Avidya
अविद्या (avidya)
Ignorance - not a lack of information, but a fundamental misperception of one's own nature. Read in English
अविद्या — सूचना की कमी नहीं, बल्कि अपने ही स्वरूप की बुनियादी भूल।
Avidya is usually translated as ignorance, but the word describes something more specific than a lack of facts. It names a root misperception: mistaking the impermanent for the permanent, the self for the not-self, suffering for happiness, and the impure for the pure.
This kind of ignorance is not corrected by acquiring more information in the ordinary sense. It is corrected, in most accounts, by a direct shift in perception, cultivated through sustained practice, that reveals the misperception rather than simply arguing it away intellectually.
Avidya is described in several traditions as the root from which other afflictions (klesha) grow: attachment, aversion, and the fear of loss are each, in this account, downstream consequences of the more fundamental misperception at their base.