Hindrances As Friends

We will never fully overcome the hindrances that obstruct our meditation until we can view them as genuine friends rather than as foes to be vanquished. This presentation uses story and dialogue to explore how hindrances can help strengthen awareness.

Transcript

They ran to the other end of the car and he got so angry at them that he kicked at their backs and what he missed,

He was so enraged that he reached down and he grabbed hold of one of the benches in the car and tried to rip it up off the floor.

In the process of doing that he cut his hand and it was started to bleed and drip on the floor.

And at that moment the doors to the train car slammed shut and the train car lurched as it started to roll out of the station and everybody froze.

They were trapped with this maniac.

Also sitting on the train car was a man by the name of Terry Dobson.

In recent years he's lived in the Boston area where we used to live not far from where we lived,

Although we died a few years ago.

But this was many years ago when he was in his twenties and he had been in Tokyo studying Akido.

He had been working out eight hours a day for three years and as you know Akido is a very effective form of martial arts and he loved to grapple.

He loved to grapple and he thought of himself as being pretty good.

But deep in his heart of hearts,

His one regret about all his training was that his martial skills had never been tried in live combat because as a student of the martial arts he was not allowed to fight.

His teacher would say,

He who has the mind to defeat another has broken his connection with life.

He said,

In Akido we study how to resolve conflicts,

Not how to start them.

And Terry listened hard to his teacher because he had a great deal of respect for him,

Didn't quite understand it all but he did his best to follow what his sensei was telling him.

He would go so far as to walk on the other side of the street down near the train stations to avoid street punks and he felt exalted in his forbearance.

He felt tough and holy.

But deep in his heart of hearts he yearned for the absolutely legitimate excuse to defend the innocent by destroying the wicked.

This is it,

He thought as he sat there in that train car,

If I don't do something,

Somebody is going to get hurt.

So he slowly stood up from where he was standing and he just took hold of the commuter strap that was hanging down above.

And the big drunk saw him stand up and turned and looked at him and Terry looked him up one side,

Down the other,

This long look of disgust and dismissal.

See from Terry's perspective,

The drunk had to make the first move and Terry wanted him good and angry.

So he pursed his lips and blew him an insolent kiss.

Alright,

The big guy said,

I'm going to give you a lesson in manners.

And he gathered himself and just as he started to rush towards Terry,

There was this voice that went throughout the train car,

Hey!

It was ear splitting,

It just pierced through everything.

But it had this strangely kind of a joyous lilting tone to it.

It was as if you had lost something very precious.

You know when you and your friend had been looking and couldn't find it and looking and couldn't find it and looking and there it is,

Hey!

So Terry turned to his left and the big drunk turned to his right and there sitting in one of the train cars was this elderly Japanese gentleman and he was dressed immaculately in a coat and a tie and he was just beaming delightedly up at the drunk and his eyes sparkled with interest.

Come here,

He said,

I want to talk to you.

And waved him forward and the big drunk staggered over standing there in front of him,

Why the hell should I talk to you?

We had us back to Terry now.

So Terry stood there poised.

That drunk took one more step towards that little man.

He was going to drop him in his socks.

But the little man just sat there beaming delightedly looking up at this drunk and he said,

What you been drinking?

Well,

I've been drinking sake and that's none of your damn business.

Spittle sprayed all over him.

And the little man said,

Oh that's wonderful,

That's wonderful.

You know I like sake too.

Every night me and my wife,

She's 82 you know,

We like to take a little glass of sake and we go outside and we sit on the bench.

You know my grandfather made this bench,

We like to go out and sit on this bench and watch the sun go down.

And we like to look and see how our persimmons tree is doing.

You know we worry about it with all the weather we've been having lately but it's actually done really quite well when you consider the quality of the soil.

Well the big drunk was standing there listening to him and you could see his fist kind of clench and unclench as he struggled to follow the old man's conversation.

And finally the big man said,

Yeah,

I like persimmons too.

And then his voice kind of trailed off in confusion.

And the little man said,

Oh yes,

Yes,

And I bet you have a lovely wife too.

And he said,

Nah.

And then he started to slowly sort of sway back and forth just a little bit with the rocking of the train car.

And he said,

I ain't got no wife.

I ain't got no job.

I ain't got no home.

And tears were starting to run down his cheeks.

I feel so ashamed and these ripples of despair just ran up through his system.

You could hear his breath sobbing.

And there's Terry.

Now he's feeling dirtier than the drunk.

As he stands there in his well scrubbed youthfulness and his make the world safe from terrorist righteousness he felt dirtier than the drunk.

Little man said,

My,

My.

That is a difficult predicament indeed.

You better come sit down here and tell me about it.

So at this point the train started to slow down a little bit.

It was coming into Terry's stop.

So Terry left his seat and made his way back to the exit.

And just before he got off the train he looked back and there was the drunk.

He was sprawled out on the seat with his head on the old man's lap who was stroking his filthy matted hair.

And about three or four minutes later he was standing alone on the train station by the tracks.

The people had gotten off and left and the train car pulled out and he was standing there watching the train rattle off in the distance.

And he thought,

At last I've seen Akito tried an actual combat.

And the essence of it was kindness.

So how do we view the big man?

How do we view the big man?

Is he a threat?

Is he a threat?

He yelled and he screamed.

He almost knocked a woman over.

He was belligerent.

You know,

To not see him as a threat would really be naive.

It would be completely naive.

But if we can't see past the belligerence,

We can't see underneath the belligerence,

Then there really is no good way to resolve the predicament.

So the elderly gentleman looked at the drunk with curiosity and kindness and patience.

And this allowed him to see below the surface and it also allowed the drunk to see below the surface of what he was feeling.

And underneath,

He was just a hurting guy who was dealing with more misfortunes than he really knew how to manage.

Has that happened to any of you?

Anybody who it hasn't happened to?

All of us get in those places at times where there's just more than we know what to do with and then we're sort of desperate to bleed off the tension of that.

And we all have our characteristic ways of doing it.

It may not be getting belligerent like he did,

But we all know what that's like.

So it's interesting to contemplate what is it that you do?

What are your characteristic ways of dealing with stuff when you feel overwhelmed?

So beneath the laborer's belligerence and hostility and all that was actually this big,

Tender,

Spacious heart that was just lost in grief and despair.

Just lost in grief and despair.

And this elderly gentleman,

Just with that simple friendliness,

Just began to help the situation unwind itself.

He saw the true nature of things and it became workable.

It doesn't mean it was easy,

But it became manageable.

He found the beginning of a path in the work through all these troubles.

So.

.

.

I have a question.

How do you think the old man would have reacted or what do you think he would have done if the drunk would have hit him?

And if your friend Terry wasn't there?

So the mind can go off into endless speculations.

I don't know.

I don't know.

All I can do is project into it.

So here we are on this retreat and we come here looking for seeking freedom,

Letting go of suffering,

Self-compassion,

Expanded states,

Staying in the present moment,

Finding more of myself,

Learning a new practice,

Cuddling with our quirks and so forth.

So we come here looking for peace and clarity in all these things.

And is that what happened for you today?

Maybe there were some moments here and there,

But mostly on the first day on the retreat train it just kind of fills up with drunks.

Right?

You know?

These uninvited guests that come in and sort of shake up the works when we're just seeking wisdom and peace.

So after a full day of retreat you should be familiar with lots and lots of hindrances.

The hindrances,

They're not at all as dramatic and colorful as that drunk,

But they do come in and sort of tickle the mind and get you speculating about this,

That and the other.

And maybe singing sweet lullabies are sometimes,

You know,

Just stupid stuff.

Some of you heard my story of I spent many days in one retreat trying to design a desk lamp.

It's just the stuff that comes up.

It's like,

Wow.

So I often experience the first day of retreat as kind of a slow motion train wreck.

I don't remember how it was in the beginning,

But I haven't been on many retreats.

You know,

When you see this stuff starting to fall apart,

It's like,

Okay,

I know this and I want to do something about it.

But it's like sort of if ever driven in ice,

You know,

When this car starts to slide and you can see what's happening,

There's not a thing you can do about it.

There you go.

So if this first day of retreat has been difficult for you,

I would say that's great.

You know,

You're right on course.

This is actually what we expect.

It's not what we wish on anybody,

But it's what we expect.

And if the day has gone completely lovely for you,

That's fine too because all of us are going to have lots of hindrances as the week unfolds.

It's the one thing we know for sure.

So maybe I could get some help here.

What I'd like to do is just make a list of some of the kinds of hindrances that have shown up for you today.

So you don't have to tell a whole back story because we have fat markers so we can't do fine writing on that.

But if you can just kind of name some of the hindrances or a little bit of the flavor of it.

Overactive.

Sloth.

Sloth.

Sloth.

Everybody know what sloth is?

Sloth is a loss of motivation.

So the sloth and torpor,

Torpor is the fogginess of mind.

And the sloth is when you're kind of sitting there and,

Yeah,

I should six-R this in a few minutes.

Aversion.

Do you have any particular repeated patterns of things you're averse to that you care to share out of?

Yeah.

Control freak.

So what are you trying to control?

Everything.

Right now it doesn't.

Did it matter at the time?

Doubt.

Doubt.

Doubt.

Loss of confidence.

Messages from the body.

Tired of sitting in a chair.

Like,

Aches.

Restlessness.

Boredom.

Boredom.

Boredom.

It's a sort of avarice.

Oh.

Avarice.

What's avarice?

Desire.

I see.

I say multiple uninvited guests.

Multiple uninvited guests.

We'll name just one or two of them,

Just a representative sampling.

Longing.

Longing.

Yeah,

So that's a quieter one.

Loss.

Loss.

Loss.

Loss.

Loss.

Frustration.

Fear.

Fear.

So one of my favorite sort of forms of hindrance are,

I'll call them earnest explanations.

I'll just sit there and for no reason I saw coming I'm sort of explaining something to somebody,

You know,

Quite sincerely.

What else?

Striving to get somewhere.

Any place in particular?

Clarity and quiet mind.

So anybody else ever strive for clarity and quiet mind?

I mean it's interesting because we all laugh because we know how futile that is,

But you know it's like just knowing that doesn't stop it.

It just comes along.

You know,

One of the most fun kind of delusions to recognize in ourselves is actually a complaint.

Maybe you have any complaints?

So what's behind a complaint is the sort of illusion that if I were God,

If I were running the universe it would be different.

Hope.

Yeah,

Hope is often kind of put out as a positive quality but it's a grasping.

It's a grasping,

It has some fear in it.

It's like,

You know,

This is what's happening and I hope it will be different.

So it's got sometimes aversion.

I want to get somewhere.

I'm hoping to get somewhere.

And it's tricky because we all came to the retreat because we were hoping for something.

Right?

Wonder,

Wondering,

As in trying to puzzle out.

Okay,

That's enough.

Anybody got a favorite that we missed?

Torpor.

We like it.

It's one of the big five.

So I just wanted to get some of this up here because tonight what we want to do is look at how we view this stuff.

Look at how we view hindrances.

And if we see these as a problem,

Then like Terry we've got to change something,

Fix something,

Defeat something,

Override something.

But just as often we'll see,

Well they're not the problem but I'm the problem.

And so,

You know,

If you see yourself as a problem then there's something you have to do to yourself to fix,

Change,

Overcome,

Transcend or something.

Pema Chodron said once that to try to transform yourself is an act of self-aggression.

Do you get that?

Yeah.

Trying to make yourself into something that you don't think you are.

So what we need is a way to see beneath the surface because all these qualities can be destructive in various ways.

So we need a way to see beneath the surface that is neither naïve nor cynical.

So we need a way that has the kindness,

The curiosity,

The openness,

The patience of that elderly gentleman.

Which is why I love this story.

I just sort of want to put a metaphor,

A kind of embodiment of what that quality might be.

If we view it with that kindness and patience then sometimes the hindrance will actually begin to soften and just disappear.

Other times it plops its head on our lap and there we are.

But it actually ceases to be a problem.

So as I mentioned last night,

You know,

That time when having people grip,

You know,

And this exercise you used to have people gripping a stone.

And then you release the stone and it doesn't hurt anymore but the stone hasn't changed at all.

Hindrances are like that.

It's how we relate to them that is most important.

So to just say it real succinctly,

They think that how we relate to hindrances is one of the most important aspects of practice more than anything else.

So again,

If you've had a lot of the hindrances today then you can rejoice because you've got a lot of good stuff to work with.

I mean this is great.

So tonight I'd like to explore the nature of hindrances and how to relate to them in a way that is not naive or cynical.

But before we do that,

I want to step back for a moment and ask a slightly larger question which is simply put,

What is meditation?

You know,

So we've come here to learn something about meditation.

The hindrances get in the way but,

You know,

That is meditation.

That is what we're looking at.

And let's do this a little differently.

What I want you to do is just turn to somebody near you and just spend a few moments sharing some of your ideas about what you think meditation is.

Yeah,

It's got some stickiness on it.

Yeah it's just a lot there.

Okay.

You can just sit down and make one on the threesome.

Okay.

Okay,

Let's take another couple minutes,

A few more moments.

So,

What is meditation?

And I guess we'll have to do this succinctly.

We can't have long paragraphs,

But you can give a long paragraph,

But we'll just give a short note.

So,

What is meditation?

Letting go.

Passive attention.

Passive attention?

Observing without judgments.

Observing the mind.

Observing the mind.

Aware of presence and presence to awareness.

Aware of presence and presence to awareness.

Presence to awareness.

Okay,

You guys have just followed that.

Which leads to acceptance?

Acceptance.

Awareness and presence.

Awareness and presence.

Quality alone time with our mind-body.

Quality alone time with mind-body.

Awareness of what's happening in the mind.

Awareness of what's happening in the mind.

The tool for better living.

The tool for better living.

Practicing how I want to experience every moment.

So,

Let's keep going and we'll see if we can pick up the ones we miss,

But I don't want you to start meditating during the silence.

Cultivating the wholesome.

So that's sadhādha ūteśaṇīya,

His definition of meditation.

Cultivating wholesome qualities.

Cultivating is not a verb.

Is it an intention?

Cultivate means to grow.

You plant,

You cultivate and it grows.

That's what you pay attention to.

But it's not striving.

To make something.

So obvious with mindfulness.

Mindfulness?

You put mindfulness,

You also have to put heartfulness.

Does anybody remember Bhātivīma Rāmṣīs?

I think I heard him say it.

I may be wrong.

Observing how the mind jumps from one thing to the other.

Yeah,

Observing the movements of the mind's attention,

How it jumps.

I'll put one more up,

Is watching awareness unfold.

So any more?

What's the most common theme that runs through all of these?

I mean if we put all that into a blender and chop it up.

Awareness.

Awareness.

Awareness.

Yeah.

And so awareness is,

As we were talking about a little bit last night and some earlier today,

Is a really kind of mysterious thing to look at.

And so a lot of these have to do with cultivating awareness in various ways.

And maybe this is what Perry was getting at,

But there,

And as we hinted at yesterday,

There really is no way to directly cultivate awareness.

Does that make sense?

Kabir writes,

I laugh when I hear the fish in the sea are thirsty.

So cultivating awareness is a little bit like a fish swimming around looking for water.

Or me looking around trying to find my glasses when I'm wearing them.

Right.

Right.

What would I do with them?

Cultivate awareness of attention?

Or just knowing your attention,

That ongoing awareness?

Yeah.

So,

We could go along thing about the nature of awareness and we've done some of that already.

But to go to the practical one that maybe you're pointing towards is how do we cultivate something that's already here?

If awareness is already here,

Then the problem is not the awareness,

But it's whatever is that's getting in the way of the awareness.

Would you be waking up to it?

Yeah,

But so the problem is not the water,

But it's the mud in the water,

So we can't see it.

And so in the mind,

What is the stuff that gets in the mind that gets in the way of awareness?

It's really simple.

Hindrances.

Hindrances?

Yeah.

And what do all the hindrances have in common?

Tension.

Tension.

It's just right out simple as that.

So we're cultivating awareness,

You can't do that directly because it's already here,

But there's all these,

These colases,

There's junk that's floating around in the water.

And so how do you get rid of it?

You need to know what it is,

It's tension.

And so what you need to do is figure out some way to relax the tension.

Any time there's a hindrance that comes in,

It is pointing towards some kind of tension that's there.

And there is,

The deal about the hindrances is that they will point to what the tension is,

But they won't necessarily tell us what to do about it.

That's really up to us.

So what do you do with tension?

Six art.

And I would go through the whole thing.

Recognize,

So you know,

Recognize a hindrance,

It's just recognize that it's there.

It's not necessarily going into the content of it.

Oops,

There's that gesture again.

There's the hindrance.

I'm incorrigible.

So recognize,

And then to release it and let it be,

Because as people have said,

You know,

If you try to change it,

It just makes it worse.

Relax the tension,

Bring in some wholesome qualities,

And then return back.

So let's look at how that plays out in a couple of different situations.

One is if we look at all the hindrances over there,

There are,

I call them the big five hindrances,

That almost all hindrances are in some way related to one of these big five.

So somebody would still want to name one of them.

Desire.

Desire.

Another one?

Sloth and torpor.

Doubt.

Doubt.

Aversion.

Aversion.

Restlessness.

Restlessness,

Yeah.

So desire,

Aversion,

They come in a sort of polar opposite,

Desire,

Aversion.

Sloth and torpor,

Restlessness,

Edginess,

And then doubt.

And doubt actually runs through all of them.

So there's some great things about those.

One is that the Buddha laid them out 2,

600 years ago.

Most of our hindrances can fall into those categories.

So when you see that's what's going on,

You know,

It really is not that personal.

You know,

It was pretty universal at his time.

This is stuff that comes up in humans 2,

600 years later.

It's coming up in us.

It's not something special that we're doing.

It's what happens in this system.

And all of us may have special little quirks on things,

But in those big categories,

It's a way of saying it's impersonal.

And I would also say that embedded in all those five and all hindrances,

If I were to personify them,

I would say that they're all trying to get rid of themselves.

Hindrances actually want what we want.

So this is tricky.

You think about it.

Restlessness.

What are the causes and conditions for restlessness?

Too much energy.

And so what the restlessness wants to do is run some of that energy off.

It's just trying to burn it off.

And one of the ways the mind will do that is to think.

And thinking will burn off energy.

But very,

Very,

Very slowly.

You know,

So the hindrances are trying to get the right place.

They're just not very skillful at it.

So sloth and torpor.

What are the causes and conditions of sloth and torpor?

Blow energy.

Yeah,

There's not enough energy in this.

Too much energy gets restless,

Not enough.

The mind gets torpor-ish and stuff.

And so what the mind is trying to,

What the hindrance is trying to do is to get you to rest so you can replenish.

But again,

It's very,

Very inefficient at it.

It's not necessarily a good way to go at it.

Desire and aversion are a little trickier.

But desire,

When you satisfy a desire,

It feels good.

And the reason it feels good is what?

It's gone.

Yeah,

The desire is gone for a few moments.

Right.

So the desire actually gets rid of itself.

But of course if we don't understand that,

Then we think that it feels good because it got what we want and we start wanting more stuff.

And so it just perpetuates itself.

But implicit in that.

And aversion is the same way.

And just like a negative desire.

So all of these are trying to get rid of themselves.

And they're just not very good at it.

So I'm just,

So my attitude towards them is that they want what's right,

But we have to supply the wisdom.

But it just doesn't work to fight against them.

Because they're already going the right directions.

Sometimes awareness itself can be a hindrance.

Because awareness,

You can get caught into striving,

Looking for awareness.

And that's why I say letting go instead of awareness.

Because my letting go,

You're not,

When things come up,

You're just kind of not attaching yourself to them.

If I find sometimes though when I'm looking,

Awareness,

I can be looking,

It can create this,

The speculation,

This idea that,

Hmm,

Awareness.

What's out there to be aware of.

Right,

Right.

So it raises an important issue.

Is there a difference between looking and seeing?

What's the difference?

It has an agenda.

And so what the awareness is,

Is the awareness we're talking about cultivating is actually pretty laid back.

And it is just receptive.

If you are going out there looking for something,

Then you've got an agenda and there's something extra that's been added on top of it.

And then that does create all the striving and everything else.

So it's not the awareness itself,

But it's striving for a particular object,

You know.

I gave the example of walking through a room.

If you walk through a room and I'm looking for Lana,

Then I go,

Oh,

Well,

There she is.

And I may not notice anybody else that's there.

But if I'm walking through the room just open to seeing,

There's a lot more that comes in.

My favorite metaphor of all this comes from Jack Kornfield,

Where he talked about if you're standing beside a freeway,

Trying to watch the cars go by,

Pretty soon you get dizzy.

But you could also stand by the freeway and just relax and just let your awareness be open and then the cars go.

You're not necessarily following them.

You're not going after them.

You're not actually trying to figure out where they went,

But you're just watching the arising and the passing.

And you can go through all the senses like that.

Is there a difference between what would it be with hearing,

With listening and hearing?

I know the English doesn't work so well in it.

With all of them you can listen for something or you can just hear.

And it gets tricky with the mind because it's subtler and people can't monitor it for us from the outside.

We can only monitor it internally.

But when you open up the awareness,

Are you actually looking for something for the awareness or are you just letting the thoughts and the things be there?

I'm practicing that sometimes and struggle with spacing out,

Getting dull.

So when I let go of looking for anything,

Do you have any suggestions on that?

So these are great.

You know,

There's a way we can go through all these and look if there's any countermeasures that are useful.

So the first thing that's important with that is just to be aware that you're spacing out.

Which comes up eventually.

Yeah.

It could be a little while.

So there are some interesting tools but they're all a little tricky.

That's why I'm hesitating a little bit.

One that you can do is just periodically look at what the quality of the awareness is.

Not so much what's there but look at the quality.

And that will show you right away whether it's dull,

Whether it's tight,

Whether it's jumpy,

Whether it's edgy or something like that.

So that's a little bit of becoming aware of the qualities of your awareness at the moment.

And I think it can be a helpful thing to do if you do it lightly,

You know,

Just periodically.

The difficulty with sloth and torpor and spacing out is that the awareness has gone dull.

And so what you're asking for is how to make the awareness more aware when the awareness is dull.

And you can always look for tension because even in boredom and sloth and all that stuff there's a tightness.

And it has a different quality.

It's like,

You know,

Desire has a particular quality.

You know,

Grasping for aversion has a quality.

Boredom and sloth have a different quality.

It feels not so much like a grasping but kind of a thickness,

A thickness of mind.

And so if you just feel the quality that's in that and then you can feel in that thickness there's a certain type of tension.

And then what you do is you don't try to get rid of the boredom but you let the tension relax.

And as the tension relax then the boredom becomes a kind of a mellowness,

You know,

Sort of a wide open spacious,

Ah,

Here we are.

Yeah,

Yeah.

So other hindrances that people are stuck with that need some special attention?

Yes,

So basically the strategy with hindrances is all the same which is to,

Is basically to six R them.

And the six R's are very effective most of the time but sometimes there are repeated patterns where something is deeply conditioned and comes up over and over and over again.

There's,

Ah,

We won't,

There's a sutta where the Buddha is talking to his cousin Anarudha who is saying that,

Ah,

You know,

He's sitting there and meditating and the mind is clear and the awareness is strong and then it all goes dull and flat and he can't figure out why.

And the Buddha's first response was,

Anarudha,

You should investigate that.

Seems like a sort of massive understatement.

So if you have,

Have a repeated pattern that comes up like that,

Then,

Ah,

You can look at that but if there's a repeated pattern what tends to happen is you tend to get a reaction to the repeated pattern.

I call them secondary hindrances.

You know,

So,

Ah,

You're angry at somebody,

You know,

And so you six R the anger and it quiets down and then it comes right back up again.

And then after about four or five times you start feeling annoyed at the anger for coming up.

And at that point the anger is not really relevant anymore.

It's the,

It's the aversion to the anger.

Both of them are aversive states.

You have aversion to aversion.

So if you can see how the mind is responding,

The secondary hindrance,

How it's relating to that and let that unwind,

Then the whole thing will come apart.

Do you have any suggestions on how to work with that?

Because that's an old friend of mine.

What I would say is that when you recognize that there's a repeated pattern,

In other words,

You know,

You six R and then it comes right back and you do that over and over again and it keeps on coming back,

Usually what's going on there is that the awareness is not actually going deep enough.

So it's in the recognition stuff.

You're not seeing deeply enough what's going on there.

Because there's probably something else underneath it that's driving that.

And so the easiest way to look at it is to see what the attitude in the mind is towards this hindrance that keeps coming up.

Can you ask yourself a question?

Yes.

And then if there is aversion to what's coming up and then just knowing that there's.

.

.

Right.

So for example,

You know,

Let's say that there's somebody at work who you don't like.

I know that's rare.

Nobody's ever experienced that.

And then you find yourself,

You know,

Kind of obsessing about what this person is doing,

You know,

Over and over again.

You know,

The other day she did this and they did that and all that.

And it just keeps on coming back up.

Well,

You can actually focus in on your aversion on that person forever and it will just spin and spin and spin and spin because you're not looking at the quality of awareness.

But if you see that something's going on like that,

See how you feel about this coming up.

And for me,

The question to look at is,

Is there any doubt?

You know,

Is your faith weakened?

Because that's what happens to me when there's a hindrance I can't handle.

I think,

I'm not any good at this or something like that.

So there's some doubt that's come in.

So there's initial aversion and then there's doubt about it.

And if you can 6R the doubt and work with the doubt,

Then as that disappears,

Use the whole complex.

I don't know,

We'll go away.

There are,

The other thing that I think is really helpful to work with them is if you can see the repeated pattern somewhat impersonally.

So particularly if there's aversive situations,

You know,

I think as we all know,

If I mentioned it already,

Is the mind really hangs on to aversive situations.

And what it is,

Is it's evolutionary.

It's just wired into us.

You're walking down a path and some small carver goes running down and takes a chunk out of your leg.

And what happens,

For a long time the mind just goes over and over and over and over and is trying to learn what the heck happened so you don't do it again.

And so it's a pattern that's wired into us when there's something negative happens.

There's a tendency for the mind,

It's just how it's wired for the brain,

To go over and over and over it.

And so if you can just see that it's going over and over and over it,

Rather than get caught in it,

Then that whole thing can start to unwind.

Isn't that dependent origination at work?

Yes.

But there are also,

I mean the core of dependent origination,

We'll spend a night on it,

But is actually seeing the impersonal nature of all these processes that come up.

And it just sort of maps out how that can happen.

Our next door neighbor,

We're parking their car in front of our house.

And I have lots of clients coming in and so they have to park other places and you can't park on the other side of the street and stuff.

And they were new in the neighborhood and so I wanted to go over and talk to them about them.

And I got to tell you,

I sort of released my inner chicken as I just thought of all the various ways they could take this wrong.

And I was just sort of obsessing about all that.

And I finally went over there and talked to them.

And of course they were just like normal people.

It's like,

Oh of course,

They're like very understanding,

Etc.

,

Etc.

And you could see how the mind just builds up this whole big,

Big deal on that.

And the difficulty with the hindrances and stuff when you're meditating is that you don't necessarily,

It's not necessarily even advised to go out and actually check it out to see the reality of the situation and whether it's really true.

But just kind of knowing that can help you unwind it.

Does that,

Does that,

Okay.

Why is it not advised to check out the hindrances?

Oh,

Because they live in Sacramento and I'm in San Juan Batista and that's a long proposition.

And eventually,

Of course what happens when we're trying to look at the mind deeper and deeper is that as you see those patterns,

You know,

In the beginning it can be helpful to check a couple of them out.

And then after you get it,

That the mind just creates all these scenarios,

Then it becomes more one of just,

It's just six ariam right from the beginning.

And if a pattern is deeply embedded,

It may keep coming back,

But you keep six ariam and it gradually subsides.

And if it doesn't,

Then there's probably something hidden underneath it that you're not seeing.

And you can even ask yourself the simple question,

What is it that I'm not seeing?

And the question is not an invitation to analyze it,

Please.

It's not an indication to analyze.

The question is one that helps the mind realize that you're actually interested in this.

And so you become more sensitive to when some information comes up about it.

Okay.

So I was going to try to keep myself down to an hour.

Pretty good.

Yeah,

I'm doing pretty good.

Well,

You know,

We talked about other things for ten minutes.

Actually,

I'm aiming for about forty-five minutes,

But I'll be glad if I can keep it down to an hour.

And I just want to see if there's anything burning on this that we've missed.

Otherwise,

We can go on for a long time and basically at some point you just need to get back to your practice.

But any questions or hindrance or something that you're stuck on?

Just a quick one,

If the hindrance comes up within awareness and it comes feeling and then maybe an image or something,

If I'm talking then,

Do we always 6-0 or if it comes up within awareness,

If it comes up and kind of fully develops to that but it still passes through awareness and it doesn't really touch so much,

Do we just let that run or do we always 6-0?

That's a great question and we can talk about it more in context of where your practice is,

But in general,

Particularly early on,

Is that if the awareness is fairly clear,

Then you don't need to 6-0 it.

As the mind gets very quiet,

As you're sort of taking care of the big boulders,

Then there's just more refined stuff and then you would end up 6-0ing just every little thing that comes up,

Even the beginning of a thought.

So one of the ways that you do that is you can just watch for what comes up before the hindrance.

You know,

So the mind will be very peaceful and then it will get a little wobbly and then something will begin to tighten and then the thought appears.

And early on,

All we see is a thought appearing.

As it quiets down,

You can see the stuff early and early and as soon as you see the mind starting to wobble,

Even before you've got a clue as to what it's about,

You just let it soften.

At that point,

The 6-Rs are probably just one movement.

You're not actually going through each of them.

They're all woven into it and you just let it soften at that point.

And in the upper jhanas,

You do end up 6-R-ing or 1-R-ing or release in everything that comes up.

But in the beginning,

If you try to 6-R everything,

It's like,

My image was a hamster in a wheel,

But it's sort of like banging the wheel for the hamster or something.

You know,

You're just stirring up too much.

We can talk about where you are in your practice.

Yeah,

That'll give you something to 6-R.

So it'd be just interesting to watch.

You're sitting there meditating and you see that come up and just see as we're talking,

I think it was,

I didn't mean to pick on you,

But Gail yesterday,

It happens to all of us that we'll be sitting there and something will come up and the mind says,

Oh,

This is different.

You know,

And the 6-Rs go out and say,

What really is that?

And you just really.

.

.

It's in the ground.

Oh,

It's in the ground.

Oh,

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

See,

It really was,

It really is special.

It's always in here.

It's not a big deal,

But out there.

No,

But it's fun to actually see the mind do that.

It's like,

Whoosh,

In a way it goes,

In a way it goes.

And to treat that with a sense of humor.

It's like,

Oh,

There it's doing its thing again.

I think one of the stickiest hindrances is shame.

And once,

You know,

There's a lot of aversion around shame and it gets very sticky and kind of once you realize that it's shame,

It feels,

You know,

6-R-ing that just doesn't feel like it's something that you can get rid of.

It feels like such a low vibrational energy that you're just kind of.

.

.

That's really a great question.

So this is the way I think it works.

And it's how we humans are wired,

And I don't understand it metaphysically,

I just know practically,

Is that when we get hurt a little,

We experience hurt.

When we get hurt a lot,

We experience anger.

And when the hurt is overwhelming,

We experience shame.

And so the difficulty with shame is that it folds back in on itself.

But what you can know,

If there's shame there,

Underneath it there's probably some anger.

And for sure,

Underneath the shame there is some hurt.

And if you can feel,

I say identify,

But I don't mean analyze,

But if you can feel where the hurt is and the tightness in that,

And can begin to 6-R and allow that.

And it's a place where the relaxing into is really important.

Because with something like shame,

There's so much aversion that comes up around,

There's a tendency to push away.

But if it's like an old friend,

And shame usually is,

You know,

By the time we experience shame it's been around for a while,

Is to actually recognize there's shame and to release it in the sense of let it be and let it be here.

And then relax into it and see if you can see where there's hurt in it.

And where there's that hurt to just relax the tension in it.

It's not to get rid of the shame,

But just to feel the hurt in that and there'll be some tension in that and allow that to soften.

And if that isn't enough,

Then what's going on is there's some identification with the hurt.

And with shame that happens a lot.

And so if there's something persistent with that,

Then that's we shift to the forgiveness practice.

Forgiving yourself for being hurt,

Forgive yourself for being shame,

For feeling shame,

For being the other person,

For,

You know,

Just whatever,

To actually work with the forgiveness.

Because what forgiveness is really good at is taking these deep,

Almost unconscious negative states that we identify with without realizing it and flushing them up to the surface.

And once they're up at the surface,

Then they can be released.

But with shame particularly,

Because it just pulls in on itself.

And a lot of patience and a lot of compassion.

And a lot of,

You know,

Compassion is the opening of the heart,

The outflowing of the heart in response to suffering.

And so it's having some compassion for your own suffering,

For the shame,

And just recognizing all that.

Does disappointment fall within all of that?

Yeah.

It's a similar dynamic.

When people use shame,

It's usually pretty cemented in pretty deeply.

Well,

Disappointment is sometimes used more like a stab,

But it is basically the same dynamic.

How about self-hatred?

I don't recommend it.

Yeah,

It is the same thing.

And it's feeling the hatred,

You know,

Which has,

You know,

Sometimes almost a burning quality to it.

And the tension in that,

You know,

When it's hot,

It can be hot.

So it has its own quality and allow that to soften.

And if it's persistent,

Then you go to forgiveness.

There's a lot of self-hatred in the West because of how we're raised.

So is that enough for the evening?

I have one more question.

Sure.

Forgiveness practice.

So I was talking to a group of yogi friends,

Some,

I don't know what you're talking about.

A little bit louder.

I was talking to some friends about forgiveness practice and they found it to be,

There's a lot of aversion towards the idea of forgiveness practice.

And I couldn't understand why that would be.

Well because forgiveness is a really tricky word.

Forgiveness,

I always use Lily Tomlin's description of forgiveness,

Which has given up all hope of ever having a better past.

For a lot of people,

Forgiveness is confused with saying that what happened was okay.

And forgiveness can also be confused,

Say if I forgive the person,

Then I have to be open to them.

And I think all that forgiveness really is,

Is just recognizing what happened is in the past.

And if there's somebody who has a pattern of attacking you where you're vulnerable,

To have your compassionate defenses available is just wise.

And at some time when you're clear,

Etc.

,

Somebody can come at you with a big attack and you look at them and you just feel bad for them.

But if you know somebody has a capacity to hook you,

Then to forgive them for hurting you doesn't mean that now you have to be open to them.

You may still want to put limits on it.

And to forgive them,

Or to forgive yourself doesn't mean that what you did or what they did,

For forgiving yourself,

For giving another,

Doesn't mean that that's okay.

It just means that it happened in the past and here we are now and where are we going from here.

So my story of a girlfriend who got into a fight and she took this painting that I had and cut it up into little pieces and I could just feel that she was just trying to do whatever she could to hurt me.

And I hadn't,

I had been a little blind,

I hadn't seen that kind of level of viciousness.

And we made up,

We resolved that,

You know,

We worked through that particular situation.

And I was now aware that she was capable of,

You know,

When I was vulnerable,

Of coming at me that way.

And I didn't want to have a primary relationship like that.

So it wasn't like shutting her out or something,

But we just began to drift apart because she wasn't who I thought she was.

And so I saw her more clearly,

You know,

Who she was.

And I have to say,

I still hold a soft place in my heart for her many,

Many,

Many,

Many,

Many years later.

But that relationship,

That closeness was gone.

So forgiving someone doesn't mean that now you have to make yourself vulnerable.

There are ways of making yourself vulnerable that are hurtful to you.

That's a whole different thing.

But it doesn't,

You don't have to be naïve.

Really forgiving is taking care of yourself.

Yes.

It's not about the other person.

So there's a difference between forgiveness and reconciliation.

Reconciliation takes two people to really work through it.

Forgiveness you can do by yourself.

And the other person can spin off and do all kinds of things.

But you're just kind of taken care of what's there.

Thank you for that.

Can I add something to this,

In terms of the practice,

Forgiveness practice and method practice,

One difference is also that in this tradition method practice is the main practice.

So it's kind of going to forgiveness is kind of off track.

Right.

So that's the other reason why people may feel that aversion to it or not.

Okay.

That's a possibility.

In my experience is that everybody at some point needs to do some forgiveness practice.

Some people's right at the very beginning.

For me it was actually,

It was important for me getting unstuck and moving into the eighth jhana.

There was some really deep piece of stuff there I hadn't seen and there was something about when I finally got a hold of that and did the forgiveness practice it kind of loosened it all up.

So I think in different places it's a very powerful practice.

There are times and places where the meditation alone is,

Boy I just feel like I've got to be careful here,

It sounds like sacrilegious,

But there are times when the meditation practice alone is not enough.

There are places where we can get stuck in things where there are actually other tools around and the forgiveness as you say is a different kind of practice but the forgiveness is more,

You can get through those deep identifications with negative states using this straight meta practice,

Jhana practice.

But forgiveness can sometimes just move through it a lot,

A lot faster in certain situations.

And so in our little sangha back in Sacramento we've been looking at whole bunches of little practices that can be really helpful in special kinds of knots where the Buddha says,

Anuruddha you should investigate that.

He's doing the practice right,

Something's stuck,

You need to look at that.

Okay,

So if you've got some good energy,

You all look so much better than you did last night just from up here.

And I don't doubt there's still some fatigue and stuff but I can see it's coming along and I really look forward to getting a chance to see you all individually tomorrow.

So if you feel like you have some good energy,

Keep going,

Keep going.

Get yourself some tea,

Go for a walk or just stay right with it.

And it's really helpful to know and develop the wisdom of knowing when it's time to practice,

When it's time to go to sleep,

When it's time to walk,

When it's time to sit.

And the only way,

Well,

The only way I ever learned this stuff is to do it wrong.

You know,

I'll go to bed too early and I think I'm tired and I lie there awake for a long time or I get up and I push myself to meditate.

So that's the way you develop wisdom is you just take your best shot at it and then pay attention to what happens.

And if you called it wrong then that becomes information and that feeds back in and over time you just get wiser and wiser about handling yourself.

And so please do that and do that with a great deal of care.

And let me close with just one more thing since we're talking about gentleness and kindness and all this.

This is from Adrienne Rich,

A feminist poet.

She writes,

Gentleness is active.

Gentleness swabs the crusted stump,

Invents the more merciful instrument to touch the wound beyond the wound,

Does not faint with disgust,

Will not be driven off,

Keeps bearing witness calmly against the predator,

The parasite.

I am tired of faint heartedness.

So kindness should not be confused with faint heartedness.

Kindness can be quite fierce.

And so you will know sometimes when you're in a tight place and you're sitting,

Sometimes what it just needs is some gentle fierceness to stay through and just to stay with it until it unwinds.

Other times the most important thing is to shift energy,

Get up and walk,

Go to sleep,

Do something different and just pay attention to all those because it's those stuck places and what we do with them that is so important in how this unfolds.

One last thing from Utejaniya,

Maybe I've said this before but I'll say it every night,

He says there are no mistakes.

There are no mistakes,

There's only lessons.

So if you do something and it doesn't work out,

If you can learn something from it,

Then it's all to the good.

And if you're like me it's like the only way I learn.

It's like I have to hit every tree.

But when I learn it,

By golly I know it.

I've got the scars to show it.

So stay with yourself in the vernacular.

Stay with awareness.

Stay with a mind heart.

Be open and gentle and kind.

And all of us together now,

Just opening up your heart and your awareness and just sending it out to other people in the room.

You're all the yogis who are sitting through this with you.

May they know kindness,

May they know fierceness,

May they know depth,

May they know well-being,

May they know freedom.

And then taking this wish and sending it out to the birds that are cooing,

To the little critters crawling through the grass,

To the brothers and all of the other folks that are taking care of us and then out into a wider and wider world out there.

May all beings everywhere.

No kindness,

No depth,

No courage,

No simplicity,

No freedom.

May all beings be free.

And may all beings have sweet dreams.

May it be so.

Blessed be.

May all beings be free.

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