Afflicted views (Buddhism)

The following are listed as afflicted views, leading to behaviour which is unwholesome and therefore rebirth which is not fortunate: (i) Transitory collection, or a belief in the existence of illusory mental and physical aggregates – that is, belief in the individuality of the self; (ii) Extremes, that the self viewed in the transitory sense is permanent and unchanging – that is, that after death and the dissolving of the skandha there is an eternal individual remaining – or that it is subject to complete annihilation rather than rebirth in another lifetime; (iii) That bad ethics and wrong modes of conduct are supreme – that is, observing false laws or sila; (iv) Perverse denial of cause, effect or function – refusal to believe the law of karma; (v) That wrong conduct is supreme – that is, that the karma arising from wrong conduct is good; (vi) That a wrong view is supreme – that is, doubting the laws of Buddhism.

Other sources list false views as follows: (i) Belief that existence is without a cause and a fatalism which denies a cause for purity or impurity; (ii) Belief that existence is without a purpose and that good or bad deeds have no effect on karma; (iii) A nihilistic attitude that on death a being merely dissolves into the physical elements.

One of the six root afflictions referred to in Tibetan Buddhism; also one of the seven tendencies or latent passions; also (as belief in the existence of the separate individual) the first of the ten fetters of Hinayana Buddhism said to bind a being to samsara, the cycle of birth, death and rebirth.