Mapping the Buddhist path onto combating the afflictions

• The heart of the Buddha’s teaching
  • Causes of happiness and suffering
  • Why we want to identify and subdue the afflictions 
• Indian masters on the afflictions
  • Shantideva: A bodhisattva’s perspective
  • Purnavardhana and Yashomitra: Relationship between afflictions, karma, and cyclic existence 
• His Holiness the Dalai Lama: Our suffering arises solely from the afflictions
• The entire Buddhist path maps onto combating the afflictions
  • The measure of our practice 
• Question: What afflictions underlie anxiety and depression?
• A step-by-step approach to working with afflictions

Scriptural quotes

Do not commit any non-virtuous actions

Commit only virtuous actions

Subdue your mind completely 

This is the teaching of the Buddha

Dhammapada, Verse 183

It would be better for me to be buried, 

To have my head cut off and to be killed,

Rather than ever bowing down 

To the afflictions, my enemies.

Engaging in the Bodhisattvas’ Deeds by Shantideva

The chariot of existence, driven by childlike beings

Possesses the wheels of affliction and karma.

But if the wheel of affliction breaks,

The wheel of karma alone cannot turn.

Explanatory Commentary to Abhidharmakosha by Punarvadhana

The arhats may not be without birth-impelling indefinite karmas, either virtuous or non virtuous, accumulated from their time as ordinary beings [in the past]. However, since they do not possess afflictions, those [karmas] cannot be ripened to bring about birth in [samsaric] existence [anymore].

Clear-word Subcommentary on the Abhidharmakosha by Yashomitra