Āsavas are deep undercurrents or predispositions that induce us to live unsatisfactory lives, to misconstrue the world, to misdirect our motivations in that misconstrued world, and to try vainly to establish a footing for an unconvincing personal identity as an enduring misdirected agent in a misconstrued world, and to want to do it all over again. The concept is clearly of fundamental importance in the Dhamma, for āsavakkhaya ‘destruction of the āsavas’ is a synonym for awakening (bodhi) alongside vimutti ‘liberation,’ and nibbāna ‘extinguishing’ (of existence). However, āsavas seem to get less attention than the others in modern circles.
There is no standard translation of āsava into English. Bhikkhu Bodhi uses ‘taints.’ Literally āsava means ‘in-’ or ‘out-flow’ or ‘in-’ or ‘out-flux’ in Pali. It also refers in Pali to a canker or ulceration (which suggest ‘corruption’), or to fermentation. Inflow or influx also suggests ‘influence.’ Āsava is translated in almost all of these ways into English. To my mind ‘taint’ and ‘influence’ do not do justice to the importance of the āsavas as the antithesis of awakening. My preferred translation is ‘corrupting influence,’ much as it is applied to attention-stealing social media, to purveyors of addictive drugs, and to celebrity worship.
The corrupting influences are human predispositions toward:
- sensuality (kāmāsava),
- existence (bhavāsava),
- ignorance (avijjāsava).
Sometimes a fourth āsava is added, which we will set aside,
- views (dhiṭṭāsava).
It is not often noticed that the effects of first three corrupting influences are spelled out in the twelve links of “dependent coarising,” whose unraveling leads indeed to awakening. In fact the whole chain might be be simplified as (note: ‘→’ should be read as ‘gives rise to’)
ignorance → sensuality → existence.
Ignorance thereby would unfold into the first six links of dependent coarising,
ignorance → formations → consciousness → name&form→ sixfold sphere → contact →
Ignorance is the drive to construct a highly presumptive, conceptual world of experience “out there,” based in sense data (rūpa), on existing dispositions (sankhāra) and on a variety of observable cognitive faculties. Ignorance is particularly evident in contact, a dualistic self-other interaction in an unmediated “billiard ball” world of self-existing, enduring, interacting objects.
Sensuality would unfold into the next three links,
→ feeling → craving → appropriation →
Sensuality is the affective drive to prefer, crave and possess select objects of contact in the quest for personal advantage. These affective factors determine attention and thereby attract consciousness. They also drive behavioral actions and thereby relate to ethics. Craving and clinging are also immediate sources of suffering.
Existence would unfold into the final three links,
→ existence → birth → this mass of suffering
Existence results from the drive to establish, adhere to and protect an enduring, coherent “personal identity,” transcending a single life, in a world primarily defined in terms of self-centered interests. Personal identity tends toward a large personal footprint in the world, doubling down on craving and clinging, and thereby suffering.
In my attempt to understand what these corrupting influences are, and where they come from, I (ever the naturalist) have recently turned to evolutionary psychology. I propose that the āsavas are well-grounded adaptations to evolutionary pressures for individual success in highly competitive physical and social environments. This is perhaps clearest in the case of sensuality, since it drives the acquisition of the mandatory resources for genetic survival to ensure nourishment, security and procreation, and to avoid threats.
Existence is built upon an ontological conviction of self, and its forward-looking nature is necessary for asserting oneself a competitive environment to ensure future success. Personal identity is to a human what a dam is to a beaver, but at a more complex level. It can be thought of as a game plan for success, for acquiring certain sets of skills, for acquiring and protecting resources to be held in reserve, for repelling threats, and for framing one’s agenthood conceptually in ways that support quick effective responses. These constitute a personal “footprint” that puts the human intellect to work in improving the prospect of success.
Ignorance is the most critical āsava, but the most difficult to understand. It has to do with how we apprehend the world by default, alongside the prospect of apprehending otherwise. Our default way of apprehending the world is to presume that there is an objective reality “out there” independent of our awareness of it, but immediately accessible to us; all we have to do is show up,
There it is, right there: your plush arm chair, the cat on your lap, the pipe in your mouth, a cup of tea, a snifter of cognac and a dog-eared copy of Buddhist Life / Buddhist Path on your side table, as you are engaged in scholarly conversation with a visiting colleague.
For the Buddha things are not that simple. Hoffman, in his book The Case against Reality, gets at the same thing, and conveniently frames it for us in evolutionary terms as “fitness beats truth.” He argues that natural selection has not adapted perception to reveal truth “out there,” but to guide our actions in ways that supportive of evolutionary success. For instance, we seem to perceive certain things “out there” as sweet, and therefore desirable. We point to a bonbon “out there” and say, “That is sweet.” This is not a quality that a chemist could discover in a molecule “out there,” but is rather reflects an adaptive behavior at work to restore blood sugar. Hoffman goes further to suggest that perception actually serves to hide the complexity of what is “out there,” not to reveal it, much as a computer’s graphical interface hides the various processes that are set in motion within the computer when you simply click on an icon. The first six links of dependent coarising are in fact a description of the cognitive mechanisms at work in constructing our experience of what we presume is “out there,” much as a graphical interface constructs the user’s experience of what is happening “in there.”
In short, I’ve argued that the āsavas are right there in the human gene pool, as sets of evolutionary adaptations that have served the successful proliferation of the human race. So, what is the problem? Why not keep them around? Why do we seek āsavakkhaya ‘destruction of the āsavas,’ through understanding dependent coarising and through practicing the noble eightfold path? Why do we call the āsavas corrupting influences? Without them, aren’t we rather helpless in a cruel world? Aren’t we likely to get eaten by a tiger, to starve for want of food, or to become impoverished by a con artist intent on growing his already huge personal footprint?
Let me leave the reader with some homework:
Submit your answer in the comments below to the question: “Why not keep the āsavas around, so we don’t get eaten by a tiger?”[Hint: there is a one-word Buddhist answer, and many ways to elaborate on it.]
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