All right,
So the five hindrances again,
I'll just repeat them every night.
Obsessive desire or sensual desire is the first one,
Aversion or ill will.
Some monastics call it,
Well Nalayo talks about the second hindrance as anger.
And I think I prefer to use aversion or ill will.
Anyway,
The third one is restlessness and worry or mental stiffness and dullness.
The fourth one is,
Sorry,
I'll come back on that.
The third one is stiffness and dullness,
Sloth and torpor.
The fourth one is restlessness and worry.
And the fifth one is paralyzing doubt and I've spelled it correctly here for a change.
So,
The hindrance we're talking about tonight is ill will.
And if you remember that analogy that I made,
Well the Buddha makes at about the five hindrances where they're like looking at a reflection in a bowl of water and I told you all about the analogies last night and this is from the sutras.
Just as Brahman,
If there was a pot of water heated over a fire,
Bubbling and boiling and a man with good sight should consider his own facial image in it.
He could not recognize or see it as it really is.
So too,
When someone abides with their heart,
With their mind pervaded by ill will,
Overcome with ill will,
They can't actually see their situation,
They can't actually see their reflection clearly.
They can't actually see and understand themselves.
It's obscured and it's like boiling water.
So,
I'm quoting something from Tiradamo here,
There's a book about the five hindrances that I have and I'm just quoting here with him.
In general,
We might say that ill will is one of an expression of the rejection syndrome,
Which manifests in a variety of ways.
For example,
Dislike,
Annoyance,
Irritation,
Resentment,
Confusion,
Anger,
Hostility,
Hate and rage.
I would go further to say that ill will includes this hindrance of ill will includes avoidance,
Condemnation,
Unfounded criticism,
Negative judgments towards oneself and others.
When one gets depressed,
I think that's the root of that is a kind of a self-hatred,
A self-loathing,
A self-dislike.
So that's another example of ill will.
And ill will tends to narrow our perceptions.
Say for example,
We're experiencing the emotion of anger about something.
What happens is our perceptions go in line with our emotion.
We fail to see a broader picture,
But all we see is through our emotions.
And in this case,
Anger,
What we're seeing is things that are going against our desires,
Our progress,
Stop blocking our progress.
And aversion or ill will is uncomfortable.
It's divisive and isolating.
It tends to contract oneself,
Tends to cut off from a sense of connection with others.
And it's really quite painful.
I've never considered myself as an aversion type.
I mean,
There's different character types in the Buddhist way of saying things.
There's the greed type,
There's the aversion type and there's the ignorant type.
I don't really fall within the type of the person who's an aversion type,
But when I do experience aversion or when I do experience ill will,
It's really uncomfortable.
I find it really unpleasant.
So,
There is a reaction.
There was a survival mechanism.
And in the survival mechanism we have fight,
Flight or freeze.
I think all these manifestations of survival are reflections of this particular hindrance.
Like with fight,
We have an anger and aggression towards the self and others.
And we will often have high self criticism towards ourself.
We have a sense of hostility.
Flight is the opposite to anger.
It's the,
It's a kind of aversion at its extreme.
So flight is like avoidance.
And when we just want to avoid something.
And it's interesting that for those of you who are psychologists amongst us,
And even those of you who aren't psychologists,
One of the maintenance factors of all the anxiety disorders is avoidance.
So at its root,
It's this tendency to reject,
Condemn,
Push away,
Avoid,
Not want to know about,
Just pretend it's not there,
Push it away,
Get rid of it.
And the freeze response also in essence is associated with a sense of avoidance.
With the freeze response,
It's a type of a dissociation and it's a shutting down and it's a withdrawal and a disconnection.
So at its root is this aversion,
Not wanting to know about things.
So all types of thought related to wanting to reject and feelings of hostility,
Resentment,
Hatred,
And bitterness are part of this hindrance to meditation.
Actually I think I've mentioned this,
But the hindrances to meditation are also hindrances to life.
They're hindrances to living a complete and full and engaging life.
They block us.
So the opposite of the antidotes and the opposites of this hindrance is loving kindness,
Warm benevolence.
It's the cultivation,
The opposite of aversion is the cultivation of warm openness and acceptance and benevolence to beings and experience,
Especially in relationship to anger.
It's this kind of turning anger around so you're no longer rejecting things,
But you're opening up to things.
Another antidote is to be mindful of the experience and to investigate it.
Turn towards it and see it for what it is.
Have the courage to look into it and face up to what we're avoiding.
This is an example of how we work with anxiety in the long run.
We gradually and sensitively face up to our avoidance strategies,
Our avoidance in general,
And we investigate into this experience.
So the other antidote is the cultivation of compassion,
Compassion for oneself and befriending oneself,
Compassion for others as well.
But there's this when we're kind of caught up in that sense of self-hatred,
Self-loathing,
Avoidance,
Not seeing anything positive about ourselves,
High self-criticism,
What we need is a lot of self-compassion,
There's a lot of warm friendliness directed towards ourselves,
And that is the antidote.
