(Moha is a state of mind characterised by delusion and fogginess, a kind of inebriation without alcohol — the mental debilitation will be elaborated on later in this topic.)
Most people would object very strongly if told they were not only predisposed to lust, hatred, and delusion, but actually driven — to a large extent — by those same unwholesome forces. In fact, these are known as the Three Unwholesome Roots because they are the source from which all unwholesome behaviour springs. Think about that. Could it possibly be true that much of your behaviour is rooted in lust, hatred, and delusion, over which you normally exercise hardly any control?
Lust is desirous avidity. An affinity towards things that are liked (or preferred) progresses into active desire for those things, with volitional attempts to acquire them, absorb them, internalise them, possess them as personal options for convenient enjoyment, cling and hold on to them. If the volitional attempts cannot be fulfilled, then the hankering, desire, wish, want, felt for the desired things persists. If the attempts do succeed, then there is a momentary feeling of satisfaction, followed soon after by desire again, perhaps for more. Only if there is a bodily mechanism for satiation (e.g., with appetites like hunger, thirst, etc.) will the desire, avidity, greed, be abated, and even then, only temporarily.
There are many synonyms for lust and avidity — avarice, cupidity, and rapacity are some of the stronger words that connote moral censure, but lust or greed does not have to be extreme to be unwholesome. Most people will have little difficulty identifying specific individuals to condemn for their avarice. But then, those same identified individuals will have even less difficulty justifying their motivations to themselves. Consider this: if the circumstances and opportunities enabling the satisfying of greed and accumulation of wealth were somehow available to you, would you honestly refuse to take advantage of them as long as the going was good? Would most people refuse? Are most people really any less greedy than those they condemn?
People often think it wise to “save for a rainy day”. Many, however, lose all sense of proportion, and the rainy day that they save for gradually grows into The Deluge. Even this is understandable if confined to savings derived from income at work, but it often happens that the individual still actively strives to increase his sources of income even after he has amassed assets that far exceed his needs for a comfortable retirement, and also the needs of his dependants for the rest of their lives. Surely, this is disproportionate greed, blind to its own obsession.
What are the things people feel they need for a decent life? Food, shelter, clothing, health, security, money, entertainment… Add whatever else you think necessary, but do give it some thought.
When will your list be complete, and when is enough, enough for any single item on your list? Is it ever? What is a decent life? When is “decent” good enough? If you already have more than your home can conveniently store, well, then you need a bigger home.
People like to think, “The more I have, the more at peace will I be.” They see only the additional options and positive advantages that come with having more, but shut their minds to the burdens of excess. The more you have, the more care must you devote to safeguarding what you have. Robbers, thieves, tax-collectors, extortionists, swindlers, importuners — there are many who would gladly alleviate your burdens of ownership: it’s greed versus greed. More care means higher expenses, more worries, less serenity, less time for beneficial contemplation and reflection. Is this what life is all about?
“The more I have in excess, the more baggage will I have to carry, and the less at peace will I be.” This requires honest contemplation to acknowledge, and most people are unable and unwilling to contemplate with honesty. What good is all their possessions to them when it’s time for them to go?
This craving for more, and yet more, this unthinking and unreflecting craving: is it not an innate driving force that controls individual behaviour? How many people do you know who are immune from this incessant craving? Are you yourself immune?
Hatred is angry aversion, dislike for something, accompanied by a desire to get rid of it, if possible by destroying it to ensure that it will never be encountered again. That hated something may be an object, a living thing, a person, a group, an event, or a set of circumstances. Hatred is characterised by an angrily emotional desire to expunge the thing, wipe it out completely, eradicate it, exterminate it, be rid of it once and for all. While the hatred is felt, no compromise is tolerated.
Hatred begins with resentment, aversion, dislike, or disapproval, which the person indulges in and intensifies — rapidly, if this has become habitual. The affected person indulges in his aversion and reinforces it willingly. Mindlessly, he makes no attempt to curb his intensifying aversion, and allows himself to become emotionally overwhelmed and consumed by it. He does not reflect on his disproportionate reaction, or on the long-term harm he inflicts on himself with his hatred. He derives a perverse gratification from feeding the growing flames of his unwholesome passion. He justifies his hatred by blaming the hated object as its valid cause, when, in fact, he built up the hatred entirely within his own mind.
Hate originates from within, but the hateful person cannot see this, nor does he want to. He is obsessed with getting rid of the object of aversion, and thinks that will bring him permanent satisfaction. But it never does. Become rid of one hated thing, and the undisciplined mind will continue to find others to take its place.
When hatred is directed against a person or group, it is always associated with ill-will, or even malice. Ill-will is the evil wish or desire for unhappy events and circumstances to befall someone. Malice is active ill-will, the deliberate bringing about of those unhappy events and circumstances. When a person wishes another ill, he has at least a certain degree of hatred towards him at that moment. If the opportunity arises, and if he thinks he can get away with it, he will wreak his malice upon the other. He will recognise neither the evil that he does another, nor the harm he does himself by raising and nurturing ill-will, malice, and hatred.
Too often — much more frequently than you might realise — someone feels intense dislike and ill-will towards a perceived category of people: a particular nationality, a race, a religion, a social class, an occupation, the unemployed, people who dress a certain way, a rival sports team or its supporters, etc. To him, whether his animosity is rational or not is irrelevant. If he sees a chance, he will act with malice and blatant unfairness against the interests of any individual whom he identifies — rightly or wrongly — to represent the category he dislikes.
Overcome by his malevolence, he does not care about the immorality of his action, or whether he does the other a gross injustice. He tries to inflict upon the other as much distress or loss as he can, and he gloats when he succeeds.
You don’t have to think very hard to identify examples of this kind of evil animosity. Many national leaders show it in their public statements. Everyday, the papers are full of examples, in every page of world news, local news, business and sports news, when personalities unwittingly reveal their viciousness.
There are malicious people who seek to arouse in others hatred directed at selected targets. They actively infect others with their own evil. This is easily achieved, as most people willingly and indiscriminately indulge in their emotions, and, when emotionally aroused, are too stupid in their self-conceit to realise they have been manipulated. Evil fools incite hatred, and morons get used.
Again, hatred does not have to be extreme to be unwholesome.
Wisdom is truly rare. Genuine wisdom, it must be pointed out, does not come spontaneously with age. A young fool, in all likelihood, will mature only into an old one, and rarely does intelligence in spring and summer ripen into wisdom in autumn. Wisdom is not just intelligence plus the experience and skill gathered with the years. In fact, brilliance and achievement in youth often ousts the deep humility required for genuine wisdom to germinate.
Moha, on the contrary, is widespread. It is a combination of delusion and an unknowing fogginess in the mind.
To be deluded is to be deceived into believing as true, something that is actually false. The deluded person believes his delusion: if he didn’t, you wouldn’t call him deluded. Because of his delusion, he behaves in ways that accord with his deceived perceptions and beliefs. One who has seen through a deceit or illusion for what it is, on the other hand, will not be fooled, even if he had believed it before.
When a person is deluded, he stays deluded so long as he does not detect the deception, and he will hold on to his deluded beliefs. If told he has been deceived, his untrained mind will even make him insist he is right. And if he has built up a large system of beliefs, values and motivations founded on his misperceptions and misinterpretations, his mind will simply refuse to entertain any possibility of delusion. (Reflect on your own mental reaction on being told that you are under the influence of delusion.)
Moha also acts like a dark fog of unknowing that envelops the mind, covering it like a leaden cloud and surrounding it closely on all sides. The mental vision is cramped by the dark fog looming in, so that it cannot penetrate beyond the nearest past and future.
In terms of time, the ordinary mind is extremely near-sighted, and is unable to recognise the causal connections between actions and their long-term consequences — the more distant past and future are shrouded in the fogs of moha. The ordinary person’s world is his little clearing in the fog, and this shifting bubble around the present contains all of his reality while he is alive and conscious.
Often, the fog pervades into the mind, which then becomes dull and lethargic, as if drugged, apathetic, drowsy, desiring sleep, to yield fully to unknowing. If a person over-indulges in sensory excitement, his mind becomes fatigued and cannot resist the fog floating in. If, on the other hand, he does not get enough sensory stimulation, he becomes bored, and is likely to draw the fog in to blanket the discomfort of boredom.
Even when he is wide awake, moha causes his attention to attach and cling in such a way that he is unknowing of what is happening in and to his mind, conscious only of the thoughts and reactions spun off by his attention.
By this combination of delusion, fogginess, and unknowing, moha debilitates the mind, nullifying much of its potential abilities.
The ordinary person thus becomes a slave to the demands of his body. He does everything he can to please his body, and does not look beyond to wonder if he could be doing better things with his life. He does not reflect on better long-term goals that will provide genuine benefit which is not merely transient, and he does not set himself in a direction that will enable him to eventually achieve these goals.
Because of his unthinking obsessions, he regards his worldly pursuits as the sole purpose and meaning of life. Fogged in without a more far-reaching and truer perspective of life, he cares only about concerns that are ultimately trivial and even irrelevant.
Whereas moha, whether as delusion or as the fogginess of unknowing, can be present without lust or hatred, lust and hatred cannot arise without moha. It is moha, particularly through delusion, that gives rise to each of the other two unwholesome roots. The worse the moha, the worse all three unwholesome roots. Anyone given to habitual excesses of lust or hatred is therefore badly affected by delusion.
Conversely, the more attenuated moha has become, the weaker must lust and hatred be. When moha is completely destroyed, all three unwholesome roots are destroyed. To rid oneself of moha so as to gain access to Reality, both the delusion and the mental fogginess must be overcome and eliminated.