The Three Poisons (Pali lobha, dosa, moha and Sanskrit raga, dvesha, moha or collectively triviṣa, Tibetan dug gsum) in the Mahayana tradition are the three unwholesome roots (Pāli akusala-mūla, Sanskrit akuśala-mūla) in the Theravada tradition.
It is a Buddhist term that refers to the three root defilements (kilesas, kleshas) that lead to all negative states. The three states or actions (karmic root motivations) are:
greed or sensual craving
hatred/fear or aversion
delusion, wrong view, or ignorance [1, 2].
These Three Poisons are considered three afflictions, habits, character flaws (states or traits) that are innate in living beings. They are the roots of all unwholesome actions (karma), as there can be craving or aversion without ignorance, and they cause suffering and lead again and again to rebirth [1, 3]. More
Never be angry: How to stay calm in every situation
(ThinkZone) Attia & Huberman. Dr. Andrew Huberman is a renowned neuroscientist and professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Stanford University School of Medicine. He has made significant contributions to the field of neuroscience through his research on brain plasticity, visual system development, and the mechanisms underlying various neurological disorders.
Dr. Peter Attia is a prominent figure in the fields of longevity, health, and performance optimization. He is a physician, researcher, and speaker who focuses on promoting a deeper understanding of human health and well-being.
Naoya Inoue (井上 尚弥), a professional boxer, was born on April 10, 1993. He has held multiple world championships in four weight classes. He is one of only three male boxers in history (along with Terence Crawford and Oleksandr Usyk) to become the undisputed champion in two weight classes in the "four-belt era," becoming the second to do so [3, 4]. Nicknamed "The Monster" (怪物 Kaibutsu), he is known for his exceptional punching power, possessing a knockout-to-win percentage of 90%. More
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Did your date give you 'the ick'? Here's the science behind the feeling
"Ugh, eww, and ick! I'm out! H to the NO!"
The food was top-notch, the atmosphere was cozy, and my date aimed to entertain. I love a good personal story, so I invited him to relate one that he'd referenced in his profile. Good fodder for a first date, I thought.
At one point in the story, as he recounted it, a goat butted its head into an outdoor toilet that he happened to be using, shoving the door open.
You could say I got "the ick" — that feeling of disgust when someone you're dating does this one thing that you just can't get past. The term was used on Ally McBeal in the 1990s and then popularized more recently on the reality show Love Island and on Nobody Wants This.
What gives me the ick and what gives you the ick can be worlds apart. From wearing acrylic nails to laughing too loud to using a Borat voice in the middle of a make-out session, a little internet searching will reveal a whole universe of "icks."
There's an idea in psychology that all emotions, from fear to disgust, were evolutionarily advantageous traits. But is the ick really serving us now?
One theory posits that disgust evolved to protect humans from pathogens that make us sick. And that kind of makes intuitive sense: If a piece of fruit or meat smells disgusting, you probably won't want to eat it.
But Professor of Psychology Josh Rottman, who studies disgust at Franklin & Marshall College, says disgust isn't just a biological function; it's a product of our socialization. And that means if you get the ick on a date, it might be time for some self-examination.
Prof. Rottman spoke with It's Been a Minute host Brittany Luse about the psychology of disgust and the case for pushing past the ick when it comes to choosing a partner. Here are four takeaways from their conversation:
1. Little kids don't feel disgust — and that tells us something
Maybe innocence means not having disgust yet.
"Unlike many emotions that emerge within the first year of life or so, it seems like disgust doesn't really robustly come online until around 5, 6 years of age," Prof. Rottman says. (Think about the toddler who has no qualms about eating a stale Cheerio off the floor.)
If disgust were all about keeping us healthy, he says, researchers would see it in younger children. Instead, kids start experiencing disgust around the same time they start thinking about "cooties" — and who's in the "in" group and "out" group on the playground.
2. Disgust is more gut reaction than conscious thought process
If you're at the movies and you see your date pick her nose before reaching for your hand, you don't think, "This behavior is indicative of poor hygiene and lack of consideration." You just flinch and pull your hand away. This revulsion response happens almost instantly; it comes without any thought, says Prof. Rottman. And he says once you feel disgusted by something, it can be really difficult to overcome that feeling.
As host Luse of It's Been a Minute puts it, it's just "this tiny bit of disgust that you just can't look past or get over."
3. Disgust is related to social norms — often ugly ones
"I think a lot of the specific icks that people have are reflections of social norms that we might want to challenge," says Prof. Rottman.
For instance, actress Millie Bobby Brown has said her "biggest ick" is when a man holds an umbrella, because "there's something about it that just feels really pathetic."
Prof. Rottman says Brown's ick might be an "aversion to the norm violation against masculinity."
And research shows that the consequences of disgust can get a lot worse than getting rejected on a date.
Prof. Rottman says that disgust may have served an evolutionary purpose in that it could help your reputation to distance yourself from people who your group considered undesirable. "I think disgust has evolved as a way to really embody a lot of xenophobia and bigotry," he says.
"There's a lot of good evidence that genocides and a lot of horrific things that have happened in society have been correlated in some way with disgust," Prof. Rottman says.
Tables turn on racist/implicitly biased Karen
Nazi princesses promoted by racist Disney
For example, Nazi propaganda used terms like "parasites" and "lice" to describe Jewish people. Disgust has been leveraged throughout history to create the feeling that certain people are "impure" or less than human.
"The ick is probably a much more minor version of that," Rottman says.
4. It's worth trying to get past the ick
Why can't I find my one and only perfect prince?
Prof. Rottman says that while it's difficult to completely shake a feeling of disgust about another person's particular behavior, getting the ick doesn't have to be a deal breaker.
And, he adds, there's good reason not to give it too much weight in dating: "I think…these feelings of ickiness are not going to be great signals of whether someone's going to be good for us and a good partner."
He shared that he even gets the ick from his partner from time to time — when she walks around barefoot in the garden, developing big calluses on her feet. "I think I can realize that…she's great in so many other ways, that that shouldn't be something to drive me away," Prof. Rottman says. (The professor said he got his wife's permission before sharing this story.)
As host Luse suggested to Prof. Rottman, perhaps "love is persevering against the ick."
So next time you get the ick, consider whether that says more about you than the other person.
And Luse says on It's Been a Minute, maybe "it's a you problem."
Corey Antonio Rose, B.A. Parker, Barton Girdwood, Liam McBain, and Jasmine Romero contributed to this story. Lead photo: munandme/Getty Images/iStockphoto
The body (form) is thought to be most obviously “me,” what “I” regard as the most tangible part of my “self.”
Around it
therefore are constructed many views, all of them distorted and perverted to some extent, which prevent insight arising into the body as
it really is.
This book, Bag of Bones, is a small Buddhist anthology relating to the
body in various ways. It presents material which, if
contemplated by the earnest and sincere student of the Dharma, will eventually provide fruitful insight and,
thereby, freedom from the many cravings, obsessions, addictions, lusts, desires, and fears centered
on the body.
Such thirst for pleasures in which the body is the
instrument (though it is in the heart-mind where they
dwell), awaken and intensify greed of all kinds, for instance, for food and sex and ego boosts of all kinds.
Greed (attraction, grasping, clinging, addiction, attachment) often accompanies pleasurable sensations. Therefore, desire (craving) needs a
rather bitter medicine to combat it.
How can anybody say this body is unattractive?
So the number of items contained here on the unattractiveness of the body, its decay
and death — all unpleasant matters — is high. Some of the material concerned with bodily unattractiveness is like a healing balm that need only be taken while the disease of greedy-lust is
active. Afterwards, it may be discontinued and set aside.
It is important
to understand this so as not to form the mistaken impression
that the Buddha advocated viewing all beauty as loathsome. There is a great deal of beauty in this world, not all of which causes us to become obsessed with harmful things.
It is only that there is a hook hidden in beauty, an unseen danger that gets tangled with
the greed in one’s heart and leads to more and more
complications and difficulties.
Fears center around aging and disease, decay and death. They
are never overcome by pretending they do not exist. Ostriches are said to bury their heads in the sand at the approach of
enemies.
Only resolutely facing the inevitable features of
life can bring insight and the dispelling of fear.
The Buddha’s instructions on how to contemplate the body
are addressed to those who are able, through their lifestyle,
to practice them.
This means in effect monks and nuns, novices, together with dedicated lay people. The former group have
this contemplation given to them by their monastic teachers at the
time of going-forth from the homebound to the left-home life, which is when we might most need such a medicine to combat lust.
Lust hurts and often harms anyone, but it can completely destroy the high life of someone training in monasticism.
Laypeople keeping the Five Precepts
have contentment with their partners as an important part
of their practice. Sex is a natural part of their life but should
still be restrained and kept within the bounds of the Third
Precept. If not, how much trouble might follow!
But some few may wish to live without sexual attachments, and this cannot
be done in the way of Dhamma (the Buddha's Teaching or natural truth) by ignoring the power of
our human sexual drive or by repressing and suppressing it.
Only when it is
treated with mindfulness (nonjudgmental awareness and observation) can it be transcended. It does not last forever. It is overcome by the first meditative absorption and uprooted by the stages of enlightenment.
The aspect
of mindfulness needed for this is the subject, or
rather the interrelated subjects, of this book.
Bhutan: Last Himalayan Buddhist kingdom
In today's world we are subjected to a mass media bombardment
of sensuality. Sex especially is
used as the bait (attractant) to sell things, a titillation of sensory
experience.
When this is continued, defilements of mind, notably lust, greed, and
attachment, are sure to be strengthened. When this has
happened, the result is not more happiness but only an increase of disappointment (dukkha, stress, ill, woe), suffering, trouble, and difficulties.
I stared until they started to look like skeletons, bags of bones, all of them. I ought to let go, become a monk, and gain enlightenment because flesh and bones are gross. I didn't tell them.
.
The medicine
for such over-indulgence and over-stimulation is given here.
It is said that this subject of meditation is unique to the
Buddha’s Teachings, the Dhamma, and that elsewhere it is not clearly
taught.
This is unsurprising as we find that desire is
sometimes accepted as being “natural.” Wherever desires
are viewed as “natural,” that is, inherent in one’s nature or
self, nothing much can be done about them.
But the Buddha
analyzed desires into those which are wholesome — the zeal to
practice Dhamma, for instance — and the unwholesome
ones, among which are greediness and lust.
They may not be
gross either, as in the case of the meditator who is greedy
for bliss, or visions, psychedelic experiences, and attached to such things.
The
Buddha has provided the medicine for all unwholesome
desires, and according to our various ways of life we can
use it to effect partial or complete cures.
When the emphasis is so much on sensuality, youth, and
beauty as we find now, the darker sides of life get pushed
away and attempts are made, always unsuccessful, to sweep
them under the rug. Those who try to do so will not be
pleased with the exercises contained in the Buddha’s
contemplation of the body as it really is.
Such things will appear to them
as morbid and unnatural, offensive and repulsive. Yet, they are also a part of this life
and should not be ignored. And if the effort is made to
ignore what is unpleasant about the body, sooner or later
one will be jolted into the recognition of these things.
Such
jolts are not pleasant. Rather than leave it until one is forced to know the body’s unpleasant sides, it is better to acquaint
one’s emotions with this knowledge gradually.
In this spirit, Bag of Bones is being published.
Unfortunately,
being only a book, it cannot give person-to-person advice on
special problems. It can only offer some general guidelines
to people who are interested in reducing their greediness and
lust.
It's only skin deep for reptilian hybridization
A word of warning: meditation on the unattractiveness
of the body can be very potent and should only be practiced
with moderation and care, especially if one has no personal
contact with a teacher of Buddhist meditation.
If fear and
anxiety, or other extreme unwholesome emotional states
arise after practice of it, then it will be better to lay it down
and take up loving kindness (mettā) or recollection of the
Buddha (Buddhānussati) as one’s meditation instead.
This book, therefore, is not so much for beginners in
Buddhism but rather for those who have already practiced
for some time. May it inspire many people to practice the
Dhamma more intently!
Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Bu Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly; Danny Elfman (lyrics)
At the hub of the Wheel of Rebirth are greed, hatred, and delusion on which its turning hinges.
According to the Buddha, there are Three Poisons, mental defilements that degrade the mind/heart, and serve as the root-motivations for all unskillful karma (unwholesome actions).
What are they? Roughly speaking -- because these are ancient Pali/Sanskrit terms only approximately translatable into English -- they are:
Greed (attraction, passion, craving, desire, liking, or lobha)
Hatred (aversion, fear, revulsion, disliking, or dosa), and
Delusion (wrong view, distortion, perversion, ignorance, or moha).
The common English translation of "greed, hatred, and delusion" of technical Buddhist terms is misleading because it makes it seem as if only the extremes of these motives are unskillful karma.
In fact, at any intensity they lead to disappointment (dukkha, a term that extends from agitation to agony) as soon as they arise. For each term, the meaning spans the entire range of the word
from liking, bias, preference, and passion to greed,
from disliking, annoyance, fearing, and revulsion to hatred,
from not knowing, wrong view, misunderstanding, and distortion to delusion.
The motives (causes and conditions) for all skillful deeds, wholesome or meritorious karma, are the opposites:
Nongreed (letting go, sharing, giving, generosity, detaching, non-clinging, or alobha).
Nonhatred (friendliness, loving-kindness, compassion, joy in others' joy, or adosa).
Nondelusion (wisdom, knowing-and-seeing, right view, undistorted understanding, or amoha).
They make more sense in positive terms, but each word is a category encompassing the entire range of degrees.
Reflect and examine it. When we do something unskillful, unwholesome, or wrong, what is at the root of it? We are making demeritorious karma (that will bear fruit and ripen in unpleasant, unwelcome, unwished for, disappointing, and painful results).
Entering one of the subterranean hells below Los Angeles: 6th Dimension*
They are called "bad" not because a God doesn't like them but because we will not like their karmic results (vipaka and phala) when they finally ripen, which might not be for a long time. (Some deeds are avyākata, indeterminate or neutral).
Is fear hate? Both are manifestations of aversion (dosa), so fear may be distinguished from hate, but it's only a matter of our reaction to stimuli. In fear, we want to run away, whereas in hate we want to send the repulsive object away).
Ven. Nyanatiloka (L) and Ven. Nyanaponika
What motivates an action and produces karma? One or a combination of these seven motivating our action. The kind of karma produced is based on the motive or intention (cetana) behind the deed.
Karma is like a seed that comes to fruition later. The famous Judeo-Christian expression of this karmic principle is that "We shall reap what we sow." In other words, we will later harvest what we previously planted.
The Three Poisons of the mind/heart are easy to recognize in ourselves if we reflect, except for hate. Of course we like things. This is a carnal world within the Sensual Sphere (Kama-Loka). Pleasure-seeking is the main defilement that got us here and that gets us into trouble while we're here by motivating more greedy, selfish, lustful acts. However, all craving is rooted in ignorance.
Ignorance is the fundamental root of all problems and all suffering. Ignorance gives rise to desire, to craving and clinging to things we imagine are persisting, pleasurable, and real.
The Buddha's teaching on the Three Marks of Existence tells us that they are not any of these three things. All conditioned phenomena (all "things" composed of other things that depend for their existence on constituent elements or factors) are:
hurtling toward destruction,
disappointing and incapable of fulfilling us,
impersonal/empty/without essence.
They are not compacts but compounds, not unconditioned (like nirvana, the sole "unconditioned element"*) but conditioned (like everything else, every element, every fabrication, every formation).
*Asankhata: the "unformed, unoriginated, unconditioned" is a name for nirvana, the "further shore," that is beyond the beyond of all becoming (rebirth) and all conditions. See Bhikkhu Bodhi's As It Is for a textual definition of nirvana (called nibbana in Pali), which too often gets confused with "nothingness" or "annihilation" or "eternal life," when it is none of these things.
In the West we are not raised to recognize or admit our hatred. We are reluctant to show anger, instead suppressing and repressing it. This root (dosa) more often finds expression in the socially acceptable form of FEAR. It's still aversion. It's still unskillful karma that leads to unwise actions that yield painful results.
*Danny Elfman's best music was from his first movie, Forbidden Zone
Danny Elfman sings about fear
Elfman still makes music, performs
The genius ginger Danny Elfman, along with brother Dick and The Mystic Knight of the Oingo Boingo (Gong Show winners), recognized how out of control this unwholesome root could get -- odd neuroses, panic attacks, specific phobias, and general anxiety. Peace of mind will always be hard to find when it is defiled.
LYRICS: "I'm Afraid"
@volatilevulture8102 corrected by Wisdom Quarterly
Afraid of the dark/ Afraid of the light/ Don't walk in the park/ Afraid of the night/ Afraid to get stabbed/ Or hit by a car/ Afraid of the streets/ Afraid to go far/ Afraid of the sky/ Don't like to be high/ I don't want to fall/ Afraid I might die/ Afraid of my friends/ Don't like to be seen/ Afraid to be nice/ Afraid to be mean/ Afraid that the wind/ Will knock over trees/ Afraid of my dog, oh/ Afraid of his fleas!
CHORUS: Peace of mind/ Peace of mind/ Peace of mind/ Peace of mind/ Hard to keep/ Hard to keep/ Hard to find/ Hard to find/ Look ahead/ Look ahead/ Look behind/ Look behind/ Looking for/ Looking for/ Peace of mind/ Peace of mind/ Can't relax/ Can't relax/ Can't unwind/ Can't unwind/ Deep inside/ Deep inside/ Secret mind/ Secret mind/ Oh, no!
Afraid to be caught/ Afraid to be free/ Afraid to make love/ Afraid of VD/ Afraid that the rain/ Will make me get wet/ Afraid to take drugs/ That make me forget/ Afraid that the air/ Will make me get sick/ Afraid that the girls/ Will cut off my/ OH!
Someone tell me how it happened/ Why my head is so confused/ Can it be my circuits finally blew a fuse?/ Blew a fuse/ Can a human being really change into a humanoid?/ Or is it my imagination/ Paranoid!/ Paranoid/ All I need is peace and quiet/ Maybe just a little time/ Turn the channel, turn the channel!/ Peace of mind/
Peace of mind/ Peace of mind/ Peace of mind/ Peace of mind/ Hard to keep/ Hard to keep/ Hard to find/ Hard to find/ Look ahead/ Look ahead/ Look behind/ Look behind/ Looking for/ Looking for/ Peace of mind/ Peace of mind/ All creation/ All creation/ All mankind/ All mankind/ Looking for/ Looking for/ Peace of mind/ Peace of mind
Afraid of success/ Afraid to grow old/ Afraid that my brain/ Is covered with mold/ Afraid that I might/ Be put on a shelf/ But last but not least, oh!/ Afraid of myself!
(Ken Pruitt) Gordon Gekko (Oliver Stone's Wall Street) unknowingly describes the problems facing today's private sector (industry), while blasting the bureaucracy (governance) responsible for said problems in the first place. This is classic speech, both the in film and in economic thought. This is for people who think Saipan is a free market.
This is a famous pro-capitalist speech. Buddhism says the root of all unskillful action (unwholesome karma) and misery is due to three things: greed, hatred (and fear), and delusion.
This, of course, is a rough translation of what the Buddha taught since he used the terms lobha, dosa (bhava), and moha. These technical terms in Pali and Sanskrit have much broader definitions than our translated English words. Better words might have been avarice, aversion (cowardice), and nescience. But who knows what those mean? All the attraction and liking are subsumed in lobha. Dosa refers to all forms of aversion and disliking, which includes fear. And moha is ignorance of all kinds.
We say greed, hatred (fear), and delusion because it makes it more obvious in English that these things are bad. Then Gordon comes around and glorifies "greed." Greed is somewhat good, in a way, at least in the way Gordon is using it. How? Well, consider what we in English mean by "good." It's not always a moral judgment.
But, Buddha, c'mon, it's so much cash money!
Sometimes it's a functional assessment with one test -- getting what we want. If something gets us what we want, we accurately call that "good." I want to kill myself, I say. I tell Dr. Kevorkian that I'm thinking of using a 45. And he says, "That's good," meaning "that will work." He might add, "That's overkill. Why not just use my poison contraption?" Why, I ask him. "Because that's better," he answers. How so, I say. And the Doctor of Death explains that not everyone dies from a shot to the head, which is news to me. Some blow off their jaw, others get brain damage and deafness on one side. Others get a facelift and become paraplegics. He starts making a lot of sense, and his death device IS "good" in that it always works and never fails, and if I really want to kill myself (which is bad and a mistake) his way is "good." That's normal English.
Think about it. You say, "I want to get rich. I'm thinking of going to an Ivy League school, majoring in business, and stealing it from a company I raid by pumping and dumping its stock, screwing over all the other workers and investors there." And I say, That's good. I'm not making a moral judgment, and you know that. All I'm doing is saying, That'll work. Right? There's a better way, but your parents have their heart set on you going to an Ivy, so you and Gordon and Wall Street bankers can all have a great time with other lowlifes in New York. And you say, "What, you have a better idea?"
And I say, Yes. Try Buddhist business. "What in the world is that," and I talk about the Sigala Sutta (DN 31) and the Buddha's business advice to young householder Sigala. I mean, imagine it. What if there were a way to grow rich, enjoy it, experience all the sensuality and worldliness you want, and it wouldn't lead to regret hereafter. And there will be a hereafter, no matter how much you drink and blot out that possibility, sinking yourself in science books and ignoring all the evidence that there's more, much more, to this life than what we see and touch and can remember.
But then in what sense is "greed" good? There is the possibility of translating other Buddhist terms as "greed." It's a stretch, but it is possible in the larger sense. All desire is disappointing, unsatisfactory, suffering. Why, how? When a craving, yearning, pining, desire, inclination, lust arises, immediately with the arising of it, we suffer (are discomfited, are pained, thirst, hunger, pine, long, yearn, agonize) in the absence of it. One way to get rid of this pain is to get the thing we want; another way is to stop wanting it, but that is not nearly as easy to do. Any desire results in this kind of "suffering" (dukkha, which is a very broad term encompassing everything from agitation to agony). But, of course, we desire enlightenment/awakening (bodhi), reality/an end to suffering (nirvana), liberation (moksha), and so on. We want the bliss of the meditative absorptions. We want magical powers (iddhi, abhinna). We want wisdom (prajna, panna), happiness (sukha). We want to meditate and so on. We desire purification (visuddhi). We want deliverance (vimokkha). These kinds of desires are desires -- and they will result in distress as soon as they arise -- but they are not called craving (tanha) to distinguish them from commonplace sensual desires. These are called by other terms -- resolve, determination, zeal, intention, or will. The term used is chanda.
Chanda: intention, desire, will. 1. As an ethically neutral psychological term, in the sense of "intention," it is a general mental factor (cetasika, q.v. Tab. II) taught in the Abhidhamma, the Dharma in Ultimate Terms, the moral quality of which is determined by the character of the volition (cetanā) associated with it. The Commentary explains chanda as "a wish to do" (kattu-kamyatā-chanda). If intensified, it acts also as a "predominance condition" (see paccaya 3). 2. As an unwholesome quality, it has the meaning of "desire" and is frequently coupled with terms for "sensuality," "greed," etc., for instance: kāma-cchanda, "sensual desire," one of the Five Hindrances (see nīvarana); chanda-rāga, "lustful desire" (see kāma). Chanda is one of the four wrong paths (see agati). 3. As a wholesome quality, it is a righteous will or zeal (dhamma-chanda) and occurs, e.g. in the formula of the Four Right Efforts (see padhāna): "The meditator rouses will (chandam janeti)...." If intensified, it is one of the Four Roads to Power (see iddhippada). (Ven. Nyanatiloka, Buddhist Dictionary: Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines).
So in that sense "greed" (chanda) is good, but it's terrible and misleading to say so because it is a matter of semantics. "Greed" is always bad as we understand the word in English, but "will" is not necessarily bad in the larger sense while still being bad (if we define "bad" as "whatever leads to suffering"). An apparent paradox arises that good things can lead to suffering, and the resolution is this: Some things lead to suffering now and much happiness later, so they are "good." Some things lead to a little respite from suffering now and much suffering later, so they are bad. For example, striving in meditation can hurt, be boring, be frustrating, be painful, can seem fruitless, and so on, but when successful we will be glad we went through all that for what it yielded. Taking a break and enjoying sensual pleasures can seem a harmless pastime, something we deserve for working so hard, but our never ending addiction to them, the danger inherent in them, the fact that they can never by their nature bring us to satisfaction, fulfillment, satiation but always instead demand more and more, greater and greater diversity (papanca, proliferation), urge us on in samsara, the endless wandering in search of satisfaction, and this is the antithesis of nirvana (release, the highest happiness, the end of all suffering, ultimate reality.
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