Asmita is the second of Patanjali's five kleshas in the Yoga Sutra, the afflicted identification of pure awareness, purusha, with the instrument through which it sees, chiefly the intellect, buddhi. Yoga Sutra 2.6 states it directly: asmita is when the power of seeing and the power of the instrument of seeing appear as if they were one and the same. Where avidya is the root confusion the other four kleshas grow from, asmita is that confusion's first concrete form, a bounded sense of I built from what is actually a borrowed instrument rather than the seer itself.
Facts
Origins
Place of OriginIndia, in the tradition traditionally associated with Patanjali; no more specific locale is recorded for the text's composition. 1 Origin of the NameSanskrit asmita, from asmi, I am, plus the abstract suffix ta, literally I-am-ness or egoism; related to but kept distinct in Patanjali's own vocabulary from ahamkara, the more general term for ego or self-sense used elsewhere in Indian philosophy. 1 Attributed Author / CompilerDefined at Yoga Sutra 2.6 as the second of the five kleshas Patanjali names at 2.3, and elaborated across the classical commentarial tradition on the text, including Vyasa's Yogabhashya. 1 Status
Status Within the TraditionStandard teaching, not formally defined 1 Doctrinal Status DetailThe second of Patanjali's five kleshas, avidya, asmita, raga, dvesha and abhinivesha, named as a set at Yoga Sutra 2.3; classical commentary treats it as the pivot point where the root ignorance of avidya first crystallizes into the personal sense of a separate self, from which raga, dvesha and abhinivesha are then said to follow in turn. 1 Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceThe affliction of mistaking pure awareness for the intellect that merely serves it, the felt sense of being a bounded I built from a borrowed instrument, the second of Patanjali's five kleshas and the point at which root ignorance becomes personal. 1 Disputed
Origin PeriodNamed within the Yoga Sutra, a text whose own compilation and dating remain unsettled among scholars: traditional accounts place Patanjali well before the Common Era, while modern philological scholarship has proposed dates ranging from roughly the second century BCE to as late as the fourth or fifth century CE, with the text possibly compiled from older material rather than composed at a single sitting. 1 Connections
Attested In
Named the second of the five kleshas at Yoga Sutra 2.6.
Source The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and CommentaryEdwin F. Bryant
Belongs to Tradition
Source The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and CommentaryEdwin F. Bryant
Derived From
Yoga Sutra 2.4: avidya is the field in which the other kleshas arise.
In Language
Opposes
Asmita, the klesha of ego or I-am-ness, is directly negated by anatta, the Buddhist doctrine of non-self; recorded as a vice-opposes-doctrine dedicated-remedy edge on the same pattern already live for Lobha (Greed) opposes Aparigraha, since no live virtue entity in this atlas names viveka or vairagya, the remedies Patanjali's own text names for this klesha.
Originates in Language
Source The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and CommentaryEdwin F. Bryant
Related To
Avidya, Doctrines The five kleshas Patanjali names as a set at Yoga Sutra 2.3, in the order the sutra gives them: avidya, asmita, raga, dvesha, abhinivesha.
Source The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and CommentaryEdwin F. Bryant
Raga (Attachment), Vices The five kleshas Patanjali names as a set at Yoga Sutra 2.3, in the order the sutra gives them: avidya, asmita, raga, dvesha, abhinivesha.
Source The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and CommentaryEdwin F. Bryant
Sources
1. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary
Edwin F. Bryant, North Point Press, 2009Originates in Language: Sanskrit, Stored language property on this entity, cited to this source: sanskrit
Divinity Atlas Entity Records, First Edition
the entity's is-shadow flag, carried forward from the first edition's own entity catalogue, marking this vice as the shadow or corrupted form of a virtue in this atlas's taxonomy
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