The Kleshas
kleśaThe five afflictions: the tradition's diagnosis of why life keeps hurting in the same places.
Chapter two of the Sutras opens with a short list of what stands in the way. Not sins: mechanisms.
The five roots of trouble: not seeing clearly (the root the other four grow from), over-identifying with "I," clinging to what feels good, pushing away what hurts, and fear for one's own life.
“The pain-bearing obstructions are — ignorance, egoism, attachment, aversion, and clinging to life.”
The original Sanskrit
avidyāsmitārāgadveṣābhiniveśāḥ kleśāḥ
Ignorance, ego, attachment, aversion, and the will to keep living. And one of them, the text says, feeds all the rest:
Ignorance is the productive field of all these that follow, whether they are dormant, attenuated, overpowered, or expanded.
The original Sanskrit
avidyā kṣetram uttareṣāṃ prasuptatanuvicchinnodārāṇām
Not a list of sins: a working model of why the mind suffers on repeat, with the root cause named.