Working With The Five Hindrances

This short talk deals with working with the five hindrances (desire, ill will, spiritual laziness, restlessness and worry, and doubt) and the seven factors of awakening, through which we overcome the hindrances' power over us.

Transcript

Hello everybody.

I'd like to talk today about the five entrances and the seven factors of awakening.

You know,

They say that being fully awake is being aware in our lives without clinging to anything.

Neither grasping nor pushing our experiences away,

Not bound by aversion.

Think about that and what that really might look like,

What that might really feel like.

Now by this definition,

I can't say that I'm fully awake.

And you know,

And why?

I mean,

I've been practicing Buddhism a long time.

I've grown in my practice of equanimity and I work to understand ways that I hold or push away different aspects of my life.

But you know,

I've yet to be jolted awake.

I've yet to see my way clear.

Now I believe we all wrestle in similar kinds of struggles emotionally and spiritually,

Intellectually.

These are strong things to contend with,

Things which the Buddha saw clearly and identified for us in ways that we can consider.

So this is where the structure of the five hindrances comes in.

Things which we experience in life and which impact our practice.

Desire.

Ill will.

Spiritual drowsiness.

Restlessness and worry.

Doubt.

These things get into us almost just as part of the human condition and they can hurt.

They can separate us from calm practice,

Diluting our spirit.

You know,

There's a sutra which gives a good analogy of this called the gold analogy.

Gold corrupted by impurities such as copper or tin makes the gold not plant.

Malleable or luminous.

Rather,

It's brittle,

Not ready to be worked.

Whereas gold not corrupted by impurities is plant,

Malleable and luminous,

It is not brittle,

But ready to be worked.

And whatever sort of ornament one has in mind,

Pure gold will surely serve one's purpose.

In the same way,

When the mind is corrupted by impurities such as desire,

Ill will,

Fear and doubt,

The mind is not plant,

Not malleable or luminous.

It's brittle,

Not rightly concentrated to achieve the ending of attachment and aversion.

But when the mind is not corrupted by impurities,

We find it to be plant,

Malleable and luminous.

It's not brittle and is rightly concentrated to achieve the ending of attachments and aversions.

Now of course the question is how do we find these impurities within ourselves?

How do we see them?

How do we touch them?

How do we navigate the effects of inevitable hindrance?

Ill will,

Worry,

Doubt,

These things stand in our way on our spiritual path.

Now in my own practice,

I value the older Theravadan Buddhist principles alongside the Zen tradition.

In Zen we talk about a state of dependent co-arising in which all beings exist in its state of deep interdependence.

Where one thing manifests because conditions cause it to come into being.

We live in interdependence with one another and so Zen's emphasis on compassion and the Bodhisattva ideal of saving all beings.

These are noble aspirations.

Theravadan principles are more practical,

Helping us to develop capacities that can serve us on the path of awakening.

It's here we find an emphasis on mindfulness,

Observing our own sense of dis-ease in life.

And mindfully engaging direct practices which can help us to transform suffering into a more awakened way of being.

So let's take a look at the seven factors of awakening.

The Buddhist teachings here come from the Satipatthana Sutta or the four foundations of mindfulness.

The sutra the four foundations of mindfulness.

In Theravadan thought,

The seven factors are seen as an antidote to the pain and suffering which the hindrances cause us.

These ideas,

The hindrances and the seven factors of awakening are in the same sutra,

One following the other.

The seven factors you can think about are tools that we can use to create a more full understanding of ourselves.

Tools to mold ourselves with so that the hindrances that pull on us can begin to loosen their grip.

Mathanasarabhiko reminds us that mindfulness really means to keep something in mind,

Having a sense of remembrance.

And he says there are three areas where mindfulness is applied.

Remembering to be present in the present moment.

Remembering to recognize qualities that arise in our minds to see them as skillful or unskillful.

And to understand their impact on our lives and our practice.

And finally,

A third way in which mindfulness applies is having seen things more clearly,

Remembering to abandon unskillful qualities to get in the way of our practice.

And to develop those that are more skillful qualities that help us in our practice.

The seven factors of awakening really are more like the third sort of mindfulness,

Abandoning what is unskilled and growing and preserving what we know to be skillful in our spiritual development.

And this is where the Satipatthana Sutta comes in.

The sutra on establishing the four foundations of mindfulness.

It begins.

I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was staying in the Kuru country.

Now there is a town there of the Kurus called Kamasadamma.

And there the Blessed One addressed the monks saying,

Monks,

Venerable sir,

They replied.

Well into the sutra,

Following the discussion of the hindrances that we face,

Buddha taught the seven factors of awakening,

Asking what are these seven?

Mindfulness,

Investigation,

Diligence,

Joy,

Tranquility,

Concentration,

Equanimity.

What we are encountering here is essentially a hierarchy of meditative states,

Each leading directly into the next.

Each providing conditions which allow for the next to come into being.

We become mindful of what is present in our hearts and minds.

We investigate the nature of these phenomena,

Their roots,

Their effects on our spirit.

And of course this investigation requires energy,

And we bring effort to bear consistently,

Diligently,

To find clarity and understanding,

And from these a natural feeling of joy arises.

In time our joy matures and feelings of calm tranquility arise,

Allowing the mind to rest.

Out of a calm mind comes a concentrated mind.

Out of the settled concentrated mind emerges equanimity,

Being aware of phenomena without grasping or aversion,

Keeping our balance in the face of change.

But it's mindfulness that is key here,

Mindful observation which serves as the basis for self investigation and the benefits that that can bring.

In Epstein or he's in the lineage of taking that Han said,

I would say that mindfulness is the primary underlying factor for the other six.

I would suggest that there are six factors of awakening,

And that they are all nourished by mindfulness.

Mindfulness investigation effort,

Joy,

Tranquility,

Concentration,

Equanimity.

Now ideas like this I know can feel remote somehow disconnected from our ordinary lives but you know really their mental qualities that we already experienced in their lives here and there,

Different times in different places.

And even more so,

When we live with an everyday practice of mindfulness.

The factors of awakening are ordinary mental states which operate in us in varying ways.

And they're waiting for us to mindfully access them.

Then we can develop them,

Make them strong and useful aids in the path that we walk.

Now I would encourage anyone interested in developing a stronger sense of these ideas to do some work with the Satipaṭṭhāna Sūtra.

I will have another piece up here on SoundCloud fairly soon,

Which was an introductory talk to an all day sitting that we did around the Satipaṭṭhāna Sūtra.

So you can look for that.

Otherwise,

You can also look at a couple of books,

Tīkh Nāt Hanh Transformation and Healing is a good book on the Satipaṭṭhāna Sūtra.

S.

N.

Goenka has a book called Satipaṭṭhāna Sūtra Discourses and Analayo,

That's the whole name,

He's a bhikkhu,

He's a monk,

Analayo has a book called Satipaṭṭhāna,

The Direct Path to Realization.

Now that book was a doctoral thesis and it's heavy going.

But if you like that sort of thing,

It's pretty thorough.

All right,

Take care everybody.

Reviews

I appreciated the clarity of your talk. In general, I prefer talks to guided meditations. It helps me to practice zazen with thoughts and memories of the talk replacing the attractions and aversions that usually threaten my attempts to live mindfully. Thank you!

Analayo and Thich Nhat Hahn - what a fine combination! Analayo published A Practice Guide for Satipattana meditation a couple of years ago - much more accessible than the thesis. I like that it comes with a link to guided meditations he recorded.
Thank you for your postings! 🙏

Thank you for a nice talk about the hindrances always good to hear.

Interesting & layered

Thanks 🙏🏼 Namaste