Kleshas

Kleśas are the afflictive patterns of mind that disturb clarity and generate suffering.

Sanskrit: क्लेश

IAST: kleśa

Tibetan: ཉོན་མོངས་

Wylie: nyon mongs

English: affliction, disturbing emotion, mental defilement, emotional obscuration

The Sanskrit root has the sense of tormenting, troubling, afflicting. So a kleśa is not just an “emotion.” It is an emotion or mental pattern when it distorts knowing, contracts the sense of self, and pushes us into reactive behavior.

So anger by itself, for example, is not merely “energy.” As a kleśa, anger becomes the mind’s painful narrowing around aversion: “I reject this; I must attack, resist, blame, or push away.” Desire as kleśa becomes grasping: “I need this to be complete.” Ignorance becomes the basic misreading of experience: “This separate self and these solid objects are ultimately real as they appear.”

In many Buddhist systems, the three root kleśas are:

1. Ignorance / delusion

Sanskrit: avidyā

Tibetan: མ་རིག་པ་

Wylie: ma rig pa

This is the fundamental not-knowing or mis-knowing of reality. In Mahāmudrā and Dzogchen contexts, this often means failing to recognize mind’s nature.

2. Attachment / desire / craving

Sanskrit: rāga, tṛṣṇā

Tibetan: འདོད་ཆགས་

Wylie: ’dod chags

This is grasping at what seems pleasant, desirable, confirming, pleasurable, or identity-supporting.

3. Aversion / hatred / anger

Sanskrit: dveṣa

Tibetan: ཞེ་སྡང་

Wylie: zhe sdang

This is pushing away what seems unpleasant, threatening, insulting, painful, or identity-undermining.

Sometimes the list expands to five poisons:

ignorance, attachment, aversion, pride, and jealousy/envy.

Pride

Sanskrit: māna

Tibetan: ང་རྒྱལ་

Wylie: nga rgyal

The inflation or hardening of “I am” around superiority, inferiority, or self-importance.

Jealousy / envy

Sanskrit: īrṣyā

Tibetan: ཕྲག་དོག་

Wylie: phrag dog

The painful reaction to another’s happiness, success, qualities, or recognition.

In the Abhidharma-style lists Thrangu Rinpoche is referring to, kleśas are analyzed very precisely as mental factors. They are not “sins” in the Western moralistic sense. They are more like distorting mental-emotional habits that produce suffering because they misread experience.

A simple example:

Someone criticizes you.

The bare hearing is not yet a kleśa.

The unpleasant feeling is not necessarily a kleśa.

The thought “that was criticism” is not necessarily a kleśa.

But then the mind contracts:

“How dare they?”

“They don’t respect me.”

“I need to strike back.”

“I’m worthless.”

“I must defend this self.”

That contraction, distortion, and compulsion is kleśa.

In Mahāmudrā, the point is especially subtle and beautiful. The kleśa is not treated as a permanent stain on mind’s nature. It is a movement within mind. When unrecognized, it binds. When recognized directly, it can self-liberate.

So the same anger that seems like a problem can become a doorway: not by acting it out, and not by suppressing it, but by looking directly into its texture, energy, and knowing-quality.

In very simple terms:

A kleśa is a disturbed state of mind that makes reality feel more solid, the self feel more threatened, and reaction feel necessary.

Mahāmudrā asks: what is this kleśa made of, right now?

Look closely, and it is not a thing. It is vivid, empty, luminous movement. 🌿