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Afflictive Emotions / Defilements

• Unleashing negative emotions affects both oneself and others.
• You are someone who has taken the bodhisattva vow. If you give in to affliction, you let down the vow, and the teacher.
• Even tiny insects have afflictive emotions. They are the same for all beings. It is common property. Any effort one person makes to get rid of afflictive emotions helps all. Don’t unleash afflictive emotions. If there is a vast ocean and you scoop a spoonful of dirt, there is that much less in the ocean.
• We cannot prevent the arising of negative emotions, but we can choose not to follow them.
• If you are a beginner, run away from them.
• Each time you detect aversion, desire, greed/craving and don’t follow, each time you are closing the door to the three lower realms.
• When mind is free from attachment and aversion, what is left is nature of mind. This is dzogchen.
• Transform negative emotions into patience, discipline. Patience begins with a moment of recognizing the faults of anger.
• The five afflictions naturally arise in a self-grasping mind.
• Thoughts of attachment and aversion will arise. Be calm and purify your obscurations. Don’t get involved. Don’t be bothered.
• The inner enemies are desire, anger, jealousy, stinginess, ignorance. The inner go away, the outer go away. The way to make them go away is altruistic mind.
• What is negative about negative emotions? The consequences.
• Negative emotions - we cling to them. They don’t cling to us.
• As long as afflictive emotions are not exhausted, we will have to experience suffering. Until the oil has ceased, the butter lamp will burn.
• Recognize each and every afflictive emotion that arises.
• Recognize afflictive emotions with awareness.
• Negative emotions are the inner cause of suffering. Don’t confuse them with external object. This is a very precious teaching.
• The reduction of negative emotions in you is dharma.
• Put alert mind on guard. Mindfulness is protection.
• Develop mindfulness of arising of afflictive emotions. Be free from accepting and rejecting. Let awareness hold its own. They will be liberated upon arising. If we cannot liberate, then causality is real.
• When negative emotions arise, they burn seeds of virtue. They will not germinate.
• Once you unleash negative emotions, result always is suffering.
• This is the worst illness we can have. They obscure the true nature.
• This is the dirt in the mind.
• Buddha nature is what remains after all the impurities are gone.
• See the value of meeting enemy in your life.
• Pain and suffering comes from afflictive emotions.
• Be afraid of afflictive emotions. They are harmful.
• One leads to other. For example, attachment can lead to jealousy or greed.
• They can transform. For example, attachment can transform into aversion.
• They are like seeds for being born in different realms. If you have a seed, there is potential.
• Afflictive emotions can destroy the fruit of virtuous actions.
• The Seven Limb prayer is the antidote to the six afflictions.

• Abandon the fault-finding mind – doubts, hesitations. This is based in attachment/fixation and aversion.

• The root of all defilements is self-clinging.