Klesha (kleśa): The Five Afflictions Named in the Yoga Sutras

Derivation

Kleśa comes from the Sanskrit root kliś, "to torment, trouble, distress or afflict." The noun formed from it means "affliction" or "distress" in the most general sense, and the word appears outside yogic literature too, in Buddhist philosophy in particular, where kleshas are likewise treated as the root defilements or afflictions binding a being to suffering. Within Patanjali's system, the word is given a specific, enumerated technical sense rather than left as a loose synonym for pain.

What the texts actually say

Kleshas are introduced in the second chapter (sādhana-pāda) of the Yoga Sutras. Sutra 2.2 states that the practices described (tapas, svādhyāya, and devotion to the lord, together forming kriyā-yoga) serve to attenuate the kleshas and to cultivate samādhi. Sutra 2.3 then lists them by name: avidyāsmitā-rāga-dveṣābhiniveśāḥ kleśāḥ — "ignorance, egoism, attachment, aversion and clinging to life are the afflictions." Sutra 2.4 makes a structural claim about how they relate to one another: avidyā, ignorance, is the field (kṣetram) for the others, which may exist in a dormant, attenuated, interrupted or fully active state — meaning the five are not simply a flat list of equally independent items but a layered structure with ignorance as the ground from which the rest grow. Later sutras (2.12–2.14) connect the kleshas directly to karmāśaya, the accumulated store of karmic residue, and to the experience of pleasure and pain that residue produces when it ripens.

The five kleshas

Avidyā (ignorance) is defined in 2.5 as taking the impermanent, impure, painful and non-self to be permanent, pure, pleasurable and self — a specific mistaking of one thing for its opposite, rather than mere lack of information. Asmitā (egoism or I-am-ness) is described in 2.6 as the apparent identity of the power of seeing (the puruṣa) with the instrument of seeing (the mind), a conflation of the seer with what it uses to see. Rāga (attachment) is defined in 2.7 as that which follows upon pleasure — a clinging that dwells on remembered enjoyment. Dveṣa (aversion) is defined in 2.8 as that which follows upon pain, an aversion resting on remembered suffering. Abhiniveśa (clinging to life, or the will to live) is described in 2.9 as a self-perpetuating current present even in the learned, flowing from its own nature — commonly read as a deep-seated fear of death or dissolution present even independent of particular reasoning about it.

Common misunderstandings

A common flattening treats "klesha" as simply a Sanskrit word for "suffering" in general, but the term in Patanjali's usage is more precise: it names five specific, causally related states, with avidyā as their shared root, rather than pain as an undifferentiated category. A second misunderstanding is treating the five as separate and unconnected; 2.4's account of avidyā as the field for the others, and the description of each as capable of being dormant, weakened, interrupted or active, indicates a dynamic and layered relationship rather than a simple checklist. A third error, common in more devotional modern retellings, is to suggest the Yoga Sutras present the kleshas as sins requiring moral condemnation; the text's own register is closer to a diagnosis of mistaken perception and its consequences than a moral indictment, and its proposed remedy (2.10–2.11) is meditative absorption back into their cause and, for the grosser active forms, dhyana.

Modern usage

In contemporary yoga teaching and wellness writing, "klesha" is often used loosely as a general term for emotional obstacles, limiting patterns or old wounds a student is working through, extending well beyond Patanjali's fivefold, structurally defined list. This broader usage is not simply wrong — the underlying idea that certain deep-seated patterns cause recurring distress is continuous with the classical concept — but it is worth being clear that the text names exactly five, in a specific order and relationship, rather than using klesha as a catch-all word for any difficult feeling.

Where this appears on the site

The glossary entries on vritti and samskara cover closely related terms from the same portion of the Yoga Sutras — the mental fluctuations the kleshas colour, and the impressions their activity leaves behind. The texts library provides further context on the Yoga Sutras' second chapter as a whole.