It means that we are unable to believe in anything because of fear. The root cause of sceptical doubt, cynicism and so forth, according to the Buddhist teachings, comes from fear. This is also not a state of mind that will produce any kind of mental quietude or peace. It is a mind that, in a manner of speaking, is very paranoid, fearful and anxious. When we are subject to sceptical doubt, we always experience an excessive doubt that is crippling. If we are always fearful of sinking our teeth into something, or always skirt around the real issues, we will never be able to commit ourselves to anything or anyone. This kind of avoidance is generated by the excessive, almost pathological, fear that one has. That is why sceptical doubt is listed as one of the emotionally based mental defilements, according to Buddhism. Initially, you might think that doubt has more to do with cerebral and cognitive activities than emotional ones. However, the point here is that sceptical doubt stirs up all kinds of emotions.

The defilements of wrong views

The other five defiling states of mind are ones that prevent us from developing proper knowledge. This has more to do with our intellectual, cognitive use of the mind. These are the products of what are called the 'five views.'

1. Wrong view based on misunderstanding the psychophysical constituents

This means that we have both an innate and a learned way of seeing ourselves as a particular type of individual. 'Innate' means that, ever since birth, without anyone telling us who we are as individuals, we have a particular notion of ourselves. We immediately see ourselves as discrete, unique individuals. That, according to Buddhism, can be reinforced through education. If we are then taught to believe in some kind of metaphysical notion of the self, or an immutable, immortal soul, etcetera, we will have completely lost our real perspective on how we see ourselves. According to Buddhism, that is an erroneous view of the 'self.' Our psychophysical constituents (skandhas) are the only things that serve as the basis for our self-identity, nothing more and nothing less. If we think that there is something more to ourselves than that, we have fallen into one of the principal wrong views. We have to learn to dismantle and transcend that view.

2. Wrong view of absolutist or relativist thinking

The second wrong view is to think that everything in this world is created by God or believing in some kind of final cause, on the one hand, and thinking that the world has just come into being fortuitously, accidentally, without any rhyme or reason, on the other. In Buddhism, everything in this world is said to be dependent upon causes and conditions, which means that we do not have to trace the way in which the world has evolved or how we, as human beings, have evolved, to try to find some kind of original cause. Neither should we disregard the whole idea of causality and think that everything happens in a very haphazard, accidental fashion. There is some kind of orderliness in the simple fact that everything that exists is dependent upon causes and conditions. If we are unable to appreciate that, we have developed a wrong view that is one of the principal sources of our mental defilements.

3. The wrong view of eternalism or nihilism

The third one is also about extreme views. Here, they consist of thinking that things have some kind of enduring, immutable substance as one extreme view, or thinking that things do not have any existence at all, as the other extreme view. This is a very important point because, according to Buddhism, we have to develop what is called the 'middle view.' This is the view that avoids falling into the eternalistic and nihilistic extremes. When Buddhism talks about emptiness (shunyata) this should not be construed to mean 'non-existence.' When Buddhists claim that everything that exists is empty, they are not saying that things do not exist at all. We have to understand that the emptiness being referred to is the 'emptiness of inherent existence.' The idea that things do not exist at all is a totally different concept altogether. If we fall into either one of these views of eternalism or nihilism, we will be unable to maintain a middle view, which is what will reveal the truth of how things actually exist, according to Buddhism. Failure to do that will further distort our view of reality.

4. The wrong view of regarding one's own views as supreme

This is about thinking that one's own view is superior, or better than all other views. For example, according to Islamic theologians, even though Moses had a revelation, his was only a proximate revelation - it was not really a full revelation. Then Jesus had one, which while being far superior to that of Moses, was still not complete. Then Mohammed came and God revealed himself to Mohammed fully. The Koran contains the full story, so to speak, of this whole process of how God has revealed himself to human beings in terms of history. Even though the revelations contained in the Old and New Testaments are not dismissed, the Koran is seen as the authoritative body of scripture that contains the full revelation. According to the Buddhist approach, this way of thinking will also take us down the wrong path, because it is a cause of forming and developing wrong views.

5. The wrong view of extreme asceticism

This view says that when we embark on the spiritual path we must engage in all kinds of practices that involve deprivation, punishment and pain for the body as a way of progressing on the path. In Buddhism, this is seen as another extreme way of making progress on the path. Just as we need to develop a middle view, in terms of our practice we need to follow a middle way. The 'middle way' means that we have to avoid the extreme of over-indulgence and the extreme of asceticism. Engaging in all kinds of severe and rigorous religious practices, which are too extreme in nature, is not only harmful to the body, it may also have a detrimental effect on the mind. If we deprive ourselves of food for many days or weeks, we will begin to have all kinds of visions and fits and unusual apparitions, which may actually encourage us to break into madness. This has also happened. In Buddhism, the whole point of one's practice is to increase one's level of consciousness.

When we indulge in sensory pleasures, our senses become dulled and we become like a drug addict. In order to get the same level of stimulation, we have to indulge more and more in the pleasures of the senses. This does not contribute towards the heightening of the senses, it does not contribute towards the sharpening of one's mind and it certainly does not make the consciousness lucid. Similarly, if one indulges in the practice of torturing the body, then again, it dulls the senses. According to Buddhism, we have to follow the middle path and we do so by avoiding those two extremes of over-indulgence and severe ascetic practices.

The twenty subsidiary mental delusions

There are also twenty subsidiary mental delusions mentioned in the Abhidharma. These delusions stem from the primary emotionally based defilements and are further causes and conditions for our wandering in the samsaric condition. They are as follows:

Being spiteful: unlike anger, spite may not be expressed; one may be spiteful without really showing it much outwardly.

Being vengeful: comes from being more and more resentful, until you want revenge. For example, your spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend leaves you for someone else. You start to ruminate over things and get more and more resentful. Then you may leave really hateful messages; you may go and damage the other person's property and things like that. This mental delusion is very hard to translate but the closest thing is revenge.

Being secretive: this means that whatever negative emotion or feeling we may have we constantly try to push it down and hold it in.

Being resentful: this defilement just refers to being resentful as a person, not because anything specific has happened; it is just in one's nature that one resents things or people.

Being jealous: we can all understand being jealous of what other people have or possess.

Being stingy: this defilement is the opposite of generosity. It refers to a 'poverty-stricken mentality,' as Trungpa Rinpoche used to call it.

Twisting things: this refers to manipulating words in order to give other people the wrong impression of yourself. For example, overselling yourself so that people find out later that you are not all you are cracked up to be.

Being deceitful: this one is about doing things in a very cunning, surreptitious or underhanded way in order to make your own situation better. It is about using tactics that may not easily be detected by others.

Being conceited: this is simply about being wrapped up in oneself and believing in one's own abilities to the detriment of others.

Being sadistic: this is about deriving pleasure from hurting others or inflicting pain on others for one's own benefit.

Being shameless: this refers to being completely brazen, showing no respect to anyone and just barging in and taking over in a very disrespectful and shameful fashion. Basically, it means not taking other people's feelings into account by simply over-riding everyone else.

Lack of decorum: this means being without conscience, having no politeness, being rough, that sort of thing.

Lack of mental clarity: this simply refers to dullness of the mind.

Disturbed mind: this refers to a worrisome mind, where one is constantly worrying about this or that, always thinking the worst, or that something terrible has happened or is going to happen.

Being forgetful: according to Buddhism, it is very important for the mind to have a good memory. In fact, we do all kinds of exercises to improve our memories and our mnemonic powers. If we cannot retain what we have learnt, that is almost as bad as not having learnt anything at all.

Being distracted: this refers to having a problem focusing one's mind; an attention deficit kind of problem.

Lack of awareness: this one is about just going through the motions in the course of our lives without being present.

Lack of conviction: this refers to not believing in anything.

Being lazy: this simply means not being bothered to carry through with anything.

Being clumsy: this one is quite hard to translate. For example, if we bang the door when we close it, if we knock over things or run into things, that, according to Buddhism, is a handicap.

According to Buddhism, we wander about in what we call 'the samsaric condition,' due to certain causes and conditions coming together. When we work towards overcoming the samsaric condition, we are working with these causes and conditions and when we are fully free we have worked with these causes and conditions. We do what is wholesome because wholesome actions will bring about wholesome results, which includes our own well-being. Engaging in unwholesome actions will bring about the opposite result, which is the opposite of our own well-being. It is not about trying to ground the Buddhist notion of morality in some kind of metaphysical foundation. We have to understand morality in relation to causes and conditions.

That is why an understanding of karma is also so important. We cannot discuss Buddhist morality or ethics without bringing in the notion of karma. Every action that we engage in, whether it be wholesome or unwholesome, leaves an imprint in our minds and colours the way that we see and experience the world. It also keeps us bound to the samsaric condition and determines the kinds of further causes and conditions that will arise in our lives. As Buddhists then, we also believe in what we call 'karmic seeds.' If you plant a small karmic seed in your mind-stream it will grow bigger. Whether that is a wholesome or unwholesome karmic seed will determine the causes and conditions of our future experience. What a seed matures into is always far greater than what was initially planted in the mind. In other words, in order to change ourselves we do not have to do anything dramatic or comprehensive straight away, we can just make wholesome changes to our mental continuum one step at a time.

This also has enormous implications in terms of morality. This is why it is very important for Buddhists to believe in the idea that the world does not come into being in a random fashion. The Buddhist concept of morality is contingent on the assumption that the world operates within the context of causes and conditions. In other words, there is convergence between Buddhist cosmology and Buddhist morality and ethics. If everything happens in relation to causes and conditions, we can have ethics. We can talk about appropriate behaviours and inappropriate behaviours, wholesome states of mind and unwholesome states of mind, virtues and vices, justice and the lack of it. We can talk about these things only if the sum total of the universe as we know it operates on the principle of causes and conditions.

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