ABSTRACT
Taking the structural similarity of the way of cognising of either ‘emotional’ or ‘rational’ dispositions of mind, a radical division between emotional and rational (that Aristotle once proposed) cannot be postulated. Buddhism (as understood through the Buddha’s teachings and not through Buddhist philosophies) takes emotions as traits of human psychodynamics that impede spiritual or inner blossoming of a person. Emotions are ordinarily understood by philosophers as something non-rational, something that distorts the reasoning and nourishes prejudices. In the Buddha's teachings, the inquiry into human psyche is known as abhidhamma. What is understood as emancipation, salvation or annihilation of āsavas in Buddhism is not, in any sense, sublimation of the negative traits (emotional or rational). Given the aforementioned threefold logic, only the dissolution principle is commensurate with the scheme of the Buddha's interpretation of emotions. There have been approaches of reading Buddhist psychology that depict human psyche as a battleground of reason and emotion.
