Theory of the Kleshas

Theory of the Kleshas: a Yogic Understanding of Human Suffering (and Liberation!)
By Elizabeth Reninger

One of the foundational texts of the Yoga Tradition is Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. It is here (among other places) that the Yogic understanding of the origins of human suffering (and Liberation) is offered in the form of what is know as the Theory of the Kleshas.

According to Patanjali, human suffering has its origin in Avidya (the first Klesa), the ignorance that arises when the soul – in its descent into matter – forgets its divine origin. This forgetting gives rise to the second Klesa, Asmita, or the identification of the soul with its vehicles (the various “bodies,” including the most dense, or “physical,” that we inhabit in our journey through manifestation). This false identification operates through the mechanism of the third and fourth Klesas, Raga and Dvesa, desire and fear. And it is here that we see the basic mechanism through which our bodyminds (our thoughts, words, & actions) operate dualistically . . . for desire/fear (Raga/Dvesa) is simply the most basic of the polarities, or sets of opposites, which define the terrain of human existence in its conditioned state. The fifth Klesa is Abhinivesha, or the desire (of the body/vehicle or ego) for its life, i.e. the desire to perpetuate, and fear of losing, its (illusory) “existence.” This fifth Klesa defines the basic obstacle to reversing this process (the necessary first step for entering the path to Liberation), namely the attachment we have to the “life” of the structure created by the various polarities, whose dissolution we experience as “death.”

So what, then, is the solution? How does one reverse this process, dissolve the polarities, re-member one’s Svarupa, or True Nature – and in the process activate a True Form, i.e. a set of vehicles enlivened by Virtues/Deities/geometries that grow out of and are nourished by the uninterrupted remembrance of their divine origin (by the radiant Core of our Being, whose yogic metaphor is the Shushumna Nadi)? Now Patanjali, of course, has an answer (which he lays out in the remainder of The Yoga Sutras ~ check it out!), as do countless other Saints, Sages and Teachers from various wisdom traditions.

The solution I’ve chosen to work with, in my own practice, is a distillation of sorts, from the wellspring of these Eastern traditions, of a set of techniques designed specifically for the Western mind, based solidly in an understanding that it is in the resolution of opposites that one finds the key to beginning this journey homeward. These “polarity processing” techniques (a “basic” technique as well as variations on it designed specifically to address issues at the level of the physical and emotional bodies) were given by Spirit to Leslie Temple-Thurston, and are described in her book The Marriage Of Spirit. (Please see my previous post describing this method!) Within the realm of yoga asana, Richard Freeman is someone whose teaching method/philosophy is based at least in part upon a resolution of opposites: a practice which looks to “marry” opposing physical/energetic movements/patterns within the context of specific asanas … and in so doing guide awareness continually back into the Shushumna Nadi, and from there allow asanas in their “True Forms” to express.

Elizabeth Reninger holds Masters degrees in Sociology & Chinese Medicine, is a published poet, and has been exploring Yoga ~ in its Taoist, Buddhist & Hindu forms ~ for more than twenty years. Her teachers include Richard Freeman and Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. For more yoga-related essays, and poetry, please visit her website: http://www.writingup.com/blog/elizabeth_reninger

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