Defilements

Eastern philosophies centred on spirituality and the search for liberation — Buddhism, Jainism, and the Hindu and Vedic traditions — all give very close attention to kilesa, or defilements. Going to deal with kilesa without first understanding the discipline surrounding them has, today, quite commonly turned the spiritual path into something needlessly complicated. For an ordinary person, the matters needed simply to build up their own existence can, in a plain sense, be called kilesa. But because many people never learn the discipline surrounding kilesa, they end up caught in their grip, and from there those kilesa turn into deceptive, corrupting forces. Once these kilesa-related matters are properly understood, they cease to be a problem in themselves — it is only when kilesa turn into deceptive forces that real difficulties begin.

Two Ways to Get Kilesa Wrong

Within the traditional Buddhism and culture that exists in society today, Hindu and Jain ideas are heavily intermixed as well. Against this strongly-influenced religious backdrop, many people, in trying to deal with kilesa, end up either fighting them outright, or believing that some idealised, perfectly serene state in which kilesa are entirely absent is itself spiritual liberation, or Nibbana. Both are a serious delusion.

Understanding how to deal with kilesa is one of the clearest signs of whether your Dhamma path is on the right track. Fighting against something that cannot actually be eliminated only creates, within you, another kind of pressure altogether. Gaining a correct understanding of kilesa, learning to manage them, building a healthy physical and mental existence, and becoming free from the excessive attention normally given to them — this is what allows spiritual exploration to be directed properly. It is only once this point is reached that the cessation of self-hood, and the growth of wisdom, actually begins.

Kayena samvaro sadhu, sadhu vacaya samvaro, manasa samvaro sadhu, sadhu sabbattha samvaro — restraint of the body is good; restraint of speech is good; restraint of the mind is good; restraint in every respect is good.

The balance gained through restraining body, speech and mind helps the spiritual path precisely because it keeps one from being tightly gripped by kilesa. But trying to suppress kilesa through sheer force of will can just as easily push a person toward the opposite extreme. What is needed is freedom, with real understanding, from both extremes: being swept along by kilesa on one side, and trying forcibly to eliminate them on the other.

The Neurochemistry Behind an Old Doctrine

What Eastern philosophies describe as kilesa has a direct connection to what Western science describes in terms of neurochemicals such as dopamine. A healthy hormonal and neurochemical function is essential to a person's physical and mental balance, and Western medicine and psychology have confirmed and presented exactly this. Take someone healthy and genuinely content: their dopamine-related secretion and their brain's chemical activity occur in an entirely ordinary way. That is, without needing the stimulation or goal that lets kilesa operate, dopamine is secreted simply as part of a pleasant feeling forming naturally, and that secretion in turn sustains the pleasant feeling. It is this mechanism that underlies life's ordinary enjoyments. If this mechanism becomes impaired, the mind can fall ill, giving rise to various disorders rooted in feeling no enjoyment at all in everyday life — this is straightforwardly scientific. Depression, among other conditions, is caused, in part, by reduced dopamine or reduced dopamine function, and this same pattern can be seen among people locked rigidly within strict religious dogma, suppressing kilesa through such disciplines.

In the same way, spiritual transformation or liberation is not, in itself, a matter of brain hormones or chemical processes. It may occur through a realisation of reality by way of a knowledge-vision; it may also be the breaking of cause and effect, the breaking of a karma-path due to a special wholesome cause, or something like the arising of Bodhichitta.

Kilesa become kilesa purely because of self-hood, and because of a lack of understanding. Both clinging to kilesa and forcibly rejecting them happen for exactly the same two reasons: self-hood, and not understanding kilesa properly. Kilesa cannot be eliminated. What should happen instead is bringing forth a real understanding relative to them, and not becoming addicted to them. Eating tasty food, for instance, is not an obstacle to liberation; satisfying the body's genuine needs is not an obstacle either. The kilesa present in an ordinary person's life are present even in an Arahant — the difference is that Arahants understand the discipline behind them, and manage those matters within ordinary life without becoming addicted to them. Not knowing this, and heading instead toward eliminating kilesa altogether, is a serious delusion.

Self-hood can be described as a subjective notion built on the firm belief of identifying, as oneself, something that is not truly oneself. It is this self-hood that ceases within the path of liberation. But many, deviating from this, end up fighting kilesa instead — and going toward eliminating kilesa this way can genuinely make a person mentally unwell.

One further point worth understanding: being present in the moment and feeling happy is simply a favourable environment for life's wellbeing and for spiritual transformation — it is not spiritual transformation itself. It remains a matter connected purely to physical and mental wellbeing.

Four Ways to Examine the Mind

Understanding kilesa intellectually is easy; engaging with how they actually behave is not nearly so simple. Some kilesa we feel clearly, and some we do not feel at all. This is because some kilesa are strongly attracted to self-hood, some clash with it, some sit level with it, and some are actively harmful to it. Others remain outside our conscious awareness altogether, arising and passing without our ever knowing, or lie beyond our mind's perceptibility in some other way entirely. If someone attacks both kilesa and self-hood all at once, they risk being destroyed by the very kilesa they are fighting, and their spiritual path can end up blocked altogether. Very subtle methods need to be followed instead.

The field of kilesa is genuinely complex. There are a few principal methods by which the mind can be examined with regard to the kilesa that give rise to continued existence.

• Allowing kilesa to arise and simply observing them
• Observing, in solitude, the way kilesa arise
• Watching carefully even the most subtle kilesa
• Examining the trajectories of the actions that follow

Every thought ultimately concludes as an action, and the moment that action ends, something new arises in the very next moment. Put another way, the 'me' present in one moment is not the same 'me' present in the next — that is the real point. None of these moments of dependent arising are actually connected to one another.

How a Kilesa-Thought Is Built

The kilesa present within the mind, together with the self-hood that makes use of them, create various strategies for their own continuation. Often, the exact way something is done in one moment is not repeated the same way the next time — but we do not perceive this. We simply feel a kilesa the moment a kilesa-thought arises, and we get caught up in deciding whether or not to act on it. At times, if the mind is strong, it manages to control it — a state that is somewhat good, though not entirely accurate either, and worth understanding carefully with wisdom.

Take, as an example, a kilesa-thought many people will recognise: the thought of eating a honey-and-cashew ice cream. Here, the honey and cashew already exist within your consciousness, and the experiencing of it happens within self-hood. Suppose you do not actually eat the ice cream, and tell yourself you controlled it — but you have already 'eaten' it in your mind. The defilement has already arisen, and the experiencing of it has already taken place. There are, in fact, two separate experiencings here: one is the experiencing, within consciousness, of the honey and cashew itself; the other is whatever would arise from actually eating a fresh ice cream, or the friction that arises from choosing not to. The form becomes, through kilesa, a mere sensation, and it is this mere sensation that self-hood perceives — by which point, a powerful process has already run its course through kilesa.

Kilesa experienced through the mind itself are especially powerful — the enjoyment is greater, and so is the delusion. As an example, when someone has no real opportunity in physical reality, sexual desire may be felt far more strongly, whereas when such an opportunity is freely available, it may hardly feel needed at all. This happens because, in the absence of opportunity, kilesa within the mind become extremely powerful, repeatedly trying to be experienced regardless — and this experience can differ considerably from person to person.

It helps here to separate kilesa itself from the kilesa-thought. A kilesa-thought is built from several parts: kilesa, together with sensing, form, consciousness (whether earlier or freshly arising), feeling, subjective sensing, becoming conscious of it, and the body preparing a background for fulfilling it. Seen this way, the kilesa-thought can be observed quite distinctly. If needed, it can equally be seen operating as action, followed by result, followed by becoming conscious of that result, followed by experiencing it again and again.

So what, in the end, is kilesa? Kilesa is a kind of energy-nature, containing no language of its own at all. When that energy-nature is felt, what arises is a subtle intoxication, a certain heaviness. All of this concerns kilesa of the mind specifically — but the body carries its own kilesa-natures too. Of this body, built as it is from kilesa, hunger and sexual sensitivity are a being's two most powerful defilements.

It is worth looking, too, at actions that belong to the body on its own account — understood very subtly: the production of saliva in the mouth while speaking, so the throat does not dry out; the heartbeat, blood circulation, certain stomach functions, kidney activity, urination, defecation, and, in men, the production of sperm, and in women, menstruation; and the onset of digestive enzyme activity the moment food comes into view.

Take, for instance, the moment of seeing a mango dish, or watching someone else savour a raw mango. Once the image of the mango arises in the mind, joined with a recognition of what it is, you can observe how the body starts preparing itself accordingly. Those bodily actions are not, by themselves, kilesa — but where there is an experiencing of them, or friction connected to them, they become kilesa.

It is entirely normal for the body to need food, and entirely normal to sense that need — but what happens at first is simply a sensing, nothing more. One does not yet know exactly what is being felt, nor what remedy should be applied; that is the first stage of knowing. It is only afterward that one can, with wisdom, determine what ought to be given in response, and provide it if needed — and that determination is made by wisdom itself.

Kilesa can be quite distinctive from person to person — some people feel certain kilesa very powerfully, others barely feel them at all, and even the likelihood of a given kilesa being felt differs from one person to the next. This happens because, when the same kind of kilesa is kept company with over a long period, a kilesa-cycle forms out of that association. Such a cycle can form, for instance, across a long stretch of samsara spent within the same kilesa. Someone born into a very high social standing, or a high caste family, will naturally develop excessive conceit; from this a conceit-cycle forms, and even once the conceit itself is removed, because the cycle persists, conceit tends to arise again very quickly. Breaking free of such a cycle is a genuinely difficult task — it cannot be undone in one stroke. What actually needs to happen is severing that cycle itself, much as one would take the fire away from beneath a pot before the water inside comes to a boil. For a cycle like this to form, the kilesa-path, the karma-path, and paticcasamuppada all play a part together. Once such a cycle has formed, after—