Asavas

☸️ Asavas (Pali: āsavā, sg. āsava) - cravings, intoxicating flows

Translated in various ways: cravings, defilements, flows, intoxicants. Literally, āsava is what “flows” or “seeps”: both liquor fermenting in a vessel and pus oozing from a wound. In the same way, asavas both intoxicate the mind and poison it. The phrase “destruction of the asavas” (āsavakkhaya) appears often in the suttas. It is one of the standard canonical formulas for attaining arahantship.

🍷 Four kinds of cravings

In the suttas, the asavas are often classified as follows:

• kāmāsava - craving for sensual pleasures
• bhavāsava - craving for existence, clinging to life
• avijjāsava - ignorance, not knowing things as they are
• diṭṭhāsava - attachment to views

Importantly, asavas are deep defiling influences that feed many specific states and lead to specific actions and behaviour. From the Buddhist point of view, anger, envy and gloom are only ripples on the surface, while the asavas are the deep currents that can produce them.

⏳ Why not “kleshas”

Mental defilements (kilesa) are a broad category of unwholesome qualities such as greed, hatred and delusion. Asavas are specific, deeply rooted influences that sustain samsaric existence.

Asavas are not always noticeable. A calm mind is less subject to their influence. But a temporary calming of the mind does not yet mean the asavas are destroyed. As soon as the right conditions arise, they show up again. Asavas are fully exhausted only through wisdom developed on the path leading to liberation.

🧰 Eradicating the asavas

Described in detail in MN 2, the Sabbāsava Sutta. The sutta lists seven methods: seeing, restraint of the senses, proper use of necessities (clothing, food, shelter, medicine), endurance, avoidance, removal of unwholesome thoughts and development of the factors of awakening. At the root of each method, however, lie wise attention (yoniso manasikāra) and seeing the four noble truths.

💡 In practice

Asavas are hard to see directly, but you can work them out from their traces. With wise attention to yourself, it is enough to catch yourself on the word “again”, for example:

• again the same kind of irritation,
• again that same chthonic gloom on a Friday evening,
• again the thought “I wish I could drop everything and move to Bali”.

Here the point is to notice the familiar aftertaste: not the thought or sensation itself, but what lies deeper than the surface reaction. Which current is feeding them right now?