Doctrine

Akusala and the Three Poisons

Also Known As unwholesome action · the three unwholesome roots · the three poisonsOriginal Term akusala-mula (Pali)

Action, Rebirth and Consequence

Origin Present in the earliest strata of the Pali discourses; systematised in the Abhidhamma and in Buddhaghosa's Visuddhimagga in the fifth century CE.

Buddhism has no word that translates as sin without distortion, and the difference is structural rather than a matter of tone. Sin in the Abrahamic sense presupposes a lawgiver whose command is broken and whose pardon is at issue. The Buddhist analysis contains neither term. An act is akusala, unwholesome or unskilful, because of the state of mind it grows from and the results it sets in motion, and its opposite, kusala, is wholesome for the same reasons. Three roots are named. Lobha is greed, the mind reaching for what it wants. Dosa is hatred, the mind pushing away what it does not. Moha is delusion, the not-seeing that lets both operate. These are the akusala-mula, the unwholesome roots, and every unwholesome act is traced to one of them. Their absence is not merely neutral, but is itself named as the wholesome root. Later usage, and Mahayana usage in particular, calls the three poisons, and paints them at the hub of the wheel of becoming as a cock, a snake and a pig, each biting the tail of the next. The acts themselves are enumerated as ten courses of unwholesome action: three of body, killing, taking what is not given and sexual misconduct; four of speech, false speech, divisive speech, harsh speech and idle talk; and three of mind, covetousness, ill will and wrong view. That the last three are states rather than deeds is the point of the list. Intention is where the analysis locates the act. Nothing here is forgiven, because the account contains nobody positioned to forgive. What is done ripens. The five precepts a lay follower takes are worded as training rules the speaker undertakes, not as commands received, and breaking one incurs no penalty from anyone. Monastic discipline does have confession, and the fortnightly recitation of the rule includes the acknowledgment of offences, but that restores a monk's standing in the community rather than cancelling a result.

Facts

Origins

Held By

Buddhism 1

Origin Period

Present in the earliest strata of the Pali discourses; systematised in the Abhidhamma and in Buddhaghosa's Visuddhimagga in the fifth century CE. 2

Origin of the Name

The three roots are called poisons in later usage, Mahayana usage especially, and are painted at the hub of the wheel of becoming as a cock, a snake and a pig. 1

The Claim

Akusala names unwholesome or unskilful mental states, and the three poisons, greed, hatred and delusion, are held in Buddhist teaching to be their root. 4

Doctrinal category (class)

Action, Rebirth and Consequence 2

Status

Status Within the Tradition

Standard teaching, not formally defined 1Buddhism

The standard analysis of harmful action, held across Buddhist schools.

Standing as a Comparative Category

A standard analytic category in the study of religion 4

Doctrinal Category

Action, Rebirth and Consequence 1

Structure

Five acts are classed as of immediate result, their consequence not deferrable to a later life: killing one's mother, killing one's father, killing an arhat, wounding a Buddha, and causing schism in the monastic community. 1

Structure

Three unwholesome roots, greed (lobha), hatred (dosa) and delusion (moha), from which ten courses of unwholesome action follow: three of body, four of speech and three of mind. 1

Attestation

Earliest Attestation

The discourses of the Pali canon, where the roots and the ten courses of action are set out in the Middle Length and the Connected collections. 3

Meaning in the Attesting Source

Kusala and akusala are rendered wholesome and unwholesome, or skilful and unskilful. Neither word carries the sense of an offence against a lawgiver, and the tradition has no term that does. 1

Position Profile

Key Text

The Abhidhamma literature analyses akusala states systematically, cataloguing the mental factors that accompany unwholesome consciousness. 4

Belief

Defining Doctrinal Position

The three poisons are traditionally depicted at the centre of the Buddhist wheel of life as a pig, a snake and a rooster, each biting the tail of the next, driving the cycle of rebirth. 4

Learn More

Why This Is Not Sin

It is tempting to file the Buddhist analysis of harmful action as another tradition's doctrine of sin, in a milder key. It is not that, and the mismatch is structural rather than a matter of severity.

Sin, in the traditions that use the word, requires a lawgiver. There is a command, an authority behind it, a breach, and a question of pardon. Every one of those terms is missing here. What the Buddhist texts assess is whether an act is kusala or akusala, wholesome or unwholesome, sometimes rendered skilful and unskilful, and the assessment is made on two grounds: the state of mind the act grows out of, and what the act produces. An unwholesome act is not unwholesome because a rule forbade it. It is unwholesome because it grows from greed, hatred or delusion, and because it ripens into suffering.

Two consequences follow that a reader coming from a juridical model will not expect. The first is that the precepts are not commandments. The five a lay follower takes are phrased as training rules that the speaker undertakes, in the first person, and breaking one incurs no penalty from any authority, because no authority imposed it. The second is that there is nothing here to forgive, since nobody occupies the position from which forgiveness would be given. What has been done ripens; the useful question is what to do now.

Monastic practice has to be described carefully, because it looks like an exception. The Vinaya does have confession of offences, and the fortnightly recitation of the code is preceded by monks declaring theirs. That procedure restores a monk's standing in his community, which is a real and important thing. It is discipline, and it does not undo a karmic result.

Three Roots and Ten Courses

The analysis is built downward from three roots. Lobha is greed, the mind reaching toward what it wants. Dosa is hatred, the same mind pushing away what it does not want. Moha is delusion, the not-seeing that lets the other two operate unchallenged. These are the akusala-mula, the unwholesome roots, and every unwholesome act is traced back to one of them. Their absence is not treated as a neutral state but is itself named, as the wholesome root, which is a small point with large consequences: the tradition holds that the ordinary condition to be cultivated is the absence of the three rather than the presence of an opposing virtue.

Later usage, and Mahayana usage in particular, calls the three poisons, and pictures them at the hub of the wheel of becoming as a cock, a snake and a pig, each biting the tail of the one in front. The image places them at the centre of the whole diagram of rebirth, which is exactly the claim being made about them.

From the roots come ten courses of unwholesome action: three of body, killing, taking what is not given and sexual misconduct; four of speech, false speech, divisive speech, harsh speech and idle talk; and three of mind, covetousness, ill will and wrong view. That the last three are mental states rather than deeds is the point of the enumeration. Intention is where the act is located.

The comparison with the Western seven is instructive precisely where it fails. Greed and hatred have obvious counterparts among the capital sins. Delusion has none at all, and it is the root the Buddhist analysis treats as the deepest of the three.

Connections

Belongs to Tradition

Buddhism

Contrasts With

Greed / Avarice (Avaritia)

Greed appears in both schemes doing different work. Here it is one of three roots from which all unwholesome action grows, rather than one item on a list of seven.

Mortal and Venial Sin

Not a milder grading of the same thing. Nothing here is forgiven, because the account contains nobody positioned to forgive.

Original sin

Nothing is inherited in this analysis and no command is broken. An act is unwholesome by what it grows from and by what it produces.

Papa and Punya

The same mechanism read without a self. Buddhism denies the enduring person to which the residue would attach.

Sin as Illness in Orthodox Theology

Two frameworks that diagnose harmful states and treat them rather than pardoning them, reached from opposite premises: one from a physician who is God, the other from an account with no lawgiver in it at all.

Wrath (Ira)

Hatred, the second unwholesome root, is the nearest counterpart to wrath among the capital sins, and it is a root rather than an entry on a schedule. The third root, delusion, has no counterpart among the seven at all.

Depicted In

Wheel of Life (Bhavacakra) Thangka

The three kleshas of attachment, hatred and ignorance sit at the wheel's center as a distinct element of the composition from the six realms of samsara and the twelve links of dependent origination that occupy the rest of the wheel. This edge names that specific doctrinal content, the three poisons themselves, distinct from the wheel's other depicts edges, to Karma and Samsara, which name its broader cosmological subject rather than the three root afflictions at its center.

Source Wheel of Life, accession C2006.66.131 (Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art)Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, catalogue entry; Elena Pakhoutova (Senior Curator) with Smarthistory

Instances

Dvesha (Aversion)

Dvesha is the second of the three root poisons.

Moha (Delusion)

Moha is the third and root most of the three poisons.

Raga (Attachment)

Raga is the first of the three root poisons.

Positions on This Question

Gelug

The three poisons are held in the Gelug school.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Jodo Shinshu

The three poisons are held in Jodo Shinshu, and the teaching is addressed precisely to the being who cannot remove them.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Jonang

The three poisons are held in the Jonang school.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Kagyu

The three poisons are held in the Kagyu school.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Karma Kagyu

The three poisons are held in the Karma Kagyu school.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Madhyamaka

The three roots of unwholesome action are held in Madhyamaka.

Source An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices, 2nd editionPeter Harvey

Mahayana

The three roots of unwholesome action, greed, hatred and delusion, are held in Mahayana, and the bodhisattva literature adds the further fault of abandoning beings.

Source An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices, 2nd editionPeter Harvey

Nichiren

The three poisons are held in Nichiren Buddhism.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Nichiren Shoshu

The three poisons are held in Nichiren Shoshu.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Nyingma

The three poisons are held in the Nyingma school.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Pure Land

The three poisons are held in the Pure Land schools, and the sutra's address to beings who cannot free themselves of them is the premise of the vow.

Source Larger Sukhavativyuha SutraAnonymous

Rinzai

The three poisons are held in the Rinzai school.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Sakya

The three poisons are held in the Sakya school.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Shingon

The three poisons are held in Shingon.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Soka Gakkai

The three poisons are held in Soka Gakkai.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Soto

The three poisons are held in the Soto school.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Tendai

The three poisons are held in Tendai.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Theravada

Theravada holds an act unwholesome by the roots it grows from, greed, hatred and delusion, rather than as an offence against a lawgiver.

Source The Connected Discourses of the Buddha (Samyutta Nikaya)Bhikkhu Bodhi (trans.)

Tiantai

The three poisons are held in Tiantai.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Tibetan Buddhism

The three poisons are held across the Tibetan schools and are drawn at the hub of the wheel of becoming as the animals that drive it.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Vajrayana

The three poisons are held in Vajrayana, and the tantric claim upon them is that they are transformed rather than only abandoned.

Source An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices, 2nd editionPeter Harvey

Zen

The three poisons are held in Zen.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Related To

Dependent origination

Delusion, the third unwholesome root, is the ignorance that heads the chain of dependent arising.

Do not kill (First Precept)

The first of the ten courses of unwholesome action, and the first training rule a lay follower undertakes.

Karma

The mechanism by which an unwholesome act produces its result.

Sources

1. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism

Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., Princeton University Press, 2014View the Source

2. Visuddhimagga (The Path of Purification)

Buddhaghosa

3. The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (Majjhima Nikaya)

Bhikkhu Nanamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi (trans.), Wisdom Publications, 1995

4. The Foundations of Buddhism

Rupert Gethin, Oxford University Press, 1998View the Source

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