We can better understand the notion of klesha or kilesa (Pali), which is often translated by “defilement”, by the compound upakkilesa (upa + kilesa) which The Pali-English Dictionary defines as “anything that spoils or obstructs.”
But now we have to ask, what does upakkilesa spoil or obstruct? We find the answer to our question in the Kilesasamyutta (27) of the Samyutta-Nikaya of the Pali canon. It is mind that is obstructed and obscured which obviously prevents it from directly apperceiving itself (this is the substance of mind which has always been devoid of defilements).
Borrowing an idea from the Samadhiraja Sutra, when mind’s determination of itself is coarse, which in this case means it is defiled (kilesa-ized!), it always fails to resonate with itself as pure Mind. As a result, it stays in samsaric bondage.
Making this bondage even worse, according to the Buddha, speaking in the Kilesasamyutta (S. iii. 234), the Five Aggregates or the same, the psychophysical body, is a kilesa/defilement of mind (cittasseso upakkileso).
Such a body affords no refuge. In fact, much of this body’s inner life is a beehive of secondary defilements consisting of anger, grudge holding, action which results from anger, the intention to harm, jealousy, pretense, hypocrisy, shamelessness, avarice, pride, lack of faith, laziness, depression and so on. Incidentally, these defilements, while serving to bind us to samsara also can propel us into lower states of rebirth.
There is no exit from this self-created hell until mind, so to speak, passes through the defilements it has generated finally coming to rest in its own pure substance or nature. Now at rest with itself as the absolute medium which transcends the configurations of the medium (and by implication, samsara), Mind sees everything like an ethereal flower.
“When thou reviewest the world with thy wisdom and compassion, it is to thee like an ethereal flower, and of which we cannot say whether it is created or vanishing, as [the categories of] being and non-being are inapplicable to it” (Lankavatara Sutra).


