The Five Hindrances

Learning how to work with these five common challenges in meditation is necessary for deepening your practice and making it sustainable. These are challenges that every meditator has to deal with.

Transcript

As you listen to these words,

Feel free to close your eyes and connect with your breathing,

Allowing yourself to become receptive and relaxed.

And what I'd like to talk about is five meditation challenges,

Five challenges that happen during meditation for everyone.

And if you were to do a strengths,

Weaknesses,

Opportunities,

And threats analysis of your meditation practice,

Under weaknesses and threats,

You might include these five basic challenges.

They are challenges that every meditator has to deal with.

In fact,

Failure to deal successfully with these five challenges often leads people to abandon their practice entirely,

Never to meditate again.

It's important to know that when one of these states arises in your meditation,

You aren't doing anything wrong.

You are just a human being experiencing what it means to be alive.

Often called hindrances,

These challenging states can be worked with in different ways.

But the key thing to know is that they are a part of every meditator's practice,

Are perfectly normal,

And can teach you a lot about yourself and about life.

The first challenge is desire.

You know how it goes.

You try to focus on your breath,

And as you try to do that,

You're constantly thinking about your upcoming vacation,

Or perhaps a new restaurant you want to try,

Or a new car you want to buy.

And when this state of desire comes up in your meditation,

It's really important to just acknowledge it,

That you're experiencing desire here,

Now.

Notice what kinds of desires keep coming up in your practice.

And don't judge yourself for having certain desires.

Be curious about them.

Where do you feel the desire in your body?

What's it like?

Is it a pleasant sensation,

Or does it make you feel restless or discontented?

When we start building a more conscious and objective relationship to our desires,

We aren't as controlled by them as before.

The second hindrance is called ill will,

Or anger.

Now anger is a frequent experience during meditation,

And in addition to outright rage,

There are more subtle types of aversion that can manifest.

Judgments about people,

Displeasure about certain scenarios that are playing out at work or at home.

Notice where the anger tends to be directed.

Watch for the patterns to your anger.

Again,

Bring your body into your investigation.

Where do you feel the anger?

What's the texture,

The weight,

The temperature of the anger?

Is the sensation of anger pleasant,

Or is it unpleasant?

In being mindful of anger,

You'll learn a lot about your heart and the places where you may be wounded.

And it's also a useful rule of thumb to disidentify with the experience of anger.

It's an event taking place with an awareness as an observable experience.

Think anger is arising and it's like this instead of my anger is arising and it's like this.

The third hindrance is restlessness and anxiety.

I used to meditate after breakfast and found that I was always restless.

It took me a while to realize that I was restless because I had had caffeine in the morning before my meditation.

As a result of this understanding,

I stopped meditating with caffeine in my system.

It's good to pay attention to what conditions in your life may be contributing to you feeling restless or anxious.

Restlessness and anxiety are very difficult mind-body states to be with.

And while it's not a lot of fun to be with them,

Allowing them space in your awareness will give you important insight into what might be driving you.

And even if you don't think you feel any better after your meditation,

You probably are feeling better than you realize just because you were able to be patient enough to ride out your anxiety and stay present.

If you can sit with your restlessness for 20 minutes without needing to change or fix it,

You'll learn a great deal.

The fourth hindrance is sleepiness or laziness.

There are two types of sleepiness.

The type that comes from a sort of mental laziness or lack of focus,

Often called sloth.

And then there's physical tiredness that can come because of the time of day it is,

Or maybe because you haven't gotten enough sleep.

A great way of working with sleepiness is to stand up and do your breathing.

I've never known anyone to fall asleep while standing and meditating.

Sleepiness is sometimes a sign that you need to get more sleep,

And sometimes it's a sign that you are resisting being present with yourself during meditation and your mind is withdrawn into dullness as a defense.

It just depends on what's going on.

Being curious about your sleepiness as well as about any of these other states is very helpful.

The fifth hindrance is doubt.

Why am I even doing this practice?

What good is it for me?

I don't seem to be making much progress.

I'm not really sure how to proceed anyway.

These are all expressions one might encounter when one experiences the hindrance of doubt.

Doubt in meditation is really a form of confusion.

The key here is to not believe your doubt.

Be curious about your doubt.

Is it possible to sit with your doubt and see what happens?

One thing's for sure.

If you sit with your doubt for long enough it will change,

And when doubt changes it often gives way to a greater clarity and focus.

So those are the five hindrances.

That we can,

That we will encounter in practice and that we can work with in practice.

Now the word hindrance is actually not a very good one in some ways.

It implies that these challenges hinder the arising of positive states of mind like concentration,

Joy,

And so on.

That is certainly one way of looking at them.

But the other way of looking at the hindrances is that when a hindrance arises it becomes your practice to be with it.

So if you're practicing,

Focusing on your breath,

But your body is terribly restless and in distress,

Then what you become aware of is the restlessness and distress.

Rather than pushing those states away,

You open to them,

Allow them,

Without judging yourself,

And then you let yourself become curious about them.

When a hindrance keeps arising there's a lot it can teach us.

Ironically as we open to these difficult states they often even out,

Soften,

Or disappear entirely.

Sometimes the reverse happens and anxiety,

For example,

Gets worse as we bring our attention to it.

This is why it's so important to keep using your breath as a home base for your attention and a support for you.

We don't have to abandon the breath to be aware of a hindrance.

It's more of a foreground and background thing.

As a hindrance becomes our object of focus,

The breath eases into the background of our attention.

But as the hindrance becomes too difficult to be with in any moment,

We bring the breath back into the foreground of our attention,

Letting the hindrance recede a bit into the background as we collect and stabilize the mind with the breath.

A flexible approach is best when determining how to work with a hindrance.

With practice you learn to trust your intuition about how best to respond.

Ultimately I have found it very helpful to have a welcoming attitude towards hindrances when they show up,

Knowing that they can teach me much about my heart and mind.

Or,

As an old saw has it,

If it's in the way,

It is the way.

Reviews

Loved this talk! The parts on anger and doubt really resonated with me.
Namaste 🙏

Thank you. Very helpful. Might help me understand why I fall asleep all the time!

Very helpful and efficient

Wonderful insights to the backstage happenings of meditation flopping. Bottom line, acceptance. Thank you so much for sharing these words! And yes, if it’s IN the way, it IS the way... Brilliant!!!

Excellent concise discussion of the five hindrances really clear and helpful thank you

I loved that so much. That information is not only a great reminder for me.. but, I have friends who ask me questions about how they can start meditating. I will pass these on to them. Thank you so much. I want to listen to this again so that it will stick in my brain for the future.

Very insightful! As a newbie, I was worried I was doing something wrong when these thoughts would creep in to my meditation. Very validating to know I am not. Sounds like its common but this talk explained how to work with the hindrances.

Great topic and great overview. Thank you so much.

Nice talk. Recommended for gaining a better understanding of what occurs during meditation and how to manage those experiences. Not a meditation though.

Great. It’s a talk, not a meditation. Enjoyed it and gained a very helpful perspective.

Really great! Thank you :)

Wonderful Dhamma. Thank you!

Very instructive And educating talk! Adorei ouvir.

Thank you, That was br

I really like "when it's in the way, our is the way" thanks for sharing x

Good description and perception. "If it's in the way, it IS the way".

Very helpful...thank you.