Desire, anger, and confusion — the three causes of saṃsāra

The classic triad that already appears in the Bhagavad Gītā (2.62-63) as a causal chain: from thought arises desire, from desire anger, from anger delusion, from delusion the destruction of discernment. Vasiṣṭha summarizes it in three terms because the chain is a single dynamic: mind that grasps (kāma), that rejects when it cannot obtain (krodha), and that loses clarity in the oscillation (moha). These are not three separate poisons — they are three phases of a single movement of ignorance.