Sublime

Isn’t it the case that ever since the human race came into being, it is from this ignorance that all our errors and all our misfortunes have arisen?

And so pride, or the loss of this humility, is the root of every sin and evil.

They are a nation void of sense; there is no understanding in them. 29 If they were wise, they would understand this; they would discern what the end would be.

The most basic defilements are the triad of greed, aversion, and delusion. Greed (lobha) is self-centered desire: the desire for pleasure and possessions, the drive for survival, the urge to bolster the sense of ego with power, status, and prestige. Aversion (dosa) signifies the response of negation, expressed as rejection, irritation,

Failing to prioritize stupidity over malice causes things like paranoia. Always assuming malice puts you at the center of everyone else’s world. This is an incredibly self-centered approach to life. In reality, for every act of malice, there is almost certainly far more ignorance, stupidity, and laziness.

This ignorance of our belonging to the sacredness of life is recognized as the root of suffering.

God uses the uneducated to confound the wise. But that doesn’t make ignorance a virtue.

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

The unwholesome roots are the three defilements we already mentioned—greed, aversion, and delusion. Any action originating from these is an unwholesome kamma. The three wholesome roots are their opposites, expressed negatively in the old Indian fashion as non-greed (alobha), non-aversion (adosa), and non-delusion (amoha). Though these are