Sacred Texts: Buddhism

Buddhism in Translations - § 34. Attachment.

Henry Clarke WarrenPali Canon TranslationsTheravada Buddhism

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This is a passage from the *Visuddhimagga* (Path of Purification), a foundational 5th-century Theravāda Buddhist treatise by Buddhaghosa — specifically section 34 on "Attachment" (upādāna). The text systematically analyzes the four types of attachment recognized in Abhidhamma psychology: attachment to sensual pleasure, to heresy (wrong views), to fanatical conduct (believing ritual austerities produce purity), and to the assertion of a self/Ego. The central argument is that each attachment arises from a corresponding "perverse" misapprehension of reality — mistaking the impure for pure, misery for happiness, the non-self for a self, and the transient for permanent — and that contemplating the five aggregates (form, sensation, perception, predispositions, consciousness) correctly dissolves each one. A notably distinctive feature is the threefold sequential analysis: the order in which attachments *arise* in a given life (ego-assertion first, sensual pleasure last), the order in which they are *abandoned* on the path (ego-assertion and heresy first via the Path of Conversion; sensual pleasure only at full Arhatship), and the pedagogical order in which they are *taught* (sensual pleasure first, as most conspicuous). The vivid simile comparing desire to a robber groping in darkness and attachment to the robber seizing his loot illustrates the scholastic text's occasional rhetorical sharpness.

Buddhism in Translations - § 34. Attachment.

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