Klesha is a Buddhist term for “afflictive emotion,” or a state of being when one is under the grips of intense feelings, as if no longer grounded by rationality. Kleshas are believed to take the form of passion or attachment, aggression, ignorance or prejudice, pride and jealousy. The parallels between these and the seven deadly sins spring to mind. However, even in the mere framing of the states of being considered harmful by Christianity and Buddhism, one sees an emblematic difference. Christianity casts lust and pride as sins and thus those guilty of having committed the acts as sinners. Buddhism is all about relating to oneself with kindness and self-acceptance, which is why you will never heard the word sin, or be asked to enter into any relationship with a judgmental deity.
There have been many times in my life when I’ve been caught in the whirlwind of klesha. I am grateful for the opportunities to recognize these times, be it in the present through mindful attention or in the past through introspection. As a caveat, in keeping with the Buddhist tradition, and in trying to foster greater self-compassion and self-acceptance, I am going to refrain from problem-oriented language. I will instead say, in recognizing ones patterns of behavior that one feels causes suffering in one’s life, one has achieved a difficult and hugely important first step in modulating that behavior in the direction of well-being.
Passion or attachment are feelings that I am familiar with. I have told myself the story that I have a big appetite, a passionate lust for life. I’m an all-or-nothing, extremist type of person. I also have something of an anxiously preoccupied attachment style, so I attach to females quite strongly, sometimes with a bit of a desperation. This pattern has played out in my being something of a serial dater. It has played out in the fervor with which I have been utilizing dating apps in the aftermath of my break up. Fortunately, with respect to the latter, I have slowed down. I have been able to check myself, notice the creeping disorder, the feeling of spreading myself too thin, and have toned it down. I am proud of myself for that, for steering clear of the empty in the name of the meaningful. I remind myself that my times of greatest self-growth, self-understanding and authenticity were times when I was on my own.
Aggression is a klesha I am too familiar with. I have a deeply held need to be right and experience a deep sense of shame if I feel I am not or that I do not know something. Furthermore when I feel that my shame is activated by judgment, then the rage comes out. The shame-rage cycle is one that is well-documented in the clinical literature and it has also been well documented throughout my life. Fights with my ex were nasty affairs, with yelling, name-calling, endless deflections, you name it. They looked nothing like mindfulness, nothing like me keeping my cool. Had I sat with the emotion mindfully, perhaps I would’ve seen what emotion-focused therapists call the primary emotion, the one that hides underneath the secondary emotion of anger or rage. Perhaps I would have seen my feelings of hurt, of feeling small over being judged, of not feeling supported through my struggles that were being help under a magnifying glass.
Ignorance or prejudice I view as states of being opposite that of empathy. When ignorant of someone’s suffering, or someone’s story, one is likely to act prejudicially. I have noticed that I get caught up in quite a bit of ignorance and prejudice when relating to my parents. I reflect back on childhood issues, on my more than a couple adverse childhood experiences, and rile myself up with feeling blame toward my parents. On the one hand these feelings of anger are righteous, yet they must be channeled into a gentle, open hearted dialogue if any productive conversation is to happen. When I am enveloped in my own narcissistic tale of suffering, I lose sight of the fact, or become ignorant to, my parents as human beings. It is as if they become mere perpetrators of my suffering, of my substance use, of my disorder, of my relationship woes. And that is no place to start a conversation.
On the flip side of narcissism is typically a crippling sense of shame, and the narcissism becomes a sort of body armor to protect against that excruciating state of being. While I feel fortunate to not be a full-fledged narcissist, I know that my shame has bred a know-it-all, quick-to-debate occasional pain in the ass of a human being. So yes, pride is something that I am familiar with. It was something I used to suffer from much more often. I felt a compulsion to assert my point of view to anyone who would hear it, and even those who wouldn’t, and this was off-putting and alienating. Once I became more comfortable in my own skin, that tendency to spew, opinions, jokes, observations, became a lot less apparent.
The last one is jealousy, perhaps the least comfortable feeling of this list. In my experience, jealousy was generated by an extreme form of possessiveness that both my ex and I shared for one another. This manifested in our having to abide by the Mike Pence rule, or the policy of not being able to get together with someone of the opposite sex, for any reason, no matter how innocuous or platonic. To say it was stifling would be a major understatement. I was not guiltless in erecting these relational shackles. I clung desperately to my ex, to the relationship and what it represented to the world, and I relied on it, often times desperately. And the desperation with which I relied was directly related to the jealousy I felt, because to cleave the bond would be too threatening, too difficult. Thankfully I am now free, free to better attune to my own wants and needs.
A Mental Health Counselor's Musings 