Restlessness And Worry, Hindrances To Life And Meditation

This recording is one in a series of recordings about the five hindrances to meditation (and life). It focuses on the 4th hindrance of restlessness and worry. It is from day 6 of a 10-day online retreat with Malcolm Huxter and Lisa Brown. It was recorded on Sept 1, 2021. It is about 15 minutes long.

Transcript

So we're up to restlessness in our little series on the hindrances.

Restlessness is a state of agitation,

A state of mind that's unable to settle and stabilize.

It's when it's compared to,

When it's bringing that analogy of looking at one's reflection in a bowl of water,

Restlessness is when the water is cut by wind or cut by the breeze so that it's kind of all ruffled,

The water's ruffled and you cannot see your reflection really.

So the,

It's an agitated mind.

It's,

It's an,

It has an energetic quality to it as well,

Just like sloth and torpor has an energetic quality to it,

Where it's the opposite of sloth and torpor.

Sloth and torpor,

The energetic quality is kind of sunken and still and quiet.

Well,

Not still and quiet.

It's more like covered and dulled and thick and de-energized.

With restlessness,

There's too much energy.

We have bodies,

Body,

We can feel it in our bodies as a sense of kind of moving around a lot,

Shuffling around,

Being unable to sit still and our minds are kind of going all over the place.

Sometimes they're going down one track and then another track and another track,

They're kind of scattered.

One analogy that's used for that mind that's scattered is like a stone that's thrown into the ash of fire and there's this kind of distribution of dust and the dust isn't really settling anywhere.

It's like that with the mind when it's rest,

When we're caught up and entangled and taken away by that hindrance of restlessness.

The restlessness and worry as a hindrance actually has two components.

We have the restlessness and then we have the worry.

But so this restlessness is this energetic component,

This scatteredness,

This tendency to kind of go all over the place,

Being unable to settle and stabilize your mind.

And the worry is more like a particular state of mind.

I think it's probably better considered as rumination when you look into what they mean by that in the commentaries and so on.

Rumination probably better describes what they talk as worry.

It's this state of mind of having done something and then thinking about it,

Like going into rumination about it,

Being not quite obsessed with it,

But just seeing the problems with it.

Like rumination in psychology is usually talked about as going over and over and over.

Things that have happened in the past or things that are happening currently,

Things that we have no control over,

Things that have happened and we feel regretful about them and we just ruminate about them.

We go over and over and over in our head thinking about them.

Rumination is often related to depression,

Where we think about problems in our lives and problems with ourselves and identifying with all these thoughts.

And we are caught up in this kind of narrow minded tunnel visioned perspective of regret and remorse and why did I do that?

And why,

You know,

What's what I'm just no good about doing that and this kind of rumination.

So that's one way we can describe this other aspect of restlessness.

So this is kind of agitation,

There's this scatteredness and there's also this kind of caught up in thinking.

Another way of describing restlessness is worry as actually worry is like rumination.

However,

Worry tends to think about the future.

It tends to think about untoward events,

The possibility or the uncertainty of untoward events in the future.

So we get caught up in this kind of what if.

And the features of worry and rumination is that we tend to get blinkers put on our mind.

We fail to see possibilities and we just get narrow mindedly caught in this particular train of thought.

Just reflecting on the untoward events that have happened in the past with rumination and with worry,

It's about the possibility of untoward events happening in the future.

So this state of restlessness as a hindrance is it's horrible.

It's being like bound to slavery.

We become the slaves of our mind in this respect.

So how to work with it?

Well,

The recommendations in the suttas are to calm your mind.

The general antidote for restlessness is a calm mind.

Being able to centre all that like that dust is all flitting around,

That the scattered mind is going every which way.

We're having mental proliferations as well.

Mental proliferations as I described last night in Pali is called pappanccha,

This imagination goal while we're thinking a lot.

And as I mentioned last night,

One way to deal with thinking a lot is to come to your senses.

Come to bare experience of the senses,

Including the bare experiences of the mind.

In other words,

Not feeding into mental proliferations about things that have happened in the past and things that may happen in the future.

Not engaging in this kind of world that's taken away from the reality of things in our head,

In our thoughts.

We just create this whole world that's somewhat not in line with reality,

Actually.

We're caught up in this mental proliferation,

This thinking a lot,

This pappanccha as it's called in Pali.

So as I mentioned last night,

One way to work with that is to actually focus on the bare experience of the senses.

And that could mean like sounds as sounds,

Sights as sights,

Smells as smells,

Tastes as tastes,

Bodily sensations as bodily sensations,

And thoughts just as thoughts rather than getting caught up in the content of the thoughts,

We see thoughts and other emotional arising like mind states as just states,

Just thoughts,

Just thoughts,

Rather than getting caught up in the train of thoughts,

Rather than being this seduced by pleasant thoughts.

And rather than being caught up in these trains of thoughts,

We stay connected with the bare experience.

We stay connected with what's happening.

We're not struggling with thoughts we don't want.

And we're also not struggling,

We're not getting seduced and entangled with thoughts that we like.

In other words,

We're not resisting unpleasant thoughts,

Thoughts and states of mind that have that vedana of unpleasant feelings.

We're not struggling with them,

We're not resisting them.

And we're not getting caught up in seductive thoughts,

The ones that will be somewhat pleasant.

So calming the mind,

There's many ways of calming the mind.

One way is I just described,

Focusing on the present being engaged in the bare,

Being engaged in bare attention,

Being present for the bare experience,

The raw experience of the six senses,

Sight,

Sound,

Smell,

Touch,

Taste and mind.

Another way is to calm our mind.

And serendipity meditations are all about calming the mind.

So we can use mindfulness of breath,

Well,

I should say focusing attention on the breath,

Being attentive to the breath and being mindful of it,

Of course,

But there's more of an emphasis on focused attention on samadhi on the breath,

Or go into a place and thinking about thinking about something that will engage our senses,

Engage our mind,

Engage our,

That's interesting,

That's engaging so that we can divert our attention away from the mental proliferations into a wholesome activity.

Sometimes when I,

When I feel restless,

I notice that I just can't sit,

You know,

I can find it's really hard to sit.

So what I will do is I'll go and walk,

Or I'll go for a jog,

Or I'll ride my bike,

Or I'll go for a surf or something like that.

I can,

I'll sing or listen to music or something,

Something that will give me some sort of joy and wholesome pleasure.

Not in a way where I'm grasping after the pleasure,

But just as in a way where the pleasure engages my mind,

It's interesting and it's enjoyable and it's wholesome.

So that my mind goes into that and has a sort of samadhi with that,

Like I've been talking about before we get into the flow with that experience,

Rather than feeding into the mental proliferations and the agitation and the worry and the ruminations and the restlessness.

So when I was,

Many years ago,

When I was a bit younger than I am now,

I was sitting with Joseph Goldstein and I was talking about restless mind as I usually talked about,

Because that was probably,

That's probably my greatest hindrance,

Is the tendency to think a lot and get engaged in things and mental activity.

And Joseph Goldstein just recommended that I listen to sounds rather than try to focus on my breath here and work with stuff.

So focusing on the sounds was really helpful in that it sort of expanded my mind.

It gave me a bit of space.

He also recommended just going for a walk and looking at a view,

Sort of expanding my mind rather than trying too hard.

One of the causes for restlessness,

And this is particularly evident in meditators,

Is trying too hard,

Trying too hard,

Trying too hard and the joy seems to get lost in the process.

It becomes like such a burden.

We've got to really,

Really try and try too hard.

So we get kind of caught up in it,

Just kind of compresses and there's no sort of escape from our mind.

So we feel it results in restlessness.

So another antidote here is to find some joy,

Have some joy,

Find some joy,

Whatever way you can find that.

I was talking to someone yesterday and we talked about being able to go for a walk rather than just sit still all the time,

Being able to go for a walk and that kind of releases some tension.

It allows our mind to relax.

It engages in something that's enjoyable for us.

And in fact,

When we're able to do that,

We're able to provide the circumstances for insights to arise,

To be honest.

So we might be sitting meditating,

Trying really hard,

Wondering about what this thing,

Insight meditation is called.

I'm not getting any insights.

I'm just getting really restless.

Then we chill out a bit,

Go for a walk,

Relax,

Minds expanded.

And then we'll actually we have mundane insights and also kind of noble insights.

The possibility of noble insights also arise.

So I think that's about all I need to say for right now.

So the restlessness is this agitation and caught up in mental thinking.

The antidotes are to calm the mind,

Find spaciousness in the mind and access those qualities that are calming in the seven factors of awakening,

Which are I know joy is usually energizing,

But joy is also a factor of samadhi.

So you can find joy.

You can engage in tranquility,

Concentrate your mind and find equanimity somehow in your experience and that will help with restlessness.

Okay,

Thanks very much.

I'm going to stop the recording there.

Reviews

Thank you for this helpful talk. Very nice and calming to listen. And kind of uplifting. I feel better now.

Helpful ideas for how to deal with restlessness and worry.

🙏🕊️