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Obstacles to Meditation:
Meditation is not easy. Some days the last place you want to be is
sitting on your meditation cushion. Those are generally the days that you
need the benefits of meditation the most. There are 5 Hindrances to
Meditation identified in the Buddhist tradition. They plague every mediator
at some point or another. When the mind wanders and it is a challenge to
refocus the mind and bring it back to the meditation, the incessant wandering is
called a hindrance. The hindrances are:
- Desire - grasping, wanting, craving, fantasy - Wanting is a
bottomless pit. If you fulfill this desire, the mind will only want
more. Try to understand the Power that craving has in your life.
- Aversion - Anger, Fear, Boredom, Judgment, Resentment, Dislike of
an experience. Aversion is experienced as unpleasant sensations,
things you want to avoid and keep out of your experience. You may experience
it as a pain in your leg distracting you as your meditate - you want that
pain to stop, and resent having to sit still. Aversion takes many
forms - notice how it arises for you - identify its forms. Do you feel
it in your body? Where? What effect does it have on your
mind? Do you express it internally ("I hate this, It bothers me,
I am afraid of that") Anger and Fear show us where we have blocks
- where we are stuck. They are a signal to you, to draw your
attention. Examine and work through your forms of Aversion, so you can
know them and integrate them back into your heart.
- Sloth and Torpor - Sleepiness, sluggishness, Confusion, Boredom,
Spaciness, Laziness, Drowsiness. Can be related to several things -
little prana (energy) in the mind. Use your awareness to penetrate the
tiredness in your mind and explore its qualities, sit up straight or try
standing or walking meditation. It can also be a sign of pain or
sorrow that we don't want to feel - sleepiness is a temporary escape from
those feelings. Examine the sleepiness, and see what the root cause
is. Work through it with your focused mind.
- Restlessness - Agitation, Anxiety, Nervousness, Jumpiness,
Scattered Energy, Worry, Planning. "I have other
things I need to do now - I have no time for this. After I meditate, I
will finish my project, do the dishes, etc." Can be too much
energy in the mind, which is not focused. Can also be a response to
not wanting to feel. Focus the mind by counting your breaths slowly
from one to ten, then start over.
- Doubt - Judgment, Self-doubt, Insecurity, Doubting the teacher,
doubting the technique, doubting our capacities, skepticism, often
accompanied by a need to escape. The voice of Doubt can be "what
am I doing here? Why am I doing this? This is too hard.
This won't work for me. What's wrong with me? What's wrong with
you? I can't do this." To work through doubt, one needs to
increase faith and trust in the experience. Continue to sit, and
decide to put aside the doubting mind and just see what gifts the meditation
experience has to offer you today.
As these hindrances arise, don't fight them. Fighting and resisting
them gives them an insidious power. Allow them to move through you,
examining them, treating them with awareness and non-resistance. This
softens them, and soon you will be able to listen to these hindrances and see
what they have to teach you. If you make space for them, they have much to
offer you - an increased awareness of yourself, to show you areas where you need
to get to know yourself better. You can use the hindrances to go deeper
into yourself and into the practice of meditation. The hindrances will
speak to you, showing you blocks, and as you treat them gently with
non-resistance, their voices will fade allowing you to continue your meditation
with focus and a greater knowledge of yourself.
Another technique for moving past the hindrances is to silently name them as
they arise. As you become aware of the hindrance in your mind, name it
twice, for example, "aversion, aversion" or "judgment, judgment."
Then bring your awareness back to your breath. After two or three silent
namings of the hindrance, it often dissolves. You gain power by having a
calm and non-reactive mind. You can acknowledge the hindrance without
reacting to it, which helps you develop patience, calm, and balance.
REMEMBER - it is normal for your mind to want to wander, draw your attention
to issues that are blocks for you, to entertain itself, and to plan for the
future. You are still meditating while this is going on. The
hindrances are a sign that your meditation is working. Draw on the
hindrances to go deeper into your meditation.
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