Introduction To The Five Hindrances

The five hindrances are different types of dullness, distraction, and disturbance that cover and suppress our mind preventing us from experiencing clear, beneficial, and peaceful mental states.

This audio introduces the hindrance of sloth and torpor, or dullness and heaviness, so we can understand how they function as negative mental states and what skills and methods we can learn and practice to let them go, reduce their intensity, and eventually abandon them completely.

Transcript

Hello,

And welcome to Lifetimes of Learning,

A production at the Buddhist Education Centre,

Which is a part of Buddhist Discussion Centre Australia.

In our podcast series,

We will be discussing the wisdom and teachings of Buddha from 2600 years ago,

Which can help improve our happiness and lives at a deep level in this modern era.

In this podcast,

We will cover the talk on The Five Hindrances.

Wherever you are,

We invite you to bring your attention to the present,

Smile,

And listen to the teachings of the Buddha.

Hello,

And welcome to the first class in a series on the five hindrances to our well-being and happiness as taught by Buddhism.

Over the next series of classes,

We are going to investigate the five hindrances so we can understand what they are.

We're also going to consider some antidotes that we can use in our daily lives in order to reduce and hopefully overcome them.

So during our class,

We have students that ask questions,

And we encourage you to ask questions because that really helps you to understand.

So welcome.

Good to see you all.

Welcome to our class.

So this is a series of classes on the topic of overcoming the five hindrances.

So what are the five hindrances and why are they relevant to our well-being and happiness?

We've done a lot of classes over the years,

And when we've asked students what it is that they're looking for when they're learning about Buddhism,

Usually they've expressed the idea that they're looking for some peace of mind or some sense of happiness or meaning,

But basically it's to do with their well-being and their long-term happiness.

And maybe we all have very busy lives,

And there's many things in our lives that are there to enrich our lives,

To make our lives more enjoyable and easier,

But often that doesn't necessarily result in us being really happy or having a sense of happiness,

A sense of fulfillment,

Or a sense of meaning.

So possibly this is why people sometimes look at Buddhism,

Because the thing about our well-being and happiness is really what the Buddha found out.

That was the core of his life,

To understand why people suffer and how people can be free from suffering.

And obviously if you're free from suffering,

You're becoming a happy person,

You're becoming a person that can deal with life,

All its complexities,

All of its stresses and difficulties,

And yet maintain a happy disposition and a happy and rewarding experience of living.

So the five hindrances are often framed as the elements of our mind and our mental states that cause the suffering,

That cause us to experience confusion,

Stress,

Anxiety,

Worry,

Annoyance,

Dissatisfaction,

Anxiety,

As I think Arthit said,

And even depression.

So if we can learn,

Firstly,

The five hindrances,

What they are,

How they operate,

What is their operating system,

According to Buddhism,

These hindrances to our well-being can all be reduced,

And they can be reduced substantially,

And as that process happens,

Our happiness comes about through the removal of those hindrances,

Because they're hindrances to our happiness.

So there's a couple of analogies that can help us in understanding the mind and how these hindrances operate.

One is sometimes the mind is described as like a mirror,

And a mirror is essentially perfectly clear,

Perfectly clean,

A beautiful surface that reflects everything with clarity.

But if you were to put dust and dirt and grime onto the mirror,

Then even though the essential nature of the mirror still exists,

It's not obvious,

You can't perceive it.

It's like what you perceive or what we perceive is all of the dust and the dirt and the things that obscure the way that the mirror really is.

So this is likened to our mind,

That actually our mind has this essential nature of being like this mirror,

That it has its own pure nature,

And if we were able to perceive that directly,

We would experience great,

Great happiness and joy and well-being.

But there's these layers and layers and layers of cloud that cover that basic mirror,

And these in Buddhism are regarded as the unwholesome mental states,

The unwholesome minds,

The hindrances,

The five hindrances in particular,

That it's the nature of those things that they cloud the mind.

So we can recognize if we're worrying,

Then the mind's not clear,

The mind's turbulent,

The mind's disturbed,

The mind's stressed.

If we have a lot of laziness or sloth and talk,

The mind's dull,

The mind's stupefied,

It's almost half asleep.

If we have anger,

Then it's like the mind is discolored with that experience of anger,

Which distorts how we see things,

Because we perceive the world through this lens of anger.

So the mind,

Again,

Is not clear,

It's not quiet,

It's not peaceful.

Also doubt is one of them.

Doubt can be self-doubt,

It can be a factor that undermines our confidence and our sense that we can do things or that we can go around without fear or anxiety.

And the final one is sense desire.

Sense desire is possibly not so obvious,

How that clouds the mind,

Because in a way we live through our senses and often we see the senses as how we do enjoy things.

We enjoy foods,

We enjoy clothing,

We enjoy music and what we see,

And these seem to enhance our life and part of how we nourish ourselves through those things.

But there is an element of how the mind can have a lot of greed in the way,

The area that causes this sort of fog of dullness over the mind.

So we have to look at each of these,

Examine them and understand how they work,

So that we can recognise that each of these contribute to our discomfort,

Our lack of mental clarity,

Our lack of ease and our lack of quietness and stillness in our mind.

So basically that's the course that we're doing,

Is to firstly identify what the five hindrances are,

Then to be able to recognise how they operate and then to learn some skills and tools that we can use to be able to weaken them and reduce them,

Just in how we live our life.

So sometimes these hindrances,

Particularly in Buddhism,

Are presented as hindrances to meditation,

Hindrances to preventing our mind from being quiet or achieving one point of concentration,

And that's of course how they do affect us if we're doing meditation.

But this is a course mainly about how they affect us in our normal lives as lay people.

You could imagine if you you had an angry experience and then you sat down to do meditation,

Then your mind wouldn't be quiet,

You wouldn't be able to get your mind to concentrate or be peaceful or pleasant.

So the hindrances in that sense are very much about how we live,

How we live from moment to moment,

Day to day.

And if we learn how to reduce and weaken the strength of the hindrances,

Then when we do meditation our mind will be clearer and brighter for that.

Another analogy to describe how these hindrances function is if you could imagine the surface of a pond.

So if the surface of a pond is still,

Is calm,

Generally you can see your own reflection in that surface quite well.

You could see anything reflected,

The moon above,

The trees above,

Whatever.

The reflection can be very clear.

But when the surface of the pond is rippled and disturbed,

You know,

By wind or whatever,

At that time you can't see any reflections.

You can only see different sort of flashes of color,

You know,

Light flashing off the surface.

In a way,

This is an analogy of what the difference between a peaceful mind or a disturbed mind is,

That the peaceful mind actually has also a lot of clarity as a byproduct of its peacefulness.

It can understand things very well and actually it can understand ourselves.

And when talking about Buddhism,

Really that's what we are trying to understand.

We're trying to understand our own nature,

How our mind works,

How we experience suffering and how we can build a life where we're happy and fulfilled.

So if we have a still mind,

A clear mind,

Those things are much more easily achieved than if our mind is like the ripples on the surface of the water,

Where we just can't see with that sort of a mind,

With clarity.

In fact,

The ripples represent the five hindrances,

The noise of the mind that never stops chattering and commenting and views and opinions and worries and anxieties.

These are the ripples that appear on the surface.

So I guess you can see my explanation is trying to identify that a lot of the causes of our mental pain are to do with these hindrances.

So if we develop the life skills of understanding the understanding the hindrances which arise in our mind and learning to be able to let them go and even further than that to be able to abandon them so they don't come back.

And really that's the purpose of Buddhist practice.

It's not only to let them go but actually to abandon them so they don't arise.

And most of Buddhist practice will work towards that process of reducing the strength of the hindrances,

Of increasing the opposites to the hindrances which are called the wholesome mental states,

The ones that are positive,

That are helpful.

And that's kind of the basic direction of the Buddhist practice.

So I mentioned then about wholesome.

So basically Buddhism divides the minds or the different types of consciousness that we experience and the objects that arise,

Or some of the objects that arise is probably a better description,

Into two categories.

And these are wholesome,

Wholesome types of consciousness,

Wholesome mental states,

And unwholesome.

The wholesome ones are the ones that will contribute to our well-being.

It doesn't mean they're,

It's not really good and evil,

It's about what the characteristics of the different mental states are.

The wholesome mental states will lead to our mind becoming happy,

Lead to our mind becoming peaceful,

Lead to our clarity and our understanding increasing.

So they're wholesome in terms of they contribute to our well-being.

The unwholesome mental states do the opposite.

The unwholesome states contribute to our dissatisfaction,

Disturbance,

Unhappiness,

Confusion,

Anxiety,

And those things.

So in Buddhism the unwholesome mental states,

That's their nature.

It's like you can't fix them to somehow work in a different way.

So if we look at ill-will for example,

Which actually today this first class is on ill-will.

This is the nature of ill-will.

You can't get ill-will and teach it to behave in a different fashion.

It can only do,

It can only,

It's the characteristic of that mental state called ill-will,

That it always behaves with the same types of behaviors.

It always produces the same sort of sets of attitudes,

The same sorts of reasoning,

And it's also associated with unpleasant mental feeling.

So the problem is if you have ill-will arising you also get those things as the by-product because it's the characteristic of that mental state or that consciousness.

So the idea in Buddhism is not to try to fix it or work on it,

It's actually to let it go,

To abandon it,

To get off it,

Because it's not fixable.

Its nature is unwholesome.

It can only lead to disturbances.

So this is the basic understanding of wholesome and unwholesome,

Is that the unwholesome are to be abandoned,

The wholesome are to be cultivated.

There's another element of Buddhism that says these different mental factors are not actually our self,

They're not part of our true nature,

They're just arising and passing away.

So if a thought arises and passes away,

You can't really say that we own that thought or that is what we are,

Because it's impermanent,

It doesn't stay.

So something that arises and passes away,

We can let it go.

It's not precious,

It's not important,

We don't have to defend it.

We don't even know what these thoughts are until they arise in our mind.

We didn't really generate them,

They just arise.

And the Buddhist view of this is that we don't see them as self,

We don't see them as something that we own.

If we owned something,

Like say if we owned our feelings,

We should be able to say,

I just want this sort of feeling to arise.

I don't want that sort of feeling.

You should be able to control what arises,

But we don't have that sort of control.

We can wish that the pain would stop,

But it doesn't stop.

And this is because these things are not actually our property.

We experience them,

But they're not owned by us.

So that means that our mind is always seeing a shifting array of different types of mental states,

Different types of feelings,

Different beliefs.

And even though we do hold on to them and we perceive them as being what I am,

This is what I am,

In reality they're not actually truly us.

Because they come and they go.

Because we can't control them.

Because they have their own lifespan.

And basically the things that arise in our mind are just our experiences,

Not what we actually are.

So if we see that,

Then what we can do is not be so intoxicated with all the different things that arise in our mind.

Okay,

So that's kind of a bit of a general introduction,

But let's just go around.

Has anyone got any comments or questions?

How are you going?

It sounds like it makes sense.

Nav,

You got a question?

What does it mean to abandon the unwholesome mind?

Okay,

So normally what might happen,

Say we got annoyed with something,

That tends to stick around,

Doesn't it?

So we get annoyed at 10 o'clock in the morning,

Somebody said something we didn't like,

And it might have lasted a minute or two minutes.

But we're still affected by it later on in the day,

And even maybe that night we might be at home and still annoyed,

Or still go back and think about it and get angry about it,

Or talk to our wife,

How they shouldn't have done that,

They shouldn't have said this,

This person said these things.

So it's like we're keeping the experience of it with us.

And so one thing the Buddha said is that,

Say for example,

When that person made the comment to us that made us upset,

And we have a feeling that comes with that of unpleasantness,

Dislike,

You know,

Maybe annoyance,

Anger,

Or whatever.

But then the event stops.

But later on in the day when we recollect that event,

What comes to our mind is not only the memory,

But the pain that came when we first experienced it,

Is like revisited.

So every time our mind connects back and recollects and dwells on that memory,

We also re-experience the pain associated with it.

So that causes our minds to be disturbed again,

Even though it was disturbed the first time.

The second time we did it,

Because the person is not there anymore,

That's just us.

And then that evening,

You know,

If we're still stuck on it,

If we go back and revisit it and talk about it,

We also re-experience the mental disturbance and the unpleasant feeling and the annoyance.

They all come back.

So it's like we're multiplying up the pain that was originally caused by the other person,

But because of how we're dealing with it,

By holding on to it,

By focusing on it,

We're recreating the mind of anger and annoyance,

And also the associated feelings that came with that,

The unpleasant feelings.

So that you could describe as clinging or grasping.

But the idea of abandoning is to not bring the experience around with us,

To not harbour it,

To not hold on to it,

To know that yes,

That was unpleasant,

But it's finished.

It's not happening now.

If the mind doesn't have that distinction,

It keeps with it lots of things that can upset it,

And also things that haven't yet arisen,

Things that we start to fret about that aren't even happening yet and may never even happen.

It's like we're holding on to this array of experiences,

Memories,

Expectations,

Beliefs,

And if we're holding on in the wrong way,

As the mind visits those things,

We also visit the unpleasant feeling associated with them.

So actually this is a cause of a lot of our mental disturbance.

It's revisiting things that don't actually exist.

They're finished.

They were impermanent.

They might have lasted two minutes,

But in our world we've made that last for an hour,

And the unpleasantness of the two minutes,

We're now experiencing another 58 minutes of that.

This is the problem if we don't know how to let go,

And we're carrying a lot of things that fuel the hindrances.

Worry feeds on this sort of way of holding on to things.

Doubt feeds on it.

Anxiety feeds on it.

Ill will feeds on it.

So you can see we're importing,

Or we have like a disturbance generating machine going on as we're living our lives,

And that is the mind that's grabbing and holding on.

So what we need to do is develop the skill of being able to abandon or let go,

But further than let go,

Abandon.

Letting go is a skill to not dwell on things,

But abandon means that we develop an ability or an understanding where that process doesn't ever happen,

Where we're able to live in the present,

Where things come up and,

Yes,

We acknowledge we might even get angry,

But the ability to not dwell on that anger,

Because it's like dwelling on something that's causing us pain.

Does that make sense?

Any other questions?

Okay.

All right,

Simon,

Do you have got any comments you would like to talk about,

About generally the hindrances,

Or we're getting on to the specific hindrance of your will?

So the hindrances really wreck your life.

As Frank said,

Any time you have a disturbance,

Any time something looks like it's going wrong,

It's going to be one of the hindrances.

And so if you look at it like that,

You see that the hindrances are operating quite a lot of the time.

Like today,

For example,

It's wet,

And maybe you've got your car keys,

You drop your car keys,

And you go,

That's one of the five hindrances,

That's your will,

Which is what we're going to be talking about today.

So it's about recognising that the hindrances are present a lot of the time,

And so then what we have to do,

Which is what you were saying before,

Frank,

Is that we need to,

Buddhism is about spending your mental time generating wholesome mental activity.

We're not actually trying to really fix anything per se,

We're just trying to spend as much time as you can remember,

Generating wholesome mental activity.

So it's about upholding your morality,

It's about increasing your concentration,

It's about engaging in explicit generosity,

As much as you can remember,

So that this is how we start to sort of reduce and attack or not attack,

But abandon the five hindrances.

It's just an exercise in replacement.

By the things that are the antidotes to the hindrances.

That's right,

That's right.

So today we'll probably discuss that loving-kindness is the antidote to ill-will.

So you can spend a lot of time practising loving-kindness and getting your loving-kindness to be very,

Very powerful.

This concludes the talk on the five hindrances.

Thank you for tuning into our Lifetimes of Learning channel.

May you be well and happy.

May all beings be well and happy.