nyon mongs

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ཉོན་མོངས
Skt. kleshas. Emotions, conflicting/negative/obscuring [RY]

• Dissonant Mental States [GD]

affliction [thd]

klesha, emotions, emotional (responses, imbalance, disturbing processes, instability, upset, obscuration), gloomy, depressed, worried, vexed, (conflicting, turbulent, disturbing, negative) emotions, instinctive forces, passions, affliction, defilement [JV]

klesha[s] [IW]

klesha[s] [sems kyi rgyu'am byed pa ma zhi ba, [turbulent] emotion, negative, emotional defilement [klesha] passions, affliction, emotionality, delusion, affect, bad thought, addiction, conflicting emotions [Gd-mk] disturbed/fettering passions, something that is difficult, hardship, that which muddies the stream of awareness lus sems gdung ba'i dka' las sam ngal dub dang, mi dge ba'i las bskul bas rang rgyud rab tu ma zhi bar byed pa'i sems byung [IW]

afflictive emotion; emotionally tainted [RB]

klesha 1) disturbed, weary/ troubled/ miserable; turbulent. 2) disturbing emotions, negative emotion. passions, affliction, emotionality, delusion, affect, bad thought, conflicting emotions, fettering passions; [something that is difficult which muddies the stream of awareness], hardship; Def: sems kyi rgyu'am byed pa ma zhi ba [RY]

Afflictive mental factors, or negative emotions (Tib. nyon mongs, Skt : (klesha) : all mental events born from ego-clinging, that disturb the mind and obscures it. The five principal afflictive mental factors, which are sometimes called "mental poisons", are attachment, hatred, ignorance, envy and pride. They are the main causes of both immediate and long term sufferings. [MR]

Discussion

The afflictions are factors which disturb the mind. There are six root afflictions: greed, hatred, delusion, pride, view and doubt. There are also many near afflictions--anger, aggression, arrogance, pretense, spite, etc.

This term is often translated as "disturbing emotions" or "negative emotions." These two translations suffer from the same faults: in addition to being wordy and clumsy, not all the afflictions are what one would call emotions in English. The view of a permanent self, for example, is an affliction (because it is a view) but it is not necessarily an emotion. One can also question whether doubt is an emotion.

Other translators use the Sanskrit term klesha. Since English speakers do not have a good understanding of what that word means and cannot look it up in the dictionary, that is not preferable.

The translation affliction has the additional benefit that it has closely related verbal and participial forms that make it easy to use understandably in a variety of contexts--afflicted, afflictive, etc. DKC