Appearance
8.5 — The Arishadvarga: Six Enemies, Introduced
Ari means enemy. Shad means six. Varga means group. The group of six enemies.
And the framing is worth noticing before the list: they are called enemies rather than sins.
A sin is an offence against something — a law, a god, an order — and it is answered by guilt and forgiveness. An enemy is something that will destroy you, and it is answered by strategy.
The Indian traditions took the second framing almost universally, and it is the more useful one, because it produces the question "how does this operate and where is it vulnerable" rather than "am I a bad person."
The six
Kama — desire, in the sense of grasping want.
Krodha — anger.
Lobha — greed.
Moha — delusion, infatuation, confusion about what things are.
Mada — pride, arrogance, intoxication with oneself.
Matsarya — envy, jealousy.
They are not independent
And the most important structural point: they are one mechanism at six stages, not six separate problems.
The Gita gave the chain in 5.2 and it runs almost exactly through the list:
Dwelling on objects produces attachment. From attachment comes desire. From desire comes anger. From anger comes confusion. From confusion, loss of memory. From loss of memory, the destruction of judgement. And when judgement is destroyed, the person is lost.
Desire produces anger when it is blocked. Anger produces delusion. Delusion destroys judgement.
And greed is desire that has become a habit rather than an event. Pride is what desire does when it succeeds. Envy is what it does when somebody else succeeds instead.
Which one destroyed whom
And here is why this Part comes after Parts 2 and 3 rather than before them. Each of the six has a person in these epics, and the person is worth more than the definition.
Kama — Ravana. He had a kingdom, learning, devotion, discipline and a functioning state (2.14). He wanted one woman who did not want him, refused every limit, ignored four separate people who told him it would destroy him, and lost everything. 8.6.
Krodha — Ashvatthama. A capable man whose father was killed by a deception, whose rage was entirely justified, and who walked into a sleeping camp and killed every child in it (3.17). His punishment is that he does not get to die. 8.7.
Lobha and moha — Dhritarashtra. He wanted the throne for his son and would not see what his son was (3.3, 3.18). His greed was quiet, indirect and entirely deniable, and it killed a hundred sons and eighteen armies, and he told himself for forty years that he was powerless. 8.8.
Mada — Duryodhana's father-in-law's world, and more precisely Daksha (7.5), and in the Mahabharata, Karna's pride and Bhima's. 8.9 takes pride through the clearest case.
Matsarya — Duryodhana. The definitive case in world literature (3.7). He had the larger kingdom and refused a settlement that gave him everything, three separate times, because what he wanted was not to have more but for them to have nothing. 8.9.
And moha — Yudhishthira at the dice table (3.8), where a man's judgement was destroyed so completely that he staked his brothers and his wife, having been told in advance exactly what would happen.
Why six and why these six
A reasonable question: why not cruelty, cowardice, laziness, dishonesty?
Because those are behaviours and these are engines.
Cruelty is what contempt does (2.8). Dishonesty is usually what fear or greed does. Laziness is frequently delusion about time.
The six are chosen as the things that produce behaviours rather than as behaviours themselves, which is why the framework is diagnostic. You do not treat the cruelty. You find out which of the six is producing it.
The pattern all six share
Four features, and knowing them is most of the defence.
Each one feels like clarity while it is running. This is the single most dangerous property. Anger feels like moral clarity. Greed feels like prudence. Envy feels like justice. Pride feels like accurate self-assessment. Desire feels like knowing what you want. Not one of them announces itself as a distortion, and 5.8's rule follows directly: do not decide in that state.
Each one has a legitimate version that it is hiding behind. Desire is not wanting things — everybody wants things. Anger is not disliking injustice. Greed is not prudence. Pride is not self-respect. In every case there is a healthy neighbouring quality, and the vice's principal defence is that it is easily mistaken for it. 8.9 does the pride and self-respect distinction properly, because it is the one people most need.
Each one grows quietly for years and then arrives all at once. Duryodhana was envious from childhood and the war came at fifty. Nothing on this list produces its consequence promptly, which is exactly why it is not corrected.
And each one recruits your intelligence rather than defeating it. Ravana had ten heads and every one of them was producing counter-arguments (2.14). A clever person with an uncontrolled vice is not less dangerous to themselves than a stupid one. They are more dangerous, because they can dismantle every warning.
What the framework is for
Not for judging yourself, and this is worth being clear about.
Everybody has all six. The tradition does not treat them as things you either have or do not have — they are described as always present and requiring continuous management, like weather.
The framework is for locating a problem.
When something is going wrong — a relationship deteriorating, a decision you cannot make, a persistent low-grade bad mood, a conflict that will not settle — the question is: which of the six is running?
And it is usually one, and once it is named the response is specific, which is what the next four chapters are for.
What to carry from this page
They are called enemies, not sins. The question is how it operates and where it is vulnerable, not whether you are a bad person.
Six stages of one mechanism, with grasping at the centre. Anger when blocked, greed when habitual, pride when successful, envy when somebody else succeeds — and delusion, which is what all of them produce and what does the actual damage.
Every one of them feels like clarity while it is running.
Every one has a legitimate neighbour it hides behind.
And when something is going wrong, name which one. The diagnosis is most of the treatment.
Next: 8.6 — desire, taken apart properly, and the exact difference between wanting something and being owned by it.