by Om Swami
The mental afflictions expounded here are emotions or emotional responses that vitiate the three doshas. Almost invariably, they lead to hypertension, diabetes, heart disease and gastrointestinal disorders. Emotions and our stomachs are inextricably related. The first part of the physical body to receive the effect of any emotion is the stomach, followed by the heart and the brain. There are five primary mental afflictions that are detrimental to one’s physical, mental and emotional equilibrium.
FEAR
Any creature born with consciousness has fear, both instinctive and conditioned. Instinctive fear is what we are born with and conditioned fear is what we acquire. A shudder in the body at a sudden loud noise is instinctive fear, for example. The thought that I’ll suffer in hell if I steal or do bad karma is conditioned fear. Fear can make us angry, greedy, insecure, negative, pessimistic, hateful or all of these. Whether it is the fear of rejection, of failure, of loss or of death, it can make you do impossible things – either negative or positive. Fear weakens you; it impairs your ability to think clearly. Any threat – perceived or real – triggers a range of chemical reactions in your body, adversely affecting your well-being. Fear is always born of anticipation. There is no fear in the present moment. It is when you start to wonder what may happen in the future – immediate or distant – that you sow the seed of fear in your consciousness.
Fear immediately vitiates the three doshas and upsets your physical and mental equipoise. An asthmatic patient may get an asthma attack in fear and a patient of depression may get a panic attack, for example. It brings to the fore any underlying disorders and makes them worse in the longer run. It stops us from being positive and happy.
When you no longer feel positive about your actions or goals because you are afraid that life may just go to jelly on you, remind yourself of all the times in the past when you felt the same, but each time your fears were proven unfounded. Fear makes us feel that this is the end of the world, but the world is eternal and your world is always moving. When companies were downsizing, the economy was in depression and the stock markets were going south, you might have been affected. But you moved on.
There is only one antidote for fear, and that is action. Action directed at the cause of fear alone dispels it. Thinking about it or artificially consoling yourself will do you no good. If your fear is grounded – that is, you have a real reason to be afraid – the only way to get rid of it is to work towards it.
Imagine a heart attack survivor who has already undergone major surgery. He’s afraid that a heart attack may be fatal the next time. If he consumes food that is harmful to him but mentally consoles himself, thinking that he’ll be okay, the truth is that he won’t be okay. Artificial consolation is not going to help him. If he’s serious, his actions must support elimination of fear. On the other hand, there may be another, similar patient, who is eating well but is still worried about death or another heart attack. In this case, he needs to learn to drop his fears. Fear begins from a thought. If we can drop the thought, fear goes away too.
ANGER
The chemical reaction in the brain is almost identical in instances of anger and fear. In both cases, the brain starts to prepare a fight-or-flight response born of a need to protect against the wrong being committed or the danger. Grinding of the teeth, flushing, prickly sensations, paling, fist or jaw clenching, sweating and increased heartbeat are common reactions in anger. Anger, however, is not just a response but an emotion.
Anger can be so ingrained in some that they are completely unaware of it. How you experience and express your anger is often dependent on your emotional set-up, your psychological make-up and your upbringing. Other factors such as your environment at home and outside and conditioning by your culture and religion greatly influence how you deal with anger. Some hold on to it and many express it fully. Both are damaging, though. While fully expressing anger may cost you relationships, holding on to anger is just as big a blunder. Anger is primarily of two types.
Reactive Anger
Reactive anger can be your emotional, physical or psychical response to an unmanageable situation. It could be your impulsive response, triggered by sadness, disgust, surprise or fear. If it is simply a reaction – an outburst – you may even feel lighter and better afterwards. This is often an illusion, though. Expressing anger to feel a sense of relief becomes your standard coping mechanism in all undesirable situations.
When anger is caused by sadness, it may be a release of clogged-up negativity and frustration. When it is due to disgust, fear or surprise, however, it is your spontaneous response; it is like someone catching you off-guard, and it is more like a fit of rage. You may feel like breaking things, kicking, punching and screaming. It is rather common for people to shout when anger is a matter of reaction.
Reactive anger is like a volcano. Some people erupt under pressure. Others pop like an inflated balloon when pricked by adversities. They express their anger by way of an emotional outburst or by a fit of rage, almost hysterically. People in rage are beside themselves in no time and then they calm down. Often, they repent their actions later: they may even apologize and vow to not get angry again. All this proves futile.
The next time they experience any friction or opposition, they behave in exactly the same manner. This is mostly because an outburst of anger has become their escape route, a way of dealing with difficult situations—for as long as their own body can endure it. Just as they feel happy in desirable situations, they feel angry in all undesirable situations.
Toxic Anger
When you suppress any emotion, it settles in your consciousness like a poisonous seed. With more suppression over a period of time, it thrives and grows, eventually causing enormous, sometimes irreparable, damage to your body and mind. When you are unable to express or let go of negativity and hurt, and you keep it within you, it becomes increasingly toxic over a period of time, often leading to depression and anxiety. It can bring damning metabolic changes, resulting in severe headaches and weight gain. It can trigger heart disease, high blood pressure and cancer. Yogic and Ayurvedic texts state that anger and other negative emotions have a direct negative impact on the quantity of prana vayu, the vital life force in the air we inhale. And a lack of prana causes tumours, among other metabolic, hormonal and glandular disorders.
Toxic anger is like brewing coffee. Beyond a certain point, it gets bitter, way too bitter to be consumed; it cannot be sweetened with honey any more. Similarly, when a person holds on to his negative emotions, this negativity keeps on brewing, only making the person more bitter. Brewing anger can easily lead to a fit of rage, because an outburst is more a symptom than a cause; it is a sign that you have been holding on to negative emotions within you. It is like heating up a steamed dumpling in a microwave oven. The dumpling is able to take heat to a certain degree, beyond which it simply explodes, splattering everywhere; it is then no longer edible, much less presentable.
The more attached you are, the greater your anger. Vedic texts list both attachment and anger as mental afflictions. The extent of hurt you experience is directly proportional to the degree of attachment you have. For example, if you are really attached to your possessions, whenever something goes wrong with them, you are likely to experience grief. The greater the attachment, the more the grief, and in turn, the greater the pain – and anger follows in tow. Above all, anger is a symptom of your inner pain. It means you are hurt somewhere within; the grief is still there.
I am a monk and I meet thousands of people. Often, I find that people are too hard on themselves. They are under a huge burden of mostly unrealistic expectations. It is important to live your life with a sense of freedom. The more you do that, the less you are frustrated, and less frustration means much less anger.
Anger is a force. It is a form of energy. Therefore, like any other energy, it can be channelled and transformed. Direct it towards empathy and forgiveness and it transforms into love a
nd compassion.
HATRED
There is a word called dvesha in Sanskrit. It is made from the union of two words: da + visha. Among other things, da means a mountain and visha means poison. Hatred is a mountain of poison. A pinch is enough to kill someone: imagine what a mountain would do! In the case of material poison, it kills a person once, but hatred is a poison that kills every moment, with every breath, with every thought. People can hate other religions, political parties, other people, countries, their loved ones, their friends and family. The object of hate becomes immaterial, because hatred is simply a misdirected emotion. The one who has hatred for one thing will always find his hatred shifting from one thing to another. Whom or what he hates is insignificant; the truth is that hatred is an emotion, an attitude, a response – even a state of mind.
Just like attachment, hatred is often an obsession too. Hatred is a deadly mental affliction. It has the same effect as toxic anger mixed with stress. Mostly, it sits in the silent corner of one’s heart. Its basis could be one’s experiences in the world or simply mental conditioning. Society, religion and culture – they all condition you. You are told what is good and bad, moral and immoral, right and wrong and acceptable and unacceptable.
For example, in certain sects of Hinduism, you are taught that slaughtering animals and eating non-vegetarian food is immoral. If you are a Christian, it is acceptable. If you are a Muslim, it’s okay only if the meat is halal, and if you are a Jew, only if it is kosher. The environments at home and outside – and especially religion – give you a set of rules; some spoken and some unspoken. Whenever you see anyone transgressing your framework of rules, you experience hatred, however subtle it may be. Hatred creates the division of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Hatred does not stand on its own, though. Anger and lack of understanding are the two feet of hatred.
Anger fuels hatred. When you are angry and you are hateful towards something or someone, your anger rises along with your hate. Your peace of mind is robbed. Unfortunately, the object of your hatred is often unaware of your feelings, so it rarely ever solves any purpose. Hatred in relationships could arise from untoward experiences you might have gone through, or it could be because your expectations have been mismanaged.
For example, let’s say a child’s parents are divorced and the father gets custody of the daughter. The father remarries and his new wife does not treat the child well. The father is busy at work; he is preoccupied enjoying his new relationship and is unable to pay as much attention to his daughter as before. The daughter feels betrayed. She has certain expectations from her father, and some from her stepmother too, but they are crushed.
As she sees her stepmother get closer to her father, she feels more out of place, even helpless. She experiences anger but is not always able to express it. This suppression of anger, along with the shattering of her expectations, clouds her understanding. She starts to see either her father or her stepmother as the cause of her negative feelings. When her understanding is clouded, hatred germinates in her mind. She may also begin to hate her mother, thinking she didn’t do her job properly and that she could have avoided the divorce. Thus evolves the chain of hatred.
At the core of hatred is the absence of understanding of the other party’s perspective. I have observed, on countless occasions, that it is not that people are unable to understand or appreciate a different viewpoint, they often just don’t want to. The comfort zone in one’s own negative and positive emotions, and in one’s own belief system, can make one completely dull. The more widely travelled you are or the more exposed you are to the world and its whims and variances, the more likely it is that your understanding will be deepened. Travel and good reading does that – it opens you up. Just like butter melts in the heat, the warmth of knowledge can easily melt one’s hatred.
In relationships, when you start to see that everyone is simply a medium – that you have to take responsibility for your own actions, for your own life – you start to see things differently. No doubt life may have been hard on you. Perhaps your partner, your friends, this world, your parents or your siblings may not be the best. But the truth is that ultimately you have to take charge of your own physical, mental and emotional state. Because when you are down and when you are hurt, others continue to lead their lives in the manner they see fit. Your mental afflictions are going to hurt you the most.
For your own good and well-being, it is important to be free and light. The greater your burden of various negative emotions and expectations, the weaker your body and your mind become. In a burdened mental state, you can take the best herbs, the best diet, or you can do the best workouts, but they will do little to save you from the onslaught of various physical and mental ailments. When you start to see the other person’s perspective – when you develop understanding – your hatred will either turn into compassion or indifference. While compassion is better than indifference, they both make you strong.
Hatred is such a closed, aggressive and aggrieved state of mind that it completely wrecks your equilibrium. If there is an emotional or mental equivalent of cancer, it is hatred. It vitiates the three doshas and upsets the seven dhatus, the ten energies, and the five fires. You must tread the path of forgiveness, compassion and wisdom to transform this emotion into love. You cannot hate what you understand. The methods contained in Chapter 15 ‘Mental Detoxification’ can help you cleanse and purify yourself.
JEALOUSY
This is the third mental affliction. But in no way is it any less damaging than the others. It is called matsara in Ayurvedic and yogic texts. Interestingly, the word matsara is derived from the root word mada which means intoxicating. This offers us two valuable insights. Just like an intoxicated person has lost the sense of discrimination and coordination, a jealous person too can no longer differentiate right from wrong. There is a mismatch between their actual physical actions and what they would like to do.
The other insight is that jealousy is a toxic emotion. It is intoxicating, because it poisons the mind of the one who is jealous. It is an expensive emotion. It costs us our peace and happiness. Perhaps of all the fundamental negative human emotions, jealousy would top the list. No matter how rich or poor you are, how healthy or unwell you are, how beautiful or ugly you may be, how well loved or rejected you may be, you can be afflicted with jealousy. It almost seems that jealousy has no basis. Even the most stable people can be struck by jealousy.
Jealousy is a paradoxical emotion. You are jealous when you think you deserve what another person has. But at the same time, you subconsciously believe you are not as good as the other person, and that is why he has what you want. The truth is, superiority has nothing to do with the feeling. It is simply about attitude and perspective.
At the core of jealousy and envy is comparison, but there is a slight difference between the two. In jealousy, there is always another contender. You may be envious of someone or his circumstances, but generally you are actually jealous of someone. In envy, one thinks: ‘How well off so-and-so is’ or ‘I wish I could have that’. In envy, you don’t necessarily want the other person to be deprived of what he has; it’s just that you desire that too. Simply put, jealousy always involves at least three people, including you and the two people who have incited that jealousy, whereas envy may have only two people all up.
Envy may even propel you to take positive action. Jealousy is an altogether different emotion. You feel the other person is taking away something that should belong to you, so you covet what he has. It is not a win-win situation – it can’t be. For you to be happy, the other person will need to part with what he wishes to keep.
Jealousy can easily trigger hatred or anger or both. What makes jealousy so pervasive is that it can be borne either out of love or hatred. No other emotion exists so gloriously and effortlessly among both the negative and positive emotions. Regardless of how you look upon jealousy or what causes it, the truth is that it is a destructive emotion and once
again, like the other mental afflictions, it vitiates the three doshas and other vital aspects of your health.
A thing to remember about mental afflictions is that they are very hungry. Always. The more you feed them, the stronger they become. When you can’t get rid of your negative emotions, they become the consumers of your physical and mental food. Any nutrition you provide your body is consumed by negative emotions; only the residue – devoid of nourishment – is left for you. You may take medication, supplements and eat a good diet – these are all consumed by your jealousy and anger. Only the toxic residue becomes the basic building material of your body. The same is true for your mental food too. Thoughts and emotions are food for the mind. When you are gripped by jealousy, all of your positivity and positive emotions are consumed by it.
GREED
Greed is a highly overpowering emotion. When overcome by greed, a person is willing to do anything and justify all of his actions, right and wrong, without any sense of remorse or guilt. Greed is a kinetic emotion; it carries tremendous momentum. When directed positively, it may manifest as ambition, but when it’s negative, it is nothing but purely destructive. The basis of greed is dissatisfaction or discontentment. With ambition, you are grateful for what you have and you proceed to obtain more with a sense of positivity, often treading the right path. In greed, however, you are not grateful for your present situation. No matter how much you have, it always appears insufficient. It is a blind and depressing emotion.
The Sanskrit term for greed is lobha. It doesn’t just mean greed, though. Lobha also means perplexity and confusion – it means impatience, temptation and eager desire as well. In Vedic scriptures, lobha is the offspring of deceit (dambha) and illusion (maya). This is what sets greed apart from ambition or mere craving. Greed is an inherently negative emotion that arises from uncontrolled temptation and a loss of wisdom. When one is prepared to use deceit to satiate a temptation, this is inevitably greed.
