The afflictions

What this passage does

Having promised to thin the afflictions (2.2), the text names them: ignorance, I-am-ness, attachment, aversion and clinging to life. Ignorance comes first and is the field of the rest (2.4). It is defined as four mistakes of seeing (2.5), and each of the others gets a single line (2.6–2.9). This is the text's account of where reactivity comes from, and the vocabulary for all that follows.

Learning goals

• List the five afflictions in order and explain why ignorance comes first.
• Explain the four states of an affliction and the four mistakes that define ignorance.
• Show how I-am-ness, attachment, aversion and clinging to life grow one from another.

The argument, step by step

1. The afflictions are five: ignorance, I-am-ness, attachment, aversion and clinging to life.
2. Ignorance is the field the other four grow in, whatever state they are in: dormant, thin, interrupted or fully active.
3. Ignorance is defined as four mistakes of seeing, ending with taking the not-self for the self.
4. That last mistake, placed exactly, is I-am-ness: the seeming oneness of the seer and its instrument.
5. The self so formed is pulled toward what pleased it and pushed from what pained it, through memory.
6. Beneath both runs clinging to life, rooted as firmly in the wise as in anyone.

The sūtras

1. 2.3 avidyāsmitārāgadveṣābhiniveśāḥ kleśāḥ
   The afflictions are ignorance, I-am-ness, attachment, aversion and clinging to life.
2. 2.4 avidyā kṣetram uttareṣāṃ prasuptatanuvicchinnodārāṇām
   Ignorance is the field of the others, whether they are dormant, thin, interrupted or fully active.
3. 2.5 anityāśuciduḥkhānātmasu nityaśucisukhātmakhyātir avidyā
   Ignorance is taking the impermanent, impure, painful and not-self to be permanent, pure, pleasant and self.
4. 2.6 dṛgdarśanaśaktyor ekātmatevāsmitā
   I-am-ness is the seeming oneness of the power that sees and the instrument of seeing.
5. 2.7 sukhānuśayī rāgaḥ
   Attachment follows pleasure.
6. 2.8 duḥkhānuśayī dveṣaḥ
   Aversion follows pain.
7. 2.9 svarasavāhī viduṣo 'pi tathā rūḍho 'bhiniveśaḥ
   Clinging to life flows by its own momentum and is rooted just as firmly even in the wise.

Study

Having promised to thin the afflictions (2.2), Patañjali names them. Vyāsa asks what they are and calls them five kinds of error (viparyaya), the word 1.8 defined (Woods p. 106). When active, he says, they tighten the hold of the guṇas and bring karma to ripeness. The list is a causal account, and the order matters.

2.4 gives the structure: "Ignorance is the field of the others, whether they are dormant, thin, interrupted or fully active." A dormant affliction is a seed, woken when its object comes face to face. A thin one has been weakened by cultivating its opposite, the method of 2.33. An interrupted one is held back while another is active: Vyāsa's example is Chaitra, whose love for one woman does not mean he has none for others (Woods p. 107). Vyāsa adds a fifth state beyond the four, seeds burned by insight, which cannot sprout even when the object is present. A quiet affliction may be only asleep.

2.5 defines ignorance: "Ignorance is taking the impermanent, impure, painful and not-self to be permanent, pure, pleasant and self." Vyāsa insists it is a positive misknowing. Just as a foe (amitra) is not merely 'no friend' but the opposite of one, avidyā is the opposite of knowledge (Woods p. 112).

From the fourth mistake comes the second affliction. 2.6: "I-am-ness is the seeming oneness of the power that sees and the instrument of seeing." Vyāsa names the two. The self is the power that sees; the intellect is the instrument. When each regains its own nature, there is freedom (Woods p. 115). The little word iva, 'as if', carries the claim: the oneness only seems.

The self thus set up moves. 2.7 and 2.8 are a matched pair: "Attachment follows pleasure." "Aversion follows pain." Vyāsa defines both through memory: craving that comes from remembering pleasure, resentment that comes from remembering pain (Woods pp. 116–117). The afflictions run on stored impressions, which links them forward to karma (2.12).

2.9 ends the list: "Clinging to life flows by its own momentum and is rooted just as firmly even in the wise." Vyāsa hears in it every creature's wish, 'May I not cease to be', and reads the fear of death in the newly born as a trace of deaths in earlier lives (Woods p. 117). Readers who set rebirth aside often read it as instinct. The sūtra's point stands either way: learning does not remove it.

Where readings differ. The vocabulary overlaps with Buddhist teaching, and Woods himself notes a striking parallel to the Buddhist Āryadeva in his note on 2.5 (Woods p. 110). Vyāsa's frame, though, is Sāṃkhya: the error is between seer and seen, a self that is real but misplaced. For practice, the chain gives an order. Attachment and aversion are where reactivity shows. I-am-ness is what they serve. Ignorance is where the chain can finally be cut.

For discussion

1. Why does Patañjali put ignorance first and call it the field of the others?
2. Vyāsa says ignorance is the opposite of knowledge, as a foe is the opposite of a friend. What difference does that make to how it is removed?
3. Can you give an example of an affliction that is interrupted, in Vyāsa's sense, rather than gone?
4. Why do 2.7 and 2.8 tie attachment and aversion to pleasure and pain already known?
5. What does 2.9 suggest about the limits of learning in practice?

A common misreading

The five are often treated as a list of bad feelings to push down one by one. The text gives a chain with a root: ignorance is the field the others grow from (2.4), so the deepest work is on how one sees.

A practice for the room

Hand out slips of paper. For five minutes everyone sits quietly and recalls the last hour. Each time they find a reaction, they make a mark under one of five headings: ignorance, I-am-ness, attachment, aversion, clinging to life. No names, and nothing is read out. Then the teacher asks two questions for a show of hands or a quiet word: which column was fullest, and which was hardest to spot?