Purifying Samskaras and Kleshas

01

What samskaras and kleshas are

Eastern spiritual traditions and Western psychology agree on one point: past experience leaves deep impressions that shape how we perceive and behave. In yogic and Buddhist terms these impressions are called samskaras, and the emotional afflictions that arise from them are called kleshas.

Samskaras are the mental impressions left by experience. In Indian philosophy, every action, intention, or intense experience leaves a trace in the deeper mind. Accumulated, these traces form vasanas, the tendencies and predispositions that shape character, habit, and reaction. They are central to the theory of karma: past deeds plant seeds in the mind that later grow into inclinations and circumstances. Christopher Wallis, a scholar of Tantra, puts it this way: when we meet a painful experience with aversion, or a pleasant one with attachment, an impression is laid down in the psyche, said to be a seed of experience that will sprout again.

Kleshas are the afflictions that disturb the mind and lead to suffering. The word means poison or defilement. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras name five: avidya (ignorance, lack of awareness), asmita (egoism, false identification with self), raga (attachment and craving), dvesha (aversion and hatred), and abhinivesha (clinging to life and fear of death). Buddhism describes the same family of states, with ignorance, craving, and aversion as the three roots that drive the cycle of suffering, samsara.

The two are closely linked. Samskaras are the latent substrate, the stored memory traces. Kleshas are what shows on the surface. Old impressions give rise to present afflictions, and those afflictions, repeated or indulged, lay down new impressions. Past conditioning triggers affliction, and affliction creates new conditioning. Breaking that loop is the aim of both spiritual practice and therapy.

02

Where they show up: psyche, karma, and the spiritual path

In the psyche, samskaras work like the building blocks of habit and identity. A psychologist might compare them to conditioned memories or schemas formed through life experience, trauma included. A child bitten by a dog may form a samskara of fear around dogs and feel anxious around them decades later, with no conscious memory of the event. The Heartfulness tradition describes how a first fear of the dark can harden into a phobia: one or two experiences flatten the grass, and repetition makes a path into a road. In this example the fear of the dark connects to several kleshas at once, fear of death (abhinivesha), dislike of discomfort (dvesha), and identification with bodily safety (asmita), all resting on a basic ignorance of one’s actual nature (avidya).

In karma theory, samskaras are the carriers of karma. Every action and intention plants a seed in the deeper layer of the being, which later bears fruit as tendencies and circumstances. Some traditions hold that this carries across lifetimes. Without taking on rebirth, the same idea can be seen in the way trauma and coping styles pass down families: a parent’s unresolved stress shapes a child’s baseline anxiety. Some holistic and Ayurvedic practitioners use the phrase ancestral samskaras for this.

On the spiritual path, samskaras and kleshas are described as impurities that veil one’s true nature. The psyche in its natural state is said to be pure, still, and content, which Yoga calls the Self (atman). Patanjali (Yoga Sutra 2.3) names the kleshas as the root of all other mental disturbance, and Sutras 2.12 to 2.14 say that as long as the roots remain, they yield karmic consequences in future experience. In Buddhism, nirvana is often defined as the end of the kleshas and so of the karma-driven cycle of rebirth. A person with no samskaras left would no longer react out of past conditioning, which is described as jivanmukta, liberated while alive. For most people the work is gradual cleansing and transformation, and contemplative paths agree that the grip of past conditioning loosens as one practices.

03

How the traditions work with them

Teachers across the ages have built detailed models for cleansing these impressions, working at the causal level, the root, as well as at the level of behavior.

Yoga

In the system codified by Patanjali, the goal is the cessation of mental fluctuations, which reveals the Self. The means are practice (abhyasa) and non-attachment (vairagya), which gradually weaken the kleshas, along with kriya yoga: discipline, self-study, and devotion.

Sutra 2.10 says the subtle afflictions are eliminated by tracing them back to their origin. This is called prati-prasava, reverse birth, and means meditating inward to dissolve the klesha at its causal seed. Some teachers, Osho among them, read this as reliving past experience in a witnessing state so its emotional charge is neutralized. Sutra 2.11 says meditation dissolves the active forms of the kleshas: by one-pointed awareness and dis-identification, we stop feeding the afflictions, and the waves of the mind subside.

Tapas, heat or disciplined effort, is said to burn samskaras to ashes. The first two limbs of the eight-limbed path, yama and niyama, are foundational because ethical living prevents new negative samskaras from forming.

The Heartfulness system adds a technique it calls Yogic Cleaning, in which practitioners imagine a divine light, or receive a transmission from a trainer, that removes samskaras from the subconscious. Heartfulness states that all the samskaras of one lifetime can be removed in one session with a trainer. This is that organization’s claim and is not part of Patanjali’s text. I include it as an example of the belief that subtle-energy practices can work directly, without slow cognitive work.

Vedanta

In Advaita Vedanta, our real nature is the pure, unattached Self. Samskaras and kleshas belong to maya, the realm of illusion and the ego-mind, so the approach is twofold: disidentify from the mind through insight, and cultivate qualities that loosen the ego’s hold. The classic practice is atma-vichara, self-inquiry, made famous by Ramana Maharshi: examine the source of the I-thought by asking who am I, and witness thoughts and emotions as passing events. Ramana taught that the mind is a bundle of thoughts and impressions, and that vasanas are destroyed on realization of the Self. For a liberated sage, the binding vasanas are said to be gone, with a few non-binding ones left for the body-mind to function.

Vedanta also prescribes preparation: karma yoga, selfless action that creates no new attachment, and bhakti, devotion, which cultivates humility and compassion. Texts describe a sequence of hearing the truth (sravana), reflecting (manana), and deep contemplation (nididhyasana).

Buddhism

Early Buddhism treats the kleshas methodically through the Noble Eightfold Path: ethical conduct prevents new afflictive states, meditation uproots them, and wisdom cuts the root of ignorance. In Theravada, mindfulness (sati) and equanimity (upekkha) let one face what arises without judgment or clinging, and vipassana develops insight into the empty, process-like nature of what we call self. The Visuddhimagga, the Path of Purification, outlines stages of insight that lead to nirvana. Practices such as the four Brahmaviharas (loving-kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity) serve as antidotes to specific kleshas, loving-kindness for anger and compassion for cruelty, and some traditions use ritual confession to ease guilt.

Mahayana adds Bodhisattva practice, cultivating generosity, patience, and wisdom for the sake of all beings. Vajrayana emphasizes transforming kleshas rather than only eliminating them: anger into mirror-like wisdom, pride into equanimity, attachment into discriminating wisdom. The saying that the poison is the medicine belongs here. Methods involve advanced meditation and visualization, and the traditions say they purify samskaras at an accelerated rate.

Tantra

In Hindu Tantra and Kashmir Shaivism the theme is embracing and transforming the shadow rather than rejecting it. Practices often work with the subtle body (pranayama, chakras, kundalini), mantra and seed syllables, and sometimes intense purging reactions called kriyas. A central principle, sva-kiya shakti, holds that the power to liberate is within our own experience. Rather than shunning negative emotion, one brings conscious awareness to it. Kshemaraja’s Recognition Sutras describe undigested experiences pushed into the subconscious where they fester, and a method of sudden total digestion, in which an experience brought into the fire of Consciousness is fully integrated and loses its power to cause future suffering.

Wallis, the tantric scholar quoted above, notes the parallel with Jungian shadow work: as one welcomes the shadow, the samskaras tied to it dissolve and become qualities one can integrate.

All of the major traditions also give lifestyle guidance for purification: dietary restraint, fasting or retreat, holy company (satsang), prayer, and chanting. Self-discipline, ethical living, and devotion are described as preventing new coarse samskaras, while meditative insight, and in some traditions grace, are held necessary for the subtle, deep-rooted ones.

04

How psychology works with the same patterns

Modern psychology has arrived at parallel methods for what are in effect samskaras (traumatic imprints, conditioning, attachment patterns) and kleshas (destructive emotions, negative core beliefs). The terminology differs, but the aims are similar: bring unconscious material into awareness, resolve the emotional charge, reframe the narrative, and integrate the experience. These are parallels, not identities. A samskara is not the same thing as a schema or a memory, and the traditions and the therapies each define their terms differently.

Trauma therapy

Severe trauma can create a somatic and emotional imprint, an experience too overwhelming to process that stays stored in the body and mind. EMDR combines recall of the memory with bilateral stimulation, and the goal is for the memory to be reprocessed so it becomes less distressing and no longer triggers the same emotional or physical response. Many clients report that afterward they can recall the event but it feels neutral, as though the charge were removed.

Somatic Experiencing and related body-based approaches work with bodily sensation and unfinished defensive responses, such as an animal shaking off a shock. Teachers of yoga draw a comparison with the work of freeing prana.

Cognitive and schema therapy

Cognitive approaches identify deeply held beliefs such as I am not safe or I am unlovable. These are the cognitive content of samskaras. Cognitive restructuring examines the evidence for these beliefs and gradually replaces them. Schema therapy works at a deeper level with lifelong patterns like abandonment, mistrust, and unworthiness, using cognitive, behavioral, and emotional techniques including reparenting the inner child. Psychoanalytic therapy aims to bring unconscious conflict into awareness, and Freud’s aim of making the unconscious conscious so we are not ruled by it parallels the work of shining awareness on the shadow. Osho and others caution that reliving a trauma without enough support can retraumatize, and modern therapies address this with a safe therapeutic alliance and paced exposure.

Parts work (IFS and ego-state therapy)

Internal Family Systems sees the psyche as made of parts that carry roles and burdens from past experience, such as a protector who triggers anger to keep people away, or an exiled child who carries the pain of rejection. Therapy involves meeting these parts, witnessing their stories, and helping them release their burdens, which are close to samskaras. IFS also describes a Self with qualities of compassion, clarity, and calm, which resembles the spiritual Self of Yoga and Vedanta. Many see IFS as a bridge between Western psychology and Eastern inner work.

Shadow work (Jungian and depth psychology)

Jung’s shadow is the collection of aspects of ourselves we have repressed or denied, often because family or society found them unacceptable. It does not disappear but affects us from the unconscious: it erupts, or is projected onto others. Jung wrote that the less a shadow is embodied in conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. This describes how the more unconscious a tendency is, the more power it has. Shadow work brings the hidden aspects to light, owns them, and integrates their energy. Methods include journaling, dialogue with inner figures, guided imagery, dream work, and writing an uncensored shadow letter. Some writers equate the shadow with samskara. I treat that as a useful parallel and not a definition.

Transpersonal and integral psychology

Stanislav Grof, Abraham Maslow, Frances Vaughan, and Ken Wilber treat psychological healing and spiritual growth as intertwined. Transpersonal therapists may use meditation, breathwork, and in some cases past-life regression. Grof’s holotropic breathwork can induce non-ordinary states in which people sometimes feel they access past-life memories or archetypal realms. Skeptics question the literal accuracy of past-life material. The view within this field is that what matters is the meaningful narrative the person reaches and the release that follows. Energy psychology such as EFT (tapping) combines exposure with attention to acupressure points, and people often report reduced distress. Holotropic breathwork can be intense, and it carries recognized cautions for people with certain medical or psychiatric conditions.

Transpersonal practitioners also emphasize the idea of an inner healer or inner wisdom, analogous to trusting the Self or the Divine. They encourage clients to use guided imagery to communicate with a symptom or pain, which sometimes produces spiritual symbols of healing, such as cleansing light poured through the memories. Hypnotherapy can overlap here: with a therapist’s guidance, a client can meet a root memory or an internal guardian of a trauma and rewrite its script. Psychology offers multiple doors to the same outcome: through the body, the narrative, the emotions, and meaning. These work best when combined, much like a holistic spiritual practice.

05

Where the two meet

In recent decades Eastern contemplative practice and Western psychotherapy have moved closer together, and combining them is now common.

Mindfulness-based therapies

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), and Dialectical Behavior Therapy teach clients to notice thoughts and feelings with non-judgmental awareness and to choose a response over reacting. MBCT has been found comparable to antidepressant medication in preventing depression relapse. In yogic terms this trains what the traditions have always done: seeing a trigger as a trigger, so the klesha has less to feed on.

Yoga therapy

Yoga is used in clinical settings, including trauma-informed classes designed to help survivors regain a sense of safety in the body. Yoga is described as reducing muscular tension, relieving stress, and easing depression. Some therapists also teach simple pranayama so a client can settle panic on the spot.

Contemplative psychotherapy

Training programs such as those at Naropa University explicitly combine Buddhist psychology with Western psychotherapy, using practices like loving-kindness or tonglen with clients who are working through self-loathing, grief, or resentment, and training the therapist’s own mindfulness. Some sessions begin with a short meditation. Many clients with a spiritual interest feel the approach fits their search for meaning better than a purely clinical frame.

Integral practice

Teachers such as Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach, Mariana Caplan, and Ken Wilber advocate pairing insight meditation retreats with therapeutic work, so that old material surfacing during a retreat can be processed and the insight stabilized. Kornfield’s phrase is that after the ecstasy comes the laundry, and that one can meditate for hours and still have neuroses if the psychological homework is not done. Jung observed that neglecting the spiritual quest can leave a person searching for meaning in symptom relief alone. The twelve-step approach to addiction reflects a related view, with its eleventh step asking for contact through prayer and meditation.

The shared point is that psychological growth and spiritual growth do not have to be separate. A person might do therapy to heal childhood wounds, practice daily meditation to manage kleshas and prevent new samskaras, and attend retreats periodically to deepen contemplative experience.

06

Practices for purification and healing

The practices below come from both worlds. Many people use several together. The common thread is conscious awareness and willingness to feel what comes up.

Meditation (mindfulness and concentration)

Meditation is foundational across nearly all traditions. Mindfulness practice teaches observing thoughts, emotions, and sensations without attachment or aversion, which in the traditions’ terms dissolves kleshas by depriving them of fuel. Vipassana, which involves scanning the body and watching sensations pass, often brings old pains and emotions to the surface, which practitioners interpret as samskaras being purged. Meditation can also bring up difficult material, so people with a trauma history or serious psychiatric condition should approach intensive practice with support.

Mantra (japa)

Mantras are sacred syllables or phrases repeated aloud or silently. In yogic lore they have vibrational power to eradicate past impressions. A Dharma teacher describes mantra as a technology to release samskaras and kleshas by bringing the mind into transcendence. Psychologically, mantra can interrupt obsessive thought loops and settle the mind, and it works as a focus tool when anger or craving threatens to overwhelm. Long-term practitioners often attribute lasting reductions in fear and craving to mantra.

Pranayama and breathwork

Pranayama has long been used to clear energetic impurities and steady the mind. Fast breaths such as bhastrika and kapalabhati energize, while slow alternate-nostril breathing settles anxiety. A deep breath signals the body to shift out of fight-or-flight. Holotropic breathwork uses controlled hyperventilation with music, and participants often report old memories and feelings surfacing and a sense that a weight has lifted. Intense forms need an experienced facilitator and are not suited to everyone.

Visualization and inner journeying

Guided visualization works with samskaras symbolically: meeting one’s younger self at the time of a trauma to offer love and support, or imagining purifying light washing through the chakras. These techniques are imaginative and often produce real emotional release and a reframed narrative. Shamanic journeying to retrieve a lost soul fragment is described as analogous to retrieving a dissociated part. These practices provide a mythic or transpersonal context that many find meaningful.

Shadow work and journaling

Writing unsent letters, dialoguing between a rational self and an angry child self, and listing recurring life themes all help uncover samskaras. A typical shadow prompt starts with whatever irritates you most in other people and asks in what ways you show, or secretly want, that quality. Self-reflection (When else have I felt this way before?) traces a klesha to its source. Affirmations are used to replace an old script with a new one, and they tend to work best alongside other work.

Expressive arts and movement

Drawing, painting, dance, music, and drama give form to what words cannot reach. The National Alliance on Mental Illness describes expressive arts as an alternative to immediately identifying and verbalizing emotional pain, and notes it may reach parts of the brain that story alone does not access. Dance and movement therapy lets people complete defensive responses that were interrupted, such as trembling or curling up.

Bodywork and energy work

Massage, craniosacral therapy, Rolfing, Reiki, and acupuncture sometimes bring up unexpected emotion, and practitioners describe the body as holding trauma in the tissue. Reiki and acupuncture are also practiced as clearing energetic blockages. Many clients nonetheless report feeling lighter and emotionally unburdened afterward, and some addiction programs use ear acupuncture for withdrawal symptoms.

EMDR and memory reconsolidation

Beyond EMDR itself (above), Brainspotting and Accelerated Resolution Therapy also work with how memories are stored and updated. In ART, the client recalls a distressing scene and then replaces the images with positive ones in a relaxed state. Clients often find the factual memory remains while the panic or heartbreak tied to it is gone or greatly reduced, which fits the idea that the brain can reprocess and the past can be reshaped.

Community and ritual

Satsang, congregation, group therapy, and support groups give a safe place to externalize samskaras and realize one is not alone. Telling one’s story until it no longer overwhelms is the logic of trauma narrative in PTSD treatment. Many cultures have healing rituals such as sweat lodge, purification baths, and fire ceremonies, and Hindu tradition has puja and yagna to atone for past karma. A ritual like burning a letter to someone who hurt you can bring closure through the body and senses, and may work partly by signaling to the psyche that it is okay to let go.

Each of these can be mixed and matched. For one person sitting in silence is the way into the deepest layers, and for another expressive dance or EMDR moves what meditation could not. One tantric teaching captures the stance behind all of them: I am willing to see whatever needs to be seen, and willing to feel whatever needs to be felt.

07

Can samskaras and kleshas be permanently cleared?

Spiritual traditions and psychology answer this differently, and both answers matter.

The spiritual view

Most Eastern traditions hold that permanent liberation is possible at the culmination of the path. In Buddhism an arhat or buddha has eliminated all kleshas, never to return, and that is essentially what nirvana means. Even before that stage, texts describe non-returners who have eliminated sensual desire and ill-will but retain subtle attachment to form. The Yogic and Vedantic view is similar: the jivanmukta has no binding samskaras left. Ramana Maharshi taught that the vasanas causing bondage are destroyed, while harmless tendencies, such as enjoying food or speaking naturally, may remain without causing rebirth or suffering. The Bhagavad Gita describes the sthitaprajna, the person of steady wisdom, who is not shaken by affliction.

Most traditions also caution that reaching zero is rare and takes extraordinary commitment or grace. For most people the process is gradual, and the realistic aim is to attenuate the kleshas. Many Hindu philosophies distinguish prarabdha karma, the portion allotted for this life that even a liberated sage lives out, from sanchita karma, the stored accumulation that enlightenment burns. A common image is the roasted seed, which looks intact but can no longer sprout. The Buddha gave an analogy of a struck bell: after awakening, old tendencies echo like a fading resonance, and with no new strike they die away. Teachers often advise treating eradication as possible while not being discouraged when old patterns return.

The psychological view

In psychology, permanently erasing an imprint is more complicated. A memory cannot simply be deleted, but its emotional impact can be greatly reduced. Someone with PTSD may never forget the event and still, after successful treatment, stop having flashbacks and high anxiety, so that the memory becomes a story and not a reliving. Under extreme stress old patterns can resurface, and many psychologists hold that complete invulnerability to triggers is unrealistic. It is more accurate to speak of integration than erasure: the painful experience becomes one part of one’s story, appropriately filed, and may even become a source of wisdom or empathy. A person who carried shame from childhood can, after therapy and inner work, recall the shaming incidents without collapsing, and hold both the knowledge that it was hard and an adult perspective that it was not their fault. At that point one might say the samskara is cleared in practical effect.

Deeply ingrained patterns such as attachment style or long-term depression often need ongoing maintenance. A person in recovery says they are always recovering and never cured, which echoes the yogic idea of eternal vigilance. Kamlesh Patel (Daaji) of the Heartfulness tradition says vigilance is never-ending because subconscious samskaras can surface at any time. There are also biological factors: someone with a genetic predisposition to bipolar disorder may need medication along with therapy and spiritual practice, which means the samskara has a physical dimension. Traditional views might see that as part of one’s karma to work with.

Energy healers and some spiritually oriented psychologists speak of permanent clearing, and claim to remove energetic cords or past-life vows that do not return. Clients often feel a marked difference, and skeptics attribute it to placebo or temporary suggestion. If the relief holds, one could say the samskara is resolved.

In summary

• On the practical level, we can transform and heal most samskaras and kleshas to the point where they no longer cause significant suffering or dysfunctional behavior. A person once tormented by trauma or consumed by anger can become stable and compassionate, and not easily triggered.
• On the ultimate level, the traditions assert a state where no afflictions ever arise again. Whether that is attainable in a human life depends on faith and experience. For most people aiming for steady progress is more realistic than aiming for zero.
• In either case, there is no scientific meter for how much remains. The lived test is that what used to upset you no longer does, or that you can meet triggers with compassion and equanimity.

The Dalai Lama emphasizes that consistent practice reduces negative emotion and raises baseline happiness, and that patience is required. The yoga teacher B.K.S. Iyengar is quoted as saying the coarse samskaras are burned off first and then the subtler ones, like polishing a diamond. Tara Brach speaks of radical acceptance, fully accepting present experience even when it is messy. Energy healers speak of raising one’s vibration so denser impressions dissolve. These are teachers’ own statements.

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Sources

• Eastern Spirituality glossary, Samskara / Sanskaras (eastern-spirituality.com)
• Heartfulness Magazine, Kleshas (heartfulness.org/magazine/kleshas), including writing by Kamlesh Patel
• Patanjali, Yoga Sutras, esp. 2.2 to 2.14
• Ramana Maharshi, Talks, on vasanas (ramana-maharshi.weebly.com/vasanas.html)
• Christopher Wallis, Recognition Sutras and the Tantric view of samskaras
• YuTantra, The Shadow Self, Tantra, and Samskaras
• Wikipedia, Kleshas (Buddhism); Stephen Hodge, key parts of the Nirvana Sutra
• McLean Hospital, When Eastern Practices Meet Western Psychology
• NAMI, Expressive Arts Therapy: A Sensory Approach to Trauma Healing
• Psychology Today, Meditative Psychotherapy; USF, Yoga Psychotherapy: The Integration of Western and Eastern Approaches
• Rise Healing Center and AZ Center for Change, on EMDR
• The Dharma Path, Japa Meditation