Hindrances To Clarity

Hindrances may seem to obstruct our meditation. However, when we are aware of the present moment and the context of that moment at the same time, there are no hindrances. Whatever arises can become an object of awareness. This is how wisdom grows.

Transcript

So, I ask you to imagine a cathedral, A big cathedral in Florence, About a thousand years ago. It's the eve of a crusade. So today we look at these misadventures as being motivated by ignorance, Prejudice, And racism. Actually, If you don't know, Part of what happened was after the Vikings and Norsemen ravaged Europe, They developed this whole class of warriors to fight them off and then they fought them all off and they had all these warriors running around that knew very little what to do except go around and pillage. So they sent them off to the east to keep them from causing damage on the home turf. But anyway, That's another time. So it's the eve of this crusade and for the people in Florence, It's this really glorious undertaking and so they've called this mass of dedication to the small army that's about to leave the next day. So there's a little pause during this mass and one of the knights stands up right there from the pews in the middle of this and he says, I, Renero di Renero, Will bring back to this church the most precious thing I find on this holy crusade. And all the eyes that look at him carry a mixture of respect and fear and resentment. Renero di Renero is known for his knightly skill and courage which is only surpassed by his arrogance. But no one expected him to bring his bragging into the church. Chief Priest sighed and carried on with the mass and he sat down. His wife, Francesca, Was sitting next to him and she thought quietly that maybe she wasn't going to miss him that much after all. The way east was long and difficult with many battles and many bloody messes and after about half a year they managed to take Jerusalem and they made their triumphant entry into the city. And that evening they had a special service and what the service consisted of was as part of the service was to go up to the tomb where Jesus had once laid and there was a candle that was kept burning there and they would go up to this candle and light their own taper there and walk away. So Renero di Renero's sword had indeed killed more of the enemy than anyone else so to him felt a privilege of being the first to do this. So he was dressed in this humble garb of penitence as was required, Walking barefoot through the dark streets of Jerusalem up this narrow pathway and there at the end of it was a single candle burning. And as he approached it there was just something of the mystery and the whole setting of it that touched something in his cold heart. It seemed like the light of the world was just coming through that one point of light and as he held his taper to that candle he thought, This is the most precious thing that I could bring back to the cathedral in Florence. Gold, Relics, All that stuff. What could be more valuable to a church than a flame lit at Jesus' tomb? So he resolves that he's going to carry this candle light back to Florence. The next day he announces his intention to his compatriots and he's greeted by silence and a few ill-concealed snickers. And so he gathers his prize and says, Well if none of you are going to accompany me I will go alone protected only by my own prowess. So a few days later he is in shining armor on top of his horse with enough candles to keep the taper lit for months holding this candle in his hand as he goes galloping proudly out of the midst of these crusaders, The wind blowing in his hair. And after a few hundred yards he looks down and the wick is dark. There's just a little thread of smoke trailing off in the distance and he stops and he looks at this thing and he can't figure out what to do. I mean, If he goes on, His mission, It was doomed. And if he goes back it's going to be publicly admitting this really embarrassing mistake and so he just stared at it for a minute. And then he slowly looked up and turned his horse around and with this kind of grin, You know, As he marched back up to relight the candle, Smiling as if the whole thing were, What an intentional joke on his part. And everybody laughed but their laughter was not very kind. So he went back, Lit his taper again and then he rides out for the second time through this gauntlet of mocking eyes. And now he's riding very slowly, Carefully watching the flame and his mind is swirling. He has never in his life really concerned himself with anybody's needs but his own. And now he realizes he's really got to take care of this candle. And he's thinking, You know, This candle that almost blew out in this breeze, When it's quiet it burns really brightly. And he realizes this journey is going to take a lot of patience. Simple test that he thought was so easy is not going to be that easy. Several weeks later he was riding along with this candle and he saw this band of about five bandits up there, Poor bandits who were preparing to ambush them. And so he draws out his sword. Five of them are going to be no match for him. And he's going to teach him a lesson and just before he rides into them he realizes he could easily beat them all but there's a chance that the candle would go out in the scuffle. And then he would have to go all the way back to Jerusalem. It's a couple weeks behind him already. And the sneers and mocking eyes of all. So he sheathed his sword and he gets off his horse and he walks into their midst and he says, Take from me what you must. I just ask you not to disturb this candle. Well these little sort of rag muffin bunch of bandits, They were amused and amazed at what was going on and so they stripped him of his armor and his weapons and his fine clothes and his horse. But they did leave the candle and left him all his tapers, All his backup candles. And as they're riding off the leader of this group looks back and takes pity on this guy there. And he gives him this old worn out robe and equally worn out nag. So stripped of all outward signs of vanity he carries on. Several weeks later this woman comes running up the trail to him and she says, My child is sick. My hut is cold. I haven't been able to rekindle the flame. I can't bake food for him. Can I use your candle to light my hearth? And Reneiro de Reneiro says, Madam, This flame came from the tomb of Jesus. It was not meant for such a lowly errand. And she bows her head in silence and then she says, Jesus cared for the sick and poor. Wouldn't he want to help a sick child? So Reneiro's mind is spinning a little bit. He can't think of rejoinder and then he says to himself, Well maybe there's no harm in it. So he allows her to use his candle to light her hearth. Late the next day he's high up in this mountain pass and a storm comes up. The rain and wind and he shelters the candle and he's working valiantly on it but some moisture leaks through and lands on the wick and the light's gone. It's just out. He can't believe it. For the first time in his life he felt unredeemable failure. He's come too far to go back. His home is still far away. He didn't know what to do so he just kind of sank down right there in the middle of the trail in this rain a figure of complete dejection. So we're going to leave him there for the moment in the mountain pass overwhelmed by a massive hindrance attack. The story was written by a woman by the name of Selma Legolov. I found it in this collection of stories called A Friendly Caravan of Stories. It's a collection put together by the friends, The Quakers, For their children. And we'll pick it up and finish the story tomorrow. Tonight what I'd like to do is to reflect on the Renero's spiritual practice and the role that hindrances plays in it. So his practice was to keep a candle burning continuously. To do this he had to constantly attend this flame. A candle flame is a universal metaphor for awareness. When we light up inside our awareness is strong and bright and clear and when our lights go out, You know, We're dull and thick and our awareness just disappears. So being aware of the candle flame you can see it as a metaphor for being constantly aware of awareness. When I first read the story it sounded to me like a metaphor for one pointed concentration. Putting all this attention on the flame and nothing else and keeping it there. But if you think about it in the story that wouldn't have worked. If he had just been aware of the flame and nothing else he would have walked into a tree or off a cliff or something else. And if he was just aware of the flame and the path before him, You know, He wouldn't have seen the bandits getting ready to ambush him. And if he broadened his awareness to include the flame, The path, Scanning for criminals, Then even something as simple as a little puff of wind, You know, Could put it out. So what was required really wasn't one pointed concentration. The required was, Well, He could use the candle as a kind of a home base to bring his attention back to when it wandered too far. But to really do this he had to keep a fairly wide open awareness. He had to be aware of the candle, Himself, His surroundings and everything around him. In Buddhism this is called sampajana. Sati, Which is translated as mindfulness, Is being present. We can be mindful of a single object, But sampajana is awareness of the present moment and everything around it at the same time. It's very broad. So we may be walking down the street and we could be aware of our breath or aware of the sensations at our feet or aware of the surroundings with sampajana. You would be aware of all of those at the same time. Aware of the weather, The traffic, Everything at the same time. Sampajana is oftentimes translated as clear comprehension or clear knowing. Some of you may have heard that phrase, But it really doesn't do justice to itself. Clear knowing. Yeah, It's usually clear comprehension. I've seen some people translate it as clear knowing. But those terms don't really give enough of the real breadth of it. The mind is capable, As I've been saying, The mind is capable of knowing many, Many things at once. However, You can't force a broad awareness. There's actually no way to do it. You can force awareness of a single object or maybe even two objects, But a broad awareness can't be forced. All you can do is relax into it. It's just something you can open out to. So cultivating mindfulness and keeping it broad can trigger sampajana, Can trigger this wide open awareness. We can create the conditions in which it can arise, But we can't force it. So to get this lit candle back to Florence, He needed not one point of concentration, But he needed sampajana, This wide open field of awareness. So Rānāra unwittingly took on this practice of tending this flame. But when he did it, He really didn't know what he was getting himself into. And I daresay when most of us start meditating, We really don't know what we're getting self into. I mean we think we do, But it's like there are all these places along the way we think, Oh, Well this is what it is. And then a little later you say, Oh, Well this is what it is. So Rānāra engaged this practice and the first thing that happened was this candle went out. His awareness, It was gone. So all of us began the first full day of this retreat, You know, This morning, Radiating well-being, Radiating metta, Peacefulness, Uplifted feelings, And what's the first thing that happens? Awareness goes pfft. So we keep coming back to our home base, Our anchor, But the lights keep going out. It's just a matter of a few moments sometimes and pfft, It's gone. So if the candle is a metaphor for awareness, Then the hindrances are anything that snuffs our awareness out. And on the first day of retreat our awareness gets blown out a lot. Right? Bhānti calls it first day blues. I mean the first day can be really difficult. It just is. We lead these busy lives and, You know, Really active and then we come into a retreat where all of a sudden we're supposed to stop. I always, As some of you know, May always have this image of the Keystone Cops, That cartoon. These little bitty cars that run around bumper to bumper and the first one stops and the others, Bam, Smash into it. And that's what the first day of retreat can be like. You know, We slow down a little bit and all the stress and fatigue of our life come to the surface and it just piles into us like this multi-car accident. And somewhere in the midst of our wreckage the awareness just disappears. Of course when this happens it's not quite as publicly humiliating as it was for narrow, Narrow, Narrow, But it can be disheartening nevertheless. So if it's been a difficult day for you, I just want to say welcome. Welcome. We actually expect this. We don't hope for it, But it's just what happens. We try to slow everything down and the practice just falls apart. And if the day has been easy for you, You're welcome to. There will be plenty of times in the coming days when your awareness is going to go out. So tonight I thought we would look at the hindrances. Take a deep look at the hindrances. And I'll just define hindrances, Anything that snuffs out your awareness, Anything that takes it away. In this practice, The way we're doing it, A hindrance is anything that takes our awareness completely off the object of meditation, The metta, The kindness that you're sending out, Completely off it. If you're still aware of metta and you're aware of thoughts and stuff, That's not a problem. It's just when it's gone completely. At one point in concentration, Which is much more difficult, A hindrance is anything that takes any of your awareness away from it. But as I was saying earlier this morning, I don't think the Buddha taught one point in concentration. He really taught sampajana. That's what he was most interested in, This wide open field. So still there were times when you were meditating and it was peaceful and things were going well and awareness just leaves. You're lost in stories. You're thinking about what are they going to have for lunch today. Or you're still getting used to the daily routine and wondering how you're going to get through the afternoon or fighting the heat or something and your attention just goes away. Most people spend most of their time in a sort of dreamlike cloud of thoughts as they go through their day. That's why the goal of the Buddha's practice is called waking up, Waking up, Just getting here. So the trick of effective meditation is not getting rid of the hindrances. The trick of it is really rekindling that flame of awareness over and over again. You can just count on it going out and it's figuring out how to rekindle it over and over again. Our job is not to blow out the hindrances. It just creates more wind. Our job is to reignite the flame over and over until the awareness gets stronger and stronger. And as the awareness gets stronger and stronger it gradually builds up its own momentum and where it begins to carry on by itself more and more and you'll feel this. So our job is to nurture the awareness and awareness's job is to take care of us as we were talking about earlier today. So how do we rekindle the awareness? Well the answer is wise effort and the wise effort as we know is the six R's. Recognize that the mind is drifted. Don't get involved in the storyline. Wear that it's gone. Release it. Let it be what it is. Not pushing or pulling. Relax in any tension. Bringing up lifted states. Smiling a little bit. And then returning to the practice and then repeating that as often as you need. And this is very effective at kindling mindfulness awareness and eventually sampajana most of the time. But there are sometimes when you six R over and over again, Well maybe six R over and over again and gradually things get clearer. But sometimes you six R over and over again and the same hindrance keeps on coming back with the same strength maybe even more vigor. So what do you do then? Well one of the first things you can do is bring the six R's in for a tune up. Did I talk about this the other night? Okay. So as we were talking with Gary about how the six R's tend to blend together, You'll notice somehow as you practice this more and more, We call it rolling the R's, You find rather than recognize and release and relax and re-smile and return, It's more like you start to recognize what flows right into the release which allows for some relaxation which feels uplifted which brings you back to your practice. They just begin to flow together. And then what can happen after they start to flow together is you can go along where you recognize release, Return and not realize you're starting to leave a few of them out. So one thing that you can do when your practice starts to break down a little bit is just slow the six R's down and just go through them, Each one, One at a time and make sure they're all there and see if you're missing one and then bring them back up to speed. I used to always leave out the re-smile, Recognize, Release, Relax and go send out. And each one of those pieces is actually very important. Other people will leave out other ones so you just slow it down and see. Sometimes even that is not enough. If that's not enough, Then usually what's going on is you're not seeing something so you actually need to spend some more time with a recognized step. So the Buddha had a bunch of tools that he offered for helping in this. One of them was this set of five hindrances. And most hindrances will fall into one of these big five. So let's see if we can aim them. What's one of them? Doubt. So doubt, Skepticism. Doubt is, There can be a place where you're not quite sure what's going on but there's curiousness and engagement. That's not what it is. Doubt is more of like when you sort of pull back. Another one? Sloth and torpor. People know what the difference between sloth and torpor is? So torpor is a kind of a groggy mind. It's sort of like if you've been sleepy at night and you're reading a book and you actually read down through the whole thing and you get down to the bottom and you realize you have no idea what you just read. That's torpor. The mind just doesn't absorb much. And sloth is actually when your motivation is shot. Oh, I should sixar that. I'll do it in a minute. And the sloth and torpor tend to go together. So doubt, Sloth and torpor. Another one? Hatred. So it's aversion. So there's desire and then there's aversion. Hatred being really strong. There's a whole range of those. Yeah? Anger. Yeah, That all falls into that camp. Anger, Illusion, Aversion. Good. Another one? Greed. Greed. Wanting. It's the sort of sticky mind that wants to move towards or pull things toward it. We're missing one. Restlessness. Nobody said desire, Right? So you have desire, Wanting things, Aversion, Anger, Pushing things away. You've got restlessness, Agitation, Sloth and torpor, And doubt. So these five hindrances are universal ways in which the human biological, Phyco-spiritual system responds in different circumstances. In other words, None of these are actually personal. We tend to take them personally but they aren't. So if you sixar over and over again and it's not working, Take a look and just see if you're taking it personally. You say, I don't like this restlessness in my mind as opposed to saying, Oh, There's restlessness in the mind. If there's some kind of identification or holding on and see if you can slide back away from it. Think of it this way. There's light and the light comes into your eye. It's actually not your light. It's just the light. So similarly, If let's say your body is not getting enough oxygen, It's going to what? It's going to start breathing faster and faster? And so if you don't like the fast breathing, One thing you can do is try to stop the breathing. But I wouldn't advise that. The other thing you can do is try to get more oxygen. You get more oxygen to it and then the breathing will slow down. Similarly, If there's too much energy in the system, This whole system will start to get restless or agitated or squirrely. It's just a sign that there's too much energy. It's not your restlessness. I mean the Buddha talked about this 2, 600 years ago. It was going on 2, 600 years before him. It's just the way the human system responds when it has too much energy into it. It's not personal. It's just what happens. So if you've got too little energy, Then you tend to get the sloth and torpor. And this has been going on for millions of years. It's not yours. So they're just messengers. They're saying that there's something about your system that's out of balance. Did you say identification is restlessness? Yeah. I'm restless. My mind is restless. Oh, That's a reaction to your restlessness. Are you saying identification happens when you're restless? No. No. No. Identification, Thank you. We humans tend to be able to identify with anything. So the issue there is that we're taking something personally rather than seeing it as a biophysical energetic phenomena. Well all of it. Yeah. The suffering would get very concerned about my suffering. Is that correct? Okay. No. Please ask me and stop me. So I would say that the hindrances are just messengers that are telling us that something's out of balance. So one says, Hey, You know, It's getting a little zippy around here. The problem is that the hindrances aren't very bright. You know, They really don't know what to do about it. Or another one says, Hey dude, The lights are getting kind of dim, Aren't they? So killing the messenger, Trying to kill the hindrance, Actually doesn't accomplish anything. Right? You have to sort of address what's going on underneath it. And the hindrances don't know what to do about it. So it's up to us to bring the wisdom to it to figure out what to do about it. Okay, Are you with me? But as you speak about it, About it in a meaning, After morphism, Which is also giving in an identity. Right. Right. So it's a metaphor. It really doesn't have an ego and a superego. It's just a way of trying to understand what the dynamics of it are. What they all are are just a reminder that our system is responding naturally to various conditions. Okay. So, And the hindrances don't know what to do about it. But just in general, You know, Awareness is a very wholesome quality. Kindness is a very wholesome quality. So if you bring some kind awareness to what's going on in your system, It will tend to bring some wisdom into it to sort it out. Okay. So and if that doesn't work, Then the Buddha offered a whole lot of antidotes. So the first thing, You just see the hindrances, Recognize that in fact it's not you personally that this is something that happens to all systems under certain conditions and bring some kindness and clarity to it and it will tend to untangle itself and if that's not enough, Then you go to some of these antidotes. And what I'd like to do now, I hope we can have some fun with this, Is there is one of, There's a sutta, It's the Upaklesa Sutta, Majjhima Gaya number 128 for those who are keeping score. It's that middle length discourses in which the Buddha lists eleven hindrances. And so what I'd like to do is to go through just a little bit of a text and the Bhikkhu Bodhis is one of the translations of it and we'll look at how the hindrances are being labeled and then try to figure out what it is in our own experience and how to counteract it. So this sutta begins, The first six verses of the sutta, Just to give a little backdrop, Are dealing with a schism in Kosambi, Actually Gushita's Park, Which was a Buddhist Sangha that was just outside of the city of Kosambi. That's a whole wonderful story in and of itself, But there was this whole ruckus and bhrulaha that was going on and the Buddha came to help him sort it out and they told him they didn't want his help, Which was kind of a pretty amazing thing in and of itself. And so he left. He just walked out of the whole thing. And then he walks over to the Eastern Bamboo Park and there he runs into a monk by the name of Anaruddha, Who was actually with his cousin. And he asked him how he's doing and Anaruddha is apparently living in great concord with two other monks. So fresh out of this whole schism and all this bhrulaha, He's really interested in how it is they live together so well. And Anaruddha says that they're kind to each other, They each place the other person's needs, The head of their own, They share their chores and so forth. And he says, We are different in body but one in mind, Blending like milk and water, Viewing each other with kindly eyes. And they play together well. And he says, And they meditate together. So the Buddha kind of perks up at this and the Buddha says, Good, Good Anaruddha. Have you attained any superhuman states, A distinction of knowledge and vision worthy of the noble ones, A comfortable abiding? Superhumans here just doesn't mean superman. It just means above average. He's talking about the jhanas. He says, Have you achieved any jhanas? And comfortable abiding means equanimity. So if you've gotten any jhanas, Is there any equanimity? And Anaruddha responds, Venerable sir, As we abide here attentive, Sincere and steady, We perceive both light and vision of form. Light just means radiance. It's kind of a luminous quality of mind. And vision of form means that they can, Their mind is able to stay with what's going on. They can see what's there without drifting off. Soon afterwards, Light and vision of form disappear. But we have not discovered the cause for that. In other words, What he's saying is that we start off meditating well, The mind heart becomes clear and luminous and steady and open and wonderful and then it all falls apart and we don't have any idea why. And the Buddha says, This has got to be the ultimate understatement, He says, You should discover the cause for that, Anaruddha. And then he elaborates, He says, Before my enlightenment while I was still only an unenlightened bodhisattva, I too perceived both radiance and was mindful. Soon afterwards this lightness and the mindfulness disappeared. And I thought, What is the cause and condition why this radiance, This luminous and this mindfulness have disappeared? I observed doubt arose in me. And because of my doubt, My stability fell away. When my stability fell away, The radiance, The luminousness and the mindfulness disappeared. And so he said to himself, So I shall practice that doubt will no longer arise in me. So let's unpack this a little bit. So saying all along, We're practicing something hijacks our attention, The first thing that we do with Sikṣāra. And usually this works, Sometimes it doesn't. And the Buddha says, You ought to ask why it's persisting. Why does this continue? And one way of doing that when you get stuck is just to ask him, What's going on? And you just sort of gently ask the question and then you go back into your practice. And what's going on, What's happening here is not an invitation to try to figure out intellectually. It's just, It's sort of like telling the mind that you're really interested in what's going on. I want to see more about what's here. And then the Buddha goes on to say that back in the old days before he had awakened, Sometimes when he looked to see what was going on, What happened was there was doubt. So doubt can sometimes be a primary hindrance. I mean it's something that just comes up on its own. Oftentimes doubt is a secondary hindrance. So you're sitting there, You're meditating and you get restless and you struggle with the restlessness and you can't figure out what to do with it and then you start to doubt whether you can do the practice or the practice works. And so that's what I mean by secondary hindrance. It's a hindrance which is a reaction to a hindrance. Hindrances run around in little packs. They run around in gangs. Once one arises it's more likely that other ones are going to arise. So what you do in that case is that you look at the secondary hindrance and six are that. And as that smooths away the rest of them will go with it. How many of you have done that? Yeah. Every time I explain it somehow it just doesn't sound like it makes sense but when you've done it you see it actually really works. That the secondary one can be the one that hides but it's really driving it so if you can take care of that one. So in this case we don't know whether the doubt was a primary or secondary hindrance but he says he was going to practice in a way that that doesn't happen. So that's verse 16. Verse 17 has all the same words and it's exactly the same text except. . . How do we know that doubt isn't the beginning of inquiry that's in a positive way to reinforce that practice? Yeah, Yeah, Good. We're going to come right back to that. You're just a little ahead of me. So verse 17 it does the whole same thing except rather than doubt comes in the next. Oh, Inattention. And then it goes through eleven of these. It's a whole the same thing but he says that there are these different hindrances that come up. So what I'd like to do is just go through all these eleven and we'll take a look at what they are. We'll start with the doubt. So the first thing, Yeah, Is to make the distinction between doubt as skepticism and doubt as inquiry. You know the Buddha was one who was very famous for saying, You know, Don't take anybody's word for anything. You really have to discover it in your own experience. So there can be this way where something's coming up and you're not sure what it is but there's some interest and so you kind of open up your awareness and kind of look at it and delve into it. That's called inquiry and it's similar to curiosity. Doubt is, It's like, Oh no, I don't believe that. Doubt has a little bit of aversion in it. It's kind of a pushing away. So the real difference is whether there is enough interest to actually engage and see what's going on or whether doubt is just a cover for just shutting it off because it's a whole different phenomenon, What you do with that. Yeah, There could be ego and it can even be sort of pre-ego but, You know, I don't believe in that stuff. Yeah, Yeah. Or it comes slowly but it does come down. So what is it that you do when doubt arises? Pardon? Six are it? Yeah. So, And what else could you do? Believe the Buddha? Okay. Okay. That would work? Yeah. Yeah. So what Jenny was saying was, Because of my question about, You know, How is it that you strengthen your belief in what the Buddha taught? Because particularly, He said, You have to find it in your own experience. And sitting with it can be a similar thing. Probably the most important thing is just taking more interest in what's going on. You know, Something is going on here. So, And you will be able to feel in doubt when there's there, You know, If you six are it, You'll feel there's some tension in the doubt that's kind of pushing away. So there's the thing about opening up and just, Oh, Okay, Well let's really see what's going on here. I think I'm failing to grasp how doubt actually arises. Like, Let's say you were on your object of focus and you were feeling good, And how would doubt actually distract you? As an example? I don't know if this is really working. I've been doing this a long time and it's not getting anywhere. So we must have lots of examples of what are some other flavors of doubt? Do you have? Right. Yeah. Yeah, Well you see what's going on in the moment and if what's really is there is that there's not enough physical energy, Then, Well you have to look and see if there's tension in it. So if you're sitting there and there's, Because you can be sitting there and the mind can be, You know, Sloth and torpor and there can be, You know, Just that grogginess of mind and you can say, Oh, You know, I'm really tired. There's not necessarily any doubt in that. That would be an overlay that says, Oh, I guess this really doesn't work for me. I know, But we were talking about it. Yeah. Did I miss something in it? Okay. So is that clear? Okay. So taking interest in it. Sometimes it can be helpful, Particularly when doubt gets really strong, Is to actually sit back a little bit. This is not necessarily a meditative practice but sit back and just reflect on what your motivation is. You know, Sometimes you can try and get into the weeds enough which you actually sort of lose track of why it is I'm doing this. And it's helpful to have an answer that feels genuine. Particularly when it gets rough, You know, When it's not going very well, It's like, You know, What are we doing all this for? And say, Well, Just actually see what your motivation is. It's looking for just kind of making peace with, You know, The maybe welcoming mystery of it. I don't know what's going on but it will be interesting to see. Right now it's not clear. Yeah. So it's looking for just kind of making peace with really not knowing. And with that sort of attitude of waiting to see what comes along as opposed to putting the layer of doubt, Of pushing it away. When you say looking for the motivation, Are you actually suggesting that we be goal oriented in our meditation? We'll get more deeply into this in the next couple of days but let me just say that there is something, There is some motivation that brought you to this practice. So I'm not talking about, You know, Finding politically correct or buddhistly correct motives but actually just look and see genuinely what is it that, You know, Why am I here? What is it that I'm really looking for with this? Yes. Yeah. Just on a very personal basis. To see if you can hook back into, You know, What it is that naturally allows you to bring energy to it. So you're really trying to bring in a more positive quality? Yeah. I would say, I'm just hesitating a little bit with positive and negative because they tend to go together but I would say more open. Could you reflect on the Noble April path and the second one, Right Intention? Right after you consider your intention. We'll tease that apart more tomorrow but yeah. I won't go too far into it now but those intentions and attitudes tend to arise out of how we see things. You can't create a motivation but if you see things clearly that will trigger motivations. So that's why the first one is wise view. Yeah, If you get wise view in place then there are those intentions sometimes translated as attitudes, Wholesome attitudes come out of it. Ready for the next? Inattention. So what this is really about is having more interest in something else other than the meditation. I've told a story to some of you of, I think it was the second retreat that I was on, Is I was sitting there meditating and I got thinking about a desk lamp. And a kind of desk lamp I wanted for my little desk up in the attic of my home there and how I could make this. And so I went through this whole long procedure of figuring out how I could make this and hinge it and all this stuff and I got all excited about it. And I thought, What am I doing? And I said, Well I'll just finish up this desk lamp and then I'll go back to my meditation. So I did that and I was delighted with the desk lamp I had and I went back to meditating and then about 20 minutes later I realized there was a flaw in the design. And so I started all over again and two days later I was still doing all this stuff and Jack Kornfield is one of the teachers there and I went and I confessed to this whole thing and you know what he said to me? He said, Yeah, He used to design meditation centers. Back long before Spirit Rock was in place. So that's what inattention is. You know you find something else that you find more interesting than what's going on and you think, Okay, Okay, Well I'll do this. So what can you do about inattention? You can 6R it? That's a safe answer to everything, Yes. And it's some of the stuff we've talked about before about just actually taking more interest in the metta, Taking more interest in your object of meditation. And you can also reflect on your motives. What am I here for? Designing a lamp? Well, Maybe I am, You know. But just be aware of what your motives are. Okay. Confidence helps too. Confidence helps. You know, Just understand why you're practicing and understanding practice and how it works and having, I designed chicken poops. Many, Many. Yeah. Just go, Oh, We're not doing that now. Yes. And then there's this grasping, Do you think it's going to go away? Or if it's the poem you're writing, You're writing it down? That's right. But after you've done it, You've got to keep, I mean that's cool, But that's not what this is. Yeah, That's great too. You know, And particularly as you have more and more practice under your belt, You can reflect back on the times and what actually happened with them, Like you were doing. Any more ideas about where to go with it? Well, It's nice that you gave the explanation as to how meta serves you. But this morning you were talking about building up and being able to see things at this level of friendship. So for me, I can see putting aside destruction because I really do want to build meta at this day. And I want to put my daily work in so there's a benefit to building up and building up. And it does help to really know what the motivation is underneath it to do that. So the motivation is to build a chicken coop. My guess is, At least in my own experience of building that lamp, Is that motivation can actually survive more if it's kind of hidden behind a curtain. You know, But if you really look at it and say, You know, Right now I'd rather be building a chicken coop and it's just clear and it's out in the open, Then it becomes something you can actually 6R. You can recognize it, Release it, Let the motivation be there, Relax the tension and etc. But what happens is when they're kind of hidden, Then they kind of avoid the 6Rs. Okay, The next one was sloth and torpor. Sleepiness, Dullness, Lack of motivation. What are some of the things that you can do with sloth and torpor? You know, Breathing helps with that, I find. Breathing helps with a lot of things. Yeah, It keeps going. Breathing helps particularly with sloth and torpor. It puts energy into your body. Right. Yeah, If the metabolic fires are low, Bringing more oxygen into the system, I mean, Literally brings up more energy. Sleep. Sleep. And it helps to be discerning. And sometimes the only way you can do this is to experiment, To see if the grogginess is because of physical sleep or the grogginess is because of something else. And so you can try different things and see what works. So what are some other things you can do? Opening the eyes. And washing your face with cold water. Yeah. Taking a walk. I used to find that I recognize these qualities of mind and sort of in the instant. So I can see what's happening in that moment, Physically, Mentally. But if I take a moment to really look and try to identify physical sensations or textures of mind that are present in me, I'm not really being curious. Yeah. And some of it is actually the more you know about your system and how it operates. I have a lot of curiosity too and so sometimes they can get carried away but just knowing that about myself I can look at how I'm working with it and more likely to catch myself before it goes out of balance. Standing meditation. Are very few people who fall asleep standing up. And you know in the same account actually just sitting up with less back support because it's actually impossible to stand still. You know the body's always moving slightly, Those little muscular adjustments and that actually brings more energy into your system. It also means if you're really tired whatever energy you've got to you're burned through it really quickly. But if it's not really fatigue it just brings more energy in. The phrase Bhante always uses is he says, No oh humming. So if you find yourself kind of oh humming, I mean that's a dead giveaway for sloth and torpor. Yeah sometimes I think that's a dead giveaway for sloth and torpor. I think it depends on your system. I know some people that just they specialize in sloth and torpor. They don't need anything. It just goes there. Any of these can be primary and secondary they can all work around. The next one is fear. What can you do with fear? Oh has anybody had fear come up in their sitting? Yeah. One of the biggest things that I've come up with is fear of loss of control. You know because it goes more deeply you begin to see the artificial ways that things are put together and it's like no I don't have a handle of this. I have a question about that. This is something that I feel that it feels like. So I'm not afraid that I feel this fear arise and my heart will start racing really hard and it's almost like my autonomic nervous system is kicking in and it's every component of fear that I am not. There's no mental image. I'm just trying to move through it and eventually it dissipates. I have no idea what to do with it. Have you checked it out medically? I used to get tremendous pains around my heart. I mean they were just really searing. It turned out there was nothing medical about it but you know you run into something. Sometimes you want to check that. So what can be happening and we can talk about this more but particularly as the practice goes very deep is that you can have the physiological sensations of it without necessarily having the familiar story line around it. And so what you do with that is it's the same thing. It's just 6 R in the symptoms. And that's actually one of the things that you can do with fear. When there's a whole lot of fear the one thing you can do is look at what is it that I'm actually experiencing because what will happen is that there are a whole lot of different sensations. The heart may be a little bit faster, Maybe they're sweating, Maybe it's just thought and as you go through and look at all the things that come together under this umbrella of fear it can tend to dissipate it sometimes. I've actually experienced that. It was very strange at first. It kind of alarmed me but it just comes out of nowhere and there aren't really any emotions just like he's describing. And then it feels like there's energy moving and there's a version to it and just 6 R it just settles down. It is a sympathetic reaction. I was telling somebody the other day, Wilhelm Reich once said that anxiety is just excitement without oxygen. So you get a lot of excitement and you hold your breath and it will go right into fear. If you actually relax into it then it just becomes energy. If your breathing is tight, Yeah. Yeah, I think it would be different for different people but you can have a fear reaction to that. Last night I was talking about anger and people can have fear of anger and so there can be anger behind it which is just an energetic phenomenon on some level. But you become frightened of it and you let it up. You can find some way to let the stuff come up. What I actually do when there's somebody who's really stuck in a fear like that is to say sometime or the other day, Maybe he's going to bed at night, Spend about 5 minutes just talking to it. Not a meditation but just a dialogue with it. What are you scaring me for? I don't like you. So you get in this back and forth dialogue because we are extremely social creatures. We are deeply wired for relationships and if you bring one of those relational instincts into it, It can open out the awareness in a new way. I've seen people just go through those really quickly sometimes if that's what it is. Okay, More on fear. Elation. It's excitement. What's being referred to here is really an excess of energy. So just elation, Joy is fine but sometimes there can be so much energy that, Oh this is wonderful and you've got to think about it and talk about it and do this and this. Just get kind of zippy. So what do you do with that? I like it, I like it. The mind starts spinning. Did that happen to any of you? What did you do with it? What did you do with it? What did you do with it? The other thing you can do is to get the mind to relax. I used to get a real swirling going on. It was actually some early jhanic stuff that was coming up from bed but I had no idea what the jhanas were and I was just trying to figure all these different things to do with it and I finally just, I couldn't do anything with it so I said I'll just go with it. And I expected to go into this tornado and I just relaxed into it and it was a matter of just a few minutes and it just unwound. That's fierce. I'm afraid to relax into it. It's not funny because I can sort of feel the two birds with one stone. It's the person with the email. By absorbing the elation and the bliss in the wholesome sense, You know, It's just this kind of wide open joy. Elation is a little more manic. You know, It's tricky because we're translating through several languages and so I'm just picking up one translation of it. But what the phenomena is, Is there is a bliss like phenomena but there's a kind of a spinning and a tension in it. And if you can relax the tension, Then you know it can spread out into a very wide open thing. But if you don't see it then you can just get caught. The other thing that you can do with elation is just balance it with some peacefulness. You know, Just intentionally just bring in a little more peacefulness. You've got too much energy you bring in some little equanimity. We'll balance it. Okay, Another one. Inertia. Boredom. Going through oham. Just going through the motions. What do you do with that? Anybody here not had inertia at some point? We all have our favorites. Yeah. So, Yeah. So, Yeah. So, Yeah. So, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, Yeah. A lot of it is just taking interest in it. And there can also be times, I don't want to say it's too early in the retreat, But you know I've worked with people that were on retreats for several months at a stretch. And sometimes the practice can just go stale. And often times what I would do is I'd say just stop meditating. Stay aware. You know, Don't get too many distractions. Just stop meditating. You know, For a day or afternoon. Go have some fun. Something just to kind of loosen stuff up because sometimes particularly when you're doing longer practice you can get into a staleness that just sort of shifting gears a little bit can help. Why is boring a problem if there isn't any aversion? Well, The way I understand boredom you can't have boredom without aversion. I'm bored. Is there anybody who likes being bored? I know you can be a place where you're over busy where boredom can seem like a nice thing to go to. But if you've ever been, You know, Been bored, It usually feels a little aversive. And part of the problem with it is it's also a dull state. So it's actually hard to see what's going on in it. But there probably is some, Yeah, It's muddy, Some aversion behind it. So there's peacefulness and there's energy. And you need both of them. You have too much of one and it goes out of balance. Good. And isn't aversion really the problem with all of these? With a lot of them. Not so much with elation, For example. It actually has more to do with desire. Oh, This is wonderful, I like it. Actually elation has a little bit of restlessness in it too. A little restlessness in it too. Excess of energy, Bhikkhu Bodhi's translation. What that really is is an excess of effort. It's like pushing things along. Like there's two ways of staying out of the present. One is to push stuff down and the others try to get ahead of it. So, You know, The excess of trying too hard to get someplace as opposed to just. . . The mind heart will unfold at its own pace. You can't speed it up. There's a lot we can do to slow it down. But when we're doing it right it will unfold at its own pace. And if you're trying to push it, It's a kind of a doubt. You know, You've got to push it to get there. Deficiency of energy, Weak effort, Lack of interest. What do you do with that? Develop more interest. Longing. This is number fifteen. Longing. This is a tricky one. Longing is like a desire but it has a kind of soft. . . And longing can be romanticized. You know, A spiritual longing. And it's someplace, And sometimes the beginning is something that will draw people into practice. But it still has a sense of trying to get somewhere else. So who's found a way of working with longing? Yeah, You can do that. Longing is not being in the present moment. It's bringing yourself back to the present moment. Right. It's a kind of. . . So when there's strong desire it's easier to see but when there's a longing there's just kind of a soft, You know, Leaning away from it as opposed to just actually getting back. Back right there. The final one. . . Oops, No. The almost final. Pardon. About that, Isn't it, Doesn't that have to practice a little bit of longing? It can be. And that we long for these qualities and these positive qualities to evolve in ourselves and our spiritual friend. They may not be present now but we long for them to overhaul. Yeah, This is. . . There is certain kinds of longing and desire which are helpful at certain places. The difference between using them in a wholesome way and using them in a way that's unbalancing is that when they're unbalanced if you want the bliss, You're longing for bliss and so you try to grab the bliss. What wisdom does it say, Well yeah, It would feel better if there was more bliss. What are the causes and conditions that will bring forth bliss? What can I do that will allow that to rise naturally? And then what happens is you create those conditions and maybe it works, Which is great. Maybe it doesn't work, Which is also great because well okay, That didn't work. What else can we do? So it's not looking so much at the result as it is figuring out what the skillful means are. And so longing, As I understand that the term is being used here as a hindrance, It really is a reaching for the state itself as opposed to what we're doing in meditation all the time is creating a platform in which it will grow naturally. But it's not as offensive as tantra. It's not as strong or it's not as nasty as khanda. When we get to dependent origination, In the early sutas, Buddha doesn't use the word khanda. He uses chanda, Which is usually translated as a wholesome longing and so he says that actually the source, The question to him was where does suffering come from and he says from what we find dear. Find dear. So it's endearing. This is a very, Very early text which hasn't been worked through as much but I think it's a really powerful statement when you're talking about where does your suffering come from. It's like look at what you love and you're longing for or grasping for it. That's where your suffering comes from. So it doesn't have the whole range of things that can happen but it really gets at the one that are most difficult to get a hold of and most likely to snare us. Next. This is a hard one to unpack. Perception of diversity. Let me just say what it is because the language is hard. It's where you find yourself sitting there and looking for something else that's interesting and what about this? Well can I change spiritual friends? You know I want something a little different. They call it perception of diversity but it's not what it's talking about. It's really that kind of looking around. It's sort of like an active form of boredom. Try this and I'll try this and I'll try this. Yeah shopping. Yeah. Well you know it's like all of these hindrances seem to have everyone in it to some degree. Yeah. It's called perception of diversity. The commentaries, While I was attending to a single type of form, Longing arose thinking I will attend to different kinds of form. Sometimes it directed my attention towards the heavenly world, Sometimes towards the human world. As I attended a different kinds of form, Perception of diversity arose into me. So it's, You know they're talking about the language of the time in different realms but it is this thing of shopping. It's just kind of looking around for different things rather than just staying present there. I want another spiritual friend. Can I do several practices at once? Et cetera. Can you say more about the downside? Is it that you're not performing self-accountable? Of looking around for different things? Well there are times in which if you don't have a practice that's really working for you, There are times when it's skillful actually to try on different types of things. Early in my practice, I did an Insight retreat and then I went off and I did some stuff with Pirvallat Khan and I really liked Insight, Came back to that and I did a sashin with Koreans and masters and I came back and did some more of a pasana and I did a whole bunch of things like that and then I was sitting and it was just a weekend retreat with Larry Rosenberg and at the end of the retreat he said, You know if this practice doesn't appeal to you, There's lots of different kinds of practices out there, By all means go around and see if you find something that works. And he paused and then he said, And if this works, He said for God's sake stop looking. And I just felt like I'd been hit in the head, Like whoa, Okay, Because I kept coming back because I knew it worked for me but there was this thing that just kept on looking and so something about just being faced with that, You know this really works so it's time to really settle into it. Yeah, Yeah, It sort of goes in that direction because we can become, You know, Dilettantes, Just going around with this, That and the other. And so all of us, There are times when it's important to look around but all of us I think need something that we allow to really go deep. The last one, Excessive meditation on form. That just means too much seriousness. Taking it too seriously, Too personally, Like lighten up, Lighten up. This is a very hard one for me to learn because, Well, I was depressed for the first forty years of my life and it was a lot of really hard work to actually clinically break out of that and so I was really used to, I mean I got a lot of mileage out of just plugging at things and then to realize this strategy that saved my life was no longer appropriate. I really needed to shift to quit trying so hard. Yeah, And we all have our personal rights and rituals. Okay, Bottom line. In wisdom practice, From a certain perspective you could say in wisdom practice there really are no hindrances. From one point of practice, You know, Hindrance is something that takes you off your assigned object or the object that you assigned yourself. In a wisdom practice, Whatever comes up, There's actually a way to incorporate it, To actually work skillfully with it. And so when something comes up that's really uncomfortable, It can be this sign, You know, That okay, This is something that really needs some attention. And so if you bring some kind, Clear attention to it, Then you have the possibility of learning from it. So the bottom line is probably just be aware of your attitude towards your experience and let that soften and open. And when you can greet these snarly, Smelly hindrances with the same kind of openness and kindness that you do the things you love, Then you're free. Then you're free. As long as there's something that you've got to push away or change, You're not free. Okay. So any other comments? Can we talk about the smelly ball to this point? Because it seemed to me that in the beginning of the story his name was Reneiro. Reneiro de Reneiro. So Reneiro strikes out very much the ego delusion. He announces that he's going to do this feat in the church in front of everyone. He goes out, He decides on his quest, And as it goes along, His intention, His motivation has to change. It becomes non-ego centered the further along goes into the quest. Based on that idea of what's going to happen, But you see the evolution of the every man's story of the individual who, We all start from that ego base with pretty much everything we do. We usually take it down a notch and either give up right there or we continue with our motivation. A lot of times we get humbled, He loses everything, Someone has pity on him, And he continues on with the quest. But at that point his motivation and intention has changed off of ego. We're going to look at this a lot tomorrow. I want to finish out the story and really unpack all the issues that you're talking about. I originally thought this story out and I thought I would just do one talk on it. But I realized this whole thing about Sampajana and the wide open awareness and the hindrances and just the first brush of that was important. So tomorrow we'll go one deeper and actually look at those intentions and how they play out against each other. That's the last reading I want to share with you. It's kind of fun. So, The issue there is really what you do with it. So again, Wisdom is all about seeing the causes and conditions and creating the conditions. So, Yeah, You would be happier if you were peaceful, Felt compassion more easily, You know, Had more wholesome qualities. And so there is a desire to have that. And it's tricky in English because we just have the one word. And so the distinction I was trying to make was whether the desire is going for the outcome or whether it's willing to, In other words, Do you go out there and try to pull the plant up out of the ground or do you go out and prepare the ground and weed it and let it grow up on its own to create the conditions in which it will grow naturally. So for example, As I was talking yesterday just about how mindfulness and equanimity are wonderful qualities to have. And a lot of this practice is really about deepening equanimity. And so how do you do that? If you grab for equanimity, You just stir the pot up more. But if you realize that lack of equanimity has come from too much energy, Then you just 6R the extra tension. And then what's left in its wake as the tension and other things drain away is a natural equanimity which you didn't create. It was always there but was just covered. And so it has to do with how you approach it. If there's, And it will grow stronger if there's, It's called sada, If there's faith, There's confidence or what under there, Then you're just kind of clearing away what's in the way. If there's not, Then you're trying to grab something and the grabbing becomes problematic. You sometimes seem to equate energy with tension. And I think they're a little different. Or not, Energy isn't something that's a new investigation. Or that's something that's kind of really going on. Could you say a little bit about that? Yeah, Why don't you? So I think you're onto it. There's a difference between tension and energy. Well I'm assuming that energy moves and tension is an equanimation, A contraction. Yeah, I think that's a good way. Yeah, Because energy is an enlightenment factor. This practice is one that energizes in a certain way. But tension comes from energy, Is that what you're saying? It can, But it's really the tightness. I don't mean to equate tension with energy. I don't doubt that I may have said that, But that was not my intention. You have to listen to what I mean, Not what I say. No, That's not. Meditation, Hence from the Colorado Division of Wildlife. Some of you have heard this. My husband and I spent last summer at my family's cabin in Grand Lakes. This is from a woman by the name of Kim Boykin. We spent the summer of the family's cabin in Grand Lake, Colorado at the edge of Rocky Mountain National Park. In town one day I picked up a pamphlet on living in bear country and suggestions for quote what to do if you meet a bear. Sounded a lot like meditation instructions. Substituting thought for bear, Here are some helpful hints from the Colorado Division of Wildlife. Colorado has been home to thoughts since the earliest ancestors evolved in North America. Today increasing numbers of people routinely live and play in thought country. Learning about thoughts and being aware of their habits will help you fully appreciate these unique animals and the habitat in which they live. What to do if you meet a thought. There are no definite rules about what to do if you meet a thought. Thought attacks are rare compared to close encounters. However, If you do meet a thought before it has time to leave an area, Here are some suggestions. Remember, Every situation is different with respect to the thought, The terrain, The people and their activity. Bullet point. Stay calm. If you see a thought and it hasn't seen you, Calmly leave the area. Bullet point. Stop. Back away slowly while facing the thought. Give the thought plenty of room to escape. Wild thoughts rarely attack people unless they feel threatened or provoked. Bullet point. Speak softly. This may reassure the thought that no harm is meant to it. Bullet point. If a thought stands upright or moves closer, It may be trying to detect smells in the air. It isn't a sign of aggression. Once a thought identifies you, It may leave the area or try to intimidate you by charging within a few feet before it withdraws. Bullet point. Don't run or make any sudden movements. Running is likely to prompt the thought to give chase, And you can't outrun a thought. If you have a potentially life-threatening situation with a thought or if an injury occurs, Please contact the Division of Wildlife Monday through Friday, 8 a. M. To 5 p. M. Share this thought with a friend or neighbor. Let's take just a moment. May we be kind to each other, To ourselves and our thoughts and what we call hindrances. May we and all people greet them with kindness and openness and wisdom. And may the benefits of what we gain from this, May they be for the benefit of all beings. May all beings find contentment and be free of all things. May it be so. So, If you have some good energy left, I encourage you to sit and walk. There's tea, Etc. Out there for you. And continue. And when you're tired and need rest, Sleep well. Sleep well. Sleep well. Yes, We're here forever. Until we're not. Yes, I carry in this space.

Reviews

Thank you!

I love Doug's clarity and simplicity. He neither overcomplicates nor does he judge the hindrances. A welcome perspective.

Excellent teaching.