properties on the cloth, and that the cloth retains the
faint aroma, intentional action leaves traces in the hu-
man causal chain. The predisposition as trace is known
as anus ́aya,and as manifest character and mental state
it is known as kles ́a(a term that means both “stain” or
“dye” and “torment”). The character state and the ac-
tion generate and maintain habitual tendencies and
cause future karmic effects. The kles ́asmay be regarded
as a psychological condition, whereas KARMA(ACTION)
is an ostensive or behavioral cause, although it too
generates latent or potential consequences. The two
constitute the pervasive ruling conditions (adhipati-
pratyaya) for all suffering, and of the sentient being’s
beginningless wandering in the realm of rebirth.
The category of kles ́asubsumes under a single rubric
habits of emotion, intentionality, and cognition, such
as three fundamental unhealthy mindsets: concupis-
cence, animosity, and delusion (the Dhatukaya’sin-
ventory includes five: the cravings of sense desire,
craving for nonsensuous pleasures, craving for dis-
embodied bliss, animosity, and DOUBT). The idea is
found outside Buddhism (e.g., in the Yogasutras) and
constitutes a common assumption of religious moral
psychology in India: Unhealthy frames of mind are at
the root of suffering; healthy mindsets are at the root
of liberation. The idea presupposes a virtue episte-
mology in which attitudinal character flaws are inter-
twined with errors of cognition, and error is
abandoned and replaced with certainty only if the
whole person cultivates and masters the highest moral,
attitudinal, attentional, and cognitive virtue.
However, Buddhist philosophers often separate, at
least theoretically, the processes that transcend the
kles ́as(meditative processes, or bhavana) from those
that transcend error (cognitive-meditation process of
correct seeing and discernment, or dars ́ana). In the MA-
HAYANAtradition, the distinction is summarized in the
idea that rending the veil of the kles ́as(kles ́a-avarana)
is only part of the process of liberation. A separate cog-
nitive shift is needed, overcoming the obscuration
caused by a veil that covers the objects of cognition (the
veil called jñeya-avarana), a veil maintained by the ha-
bitual tendency to cognize by way of dualities: being/
nonbeing, self/object, and so forth.
The preceding theoretical constructs sometimes
parallel and sometimes overlap with the idea that acts
of mentation and acts of manifest behavior generate
bodily changes that, although unseen, are powerful
determinants of future experience and behavior. This
unmanifest transformation is known as avijñapti
(“lacking the capacity to make itself noticeable,” hence,
that which is “unnoticed, unreported, latent, not man-
ifest”) and is a type of material or bodily change. Gen-
erally mental states are, by definition, nonmanifest,
and Buddhist thinkers do not appear to have explored
the possibility of unconscious conflicts or processes.The theory of the avijñaptiand the vasanasdo not
appear to have cross-fertilized in any significantly
productive manner. Although both theoretical con-
structs explain in part how contradictory, unexpected,
or unwilled behavior can occur, they were not used to
explain inner conflict or struggles between the for-
bidden and the tolerated. Nonetheless, one may argue
that Buddhist philosophers, especially in India, strug-
gled with the idea that some of the most potent de-
terminants of human experience and behavior are not
readily accessible to consciousness, much less to will-
ful control. Thus, suffering in general was understood
to be more than simply the awareness of painful states,
cognitions, and vicissitudes: The most powerful and
pervasive form of suffering is understood only by the
saints, for it is the innately or inherently painful na-
ture of the very construction (sam ̇skara-duhkhata) of
the person’s psychosomatic makeup. It is the pro-
found ache behind the conscious and unconscious,
the ever-frustrated attempt to hold on to the false idea
of a self. Suffering is, therefore, like desire and delu-
sion, a pervasive free-floating drive, a thirstlike un-
quenchable drive that pushes us not only toward
sense-enjoyment, but toward wanting to be and want-
ing not to be.These principles help explain in part the process by
which a sentient being effects psychosomatic move-
ments in the direction of either psychic health or psy-
chic “dis-ease.” However, to explain the possibility of
liberation, the scholastics had to propose explanations
for the possibility of error. With regard to this prob-
lem, the fundamental question for the Buddhist
philosopher was how one could see a self where there
was none, or see an object of desire and pleasure in
phenomena that were inherently undesirable and
painful. Furthermore, if our perception of the world is
in essence a construct of mentation (abhisamskrta),
one needed to explain the process of verbal and men-
tal reification that led to delusion and suffering.The theory made a common assumption that con-
vention constructs, or at the very least, distorts reality
—either through a process of discursive elaboration
(prapañca) or conceptual imagination (vikalpa). A key
term behind such theories was that of “conventionalPSYCHOLOGY