Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 96-minute session, Ven Jampa Gendun anchors the teaching in a single provocative claim: the purpose of meditation is to transform the mind — not to have good meditation. From that premise he reframes the five hindrances — desire, hatred, restlessness, sloth, and doubt — not as obstacles blocking practice but as its raw material, illustrating the point with a Zen gardener who folds weeds into the soil to nourish the flowers, and with the Dalai Lama’s remark that the Chinese invasion of Tibet was an unexpected act of kindness. He then works through five antidotes in sequence: recognizing a hindrance as a hindrance; applying specific counterforces (discrimination for desire, loving-kindness for anger, patience for restlessness, light visualization or bliss for torpor, clarification for doubt); contemplating the consequences of being overwhelmed; passive noting drawn from Mahasi Sayadaw’s tradition; and suppression as a last resort. The session closes with a guided loving-kindness meditation expanding goodwill outward from oneself to all beings.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1987 12 04 3 P A P.mp3
UUID: 1aa2222e-c505-4174-a775-1bfaa7050227
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 1987-1988 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1987-12-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 96.0 minutes
Words: ~10,697
Just the general pattern of breathing in and out. Natural breathing, no particulars. However we breathe naturally, we’re not trying to retain the breath or breathe any faster or slower than we normally do. It’s just natural breathing. And then simply when you breathe in, you try to know that you’re breathing in.
One way to help you become aware of the fact that you are breathing in is to mentally note in and then when you breathe out, know that you’re breathing out by mentally noting out. And you can use the technique of counting, just counting in, out, then one, In, out, two. In, out, three. Go up to five. Come back down to one.
Go up to six. Come back down to one. Then seven, eight, nine, and ten. And then if there’s still time, then come back down to one through five again. Those are want to try another technique?
You can try following the breath that is beginning at the nose tip and as if there was a tube coming up from the nose tip inside, coming up through the skull, inside the spinal cord down to the navel. This is like a, just imagine there’s a tube there. You don’t even have to visualize it, just imagine it’s there, feel it’s there and you’re just following the breath as it comes up and down to the navel. And you can count. The nose tip is one, halfway between the nose tip and the heart is two, heart is three, halfway between the heart and the navel is four, and the navel itself is five.
And and the reverse, one two three four five. One two three four. And, again, just natural breathing. We aren’t trying to breathe in any unordinary way. Okay.
So let’s practice mindfulness of breathing. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge and until I am enlightened. Through the merit I create by practicing the Dharma, I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. Through the merit I create by talking about the Dharma, I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings.
To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, I go for refuge until I am enlightened. Through the merit I create by practicing the Dharma, I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. It’s a mark of the great vehicle in general. The the motivation for an action is just as important as the action itself. In fact, it’s probably more important.
If our external actions of body and speech, though they may appear to be have have the nature of some positive nature about them. But if in fact, they’re motivated by some negative attitude, some afflictive emotion, desire, pride, jealousy, and in fact, they aren’t positive at all. They’re still negative no matter what they may appear on the outside. So we try to keep readjusting our motivation for whatever action, any actions of body and speech. And, of course, the highest action we the highest motivation is to become mentally healthy, to become sane, to become balanced in order that we can help others to do the same, or in other words, that we achieve enlightenment in order to place others in enlightenment and to liberate them from their suffering.
But on a very mundane plane, when we think about helping others, it’s very important that we make a concerted effort, that we make it very much a part of our lives to helping others, that we can’t really be paying lip service to the fact of helping others, that we have to express in reality. It’s motivation that we keep talking about in the great vehicle in general. But we have to be wise in helping others. We have to know why we’re trying to help others. We have to check up on our motivation.
And what is my motivation for wanting to help this person? Sometimes it’s quite difficult to know our own mind when we deceive ourselves. In fact, we probably perhaps don’t know why we’re doing it. We just want to help this other person. One way we can tell, we can begin to check up if our motivation is positive or negative, if it’s a fact that it’s an altruistic motivation in the sense that it’s nothing we want in return, As if, for example, we give someone some I want some advice, and, you know, people don’t have to follow our advice no matter how profound our advice may be or how profound we may think it to be.
They can accept as a reject. And if you feel hurt that they reject your advice, that that you feel that they’re fools, that they didn’t listen to you, then then perhaps there is some question about your motivation or the fact that you helped someone. You did them a favor. They had a problem with you. And you worked with them and you gave them something, and you feel pretty good about it.
In the future, when some problem arises for you, and you expect something in return that when they don’t return the favor, then you feel hurt. Maybe you think, well, I’m never going to do anything for anybody again. Well, you weren’t doing anything for anyone in the first place. Is to say your motivation was mixed with gain for some profit for yourself. It was mixed with some attachment, desire.
It’s not to say that we have to wait till we have perfect motivation before we help anybody. If we did that, we’d never do anything. But we can at least try to adjust our motivation and be, honest with ourselves. And if we see that our motivation is mixed with attachment, desire for some gain for ourselves, then we can try to purify it to work with our motivation because if our motivation is at least altruistic to some degree, then we’re going to be drawing on more deeper inner sources, inner resources to be able to benefit others. The ego is quite limited.
It’s always going to be seeking solutions to problems within reference to aggrandizing itself. Always self referencing. It’s never going to be seeing how we can benefit that person without any way benefiting ourselves. That’s not the work of ego. If you really want simply to help that person without any without any benefit for yourself, you’re going to your possibilities for solutions so their problems are greatly more increased.
Would you be willing to do things which perhaps might cause them to go away from you, like a mother and a child? Perhaps the young she has a son who wants to go away, He has a plan. He wants to move to another city. He feels it’s a beneficial for himself. So he presents her with a dilemma, it?
Whether to hold on. You know, she wants to help him. She wants him to be happy. Can she say, you know, I think that would make you happy. I think this is a good plan.
Or is it or is she able to detach herself from her own personal and her own personal attachments to her son and mix her, you know, whatever help she’s going to give her son with this self gaining mind. What is what is her motivation for counseling her child as to whether it would be good for him or not. So we have to check up on our motivation. Also we have to check up on our capabilities. Can we actually, though we may have good motivation, can we actually be have any benefit in this situation?
Having good intentions is not quite enough, is it? We can actually cause a lot of chaos. If we just go bungling along, we can cause more problems than we’re solving. So we have to check up whether we actually have some of the skill or if in fact maybe we could find someone else who does have the skill, we could do that with the proper motivation. We also have to know why we’re wanting to help another person.
Quite often perhaps seek to help others as a way of diverting ourselves from our own problems. We don’t have not having to put our own house in order. I think if we work with ourselves and we put our house in order, we do gain some balance, then this will naturally evolve to helping others. It’s a natural evolution. But first I think it’s quite necessary to emphasize solving your own problems so that you can develop the skills to help others.
And finally, there’s the question of whether the other person is open to your help. We simply can’t invade someone else’s territory without their permission. You have a very penetrating insight into to perhaps a game they’re playing and some patterns they’re going through and that when you confront them like this, and they’re putting up all these signs that say do not enter. Don’t stick on your grass and you’re crashing through all these signs, and I’m gonna help you in spite of yourself. You’re being quite unskillful, in fact, you’re sensitive to the actual situation and in fact you may require a great deal of patience until this person is open to your help.
You may have some insight to the solution of their problem, but until they’re willing to open up to this solution, you’re not going to be able to benefit them and in fact you may create a worse situation by alienating them, making them defensive. So in helping others we have to check up on our motivation, capabilities, and whether the situation is right, whether the person we’re seeking to help is in the right frame of mind. We’re not talking to a wall, we’re talking to another human being. But we cannot we can’t wait until we have a perfect motivation, until we have all the complete skills, until we act. But at least we can keep this peace in mind when you know, seeking to express this wish to benefit others, which is very necessary to a healthy and happy human being, I think.
We’re talking about the five hindrances to meditation. Desire, hatred, restlessness, anxiety, sloth and torpor, and doubt and and indecisiveness. So in a way, we’re talking about our entire attitude toward meditation in general, you know, we keep in mind the purpose of meditation I’ve sort of said this a number of times, I’ll say it again. The purpose of meditation is to transform our mind, It is not to have good meditation. So I think this is for me, it’s a key point in my practice.
It’s sort of the key which opens up the practice, I think. So, you know, keeping this idea in mind that we’re sitting down to meditate, to transform our mind, It is to learn about ourselves. The learning process is the way we transform our mind. If we have this attitude toward our meditation, then whatever arises in our meditation can be used, can be transformed into a learning process. Even if the five hindrances arise, we can use those as part of the learning process.
And therefore, the very five hindrances, desire, hatred, etcetera, can be a method to transform our mind, to benefit ourselves. So we’re learning what is inside of ourselves and how to work with it. And this is, in general, this truism. We learn from challenges, from obstacles, from difficulties. Mankind progresses for the same reason that the oyster evolves, from irritation.
There was never any flower of human achievement but some great sorrow lay at its root. So our enemies teach us patience. Painful situations give us courage. When they can’t give us courage, there’s potential to give us courage. And the five hindrances can help us learn to develop a balanced mind.
You know, having a balanced mind, it doesn’t simply come to us. We have to work to be able to develop this balanced mind. We work with the five hindrances to develop a balanced mind. So we’re trying to work through the five hindrances as a way of transforming our mind. It’s working through the five hindrances as the transforming process and the transforming process is what we’re calling meditation.
You know, in in Hatha Yoga, there are some some people who are naturally extremely flexible people. And, you know, you get a class of people who are doing Hatha Yoga. These people, they’re like rubber, and the teacher says, Well, now we can do it well, whatever. Know you’re touching your feet, and they kind of flop over, and everybody else is pushing, going through the painful stretching of ligaments, the stretching of muscles, just trying to get their hands on the ground. This person is very relaxed with their hands on the flat on the ground or something like that.
So some of some of the people, the apparent positions come very easily, very readily. They’re naturally extremely flexible. But there reaches a point in the practice of hatha yoga. When you’re trying to adjust the posture, the asanas, to get them correct, first you’re just approximating the postures, the correct posture, it is. So it’s the people who have actually gone through the painful process of stretching ligaments, muscles, who know know every pain of every position of every muscle in their body in order to get into a perfect posture, who are able actually to feel, develop the tactile sensation in their body so they know, Ah, now I’m at the right position, because they develop the tactile sensation.
There’s a learning process. These flexible people, naturally flexible people, have an extremely difficult time getting into the correct posture. They don’t know how it feels. It came so naturally for them, the bending process. They didn’t have to go through the stretching process of muscles and ligament.
They don’t know how the crip posture actually feels. They haven’t had to work towards that point. So this is and it’s quite important to keep in mind that working through is actually a learning process. It’s not as if we’re trying to get rid of the five hindrances in order that we can fit to our meditation. It’s that even the working with the hindrances is meditation.
This is the attitude that we can develop. I’m going to sit down. Whatever your program of meditation is, first I’m going to meditate on mindfulness and breathing. But first I take refuge and I meditate on the Four Immeasurables. And then I’m going to do mindfulness and breathing.
And I’m going to do whatever practice, the Graduated Steps to Enlightenment, meditation from selflessness, mind of enlightenment, whatever your meditation program might be. If one takes the attitude, well, I’m sitting down to learn about myself, I’m sitting down to transform myself, to learn about my mind. And even if there’s a hindrance, you sit down and feel restless. Ah, now I can learn something about restless mind. I can learn something about lazy mind.
I can learn something about anger. I’m very angry. I can watch it. I can learn something about myself. This is an aspect of who I really am.
I have an angry aspect of my mind. Ah, this is a chance to learn something about myself. And that’s essentially what we’re doing. When we study Buddhism, we’re studying ourselves. And to practice Buddhism is to take what we have learned about ourselves and apply it to our everyday life.
Ultimately, it’s knowing yourself which is going to make you free, nothing else outside of that. So we go through this this process. It’s a challenge and making effort to work through the hindrances, desire, hatred. Not that there’s something that we got rid of, that they’re somehow obstructing us getting on with our meditation, but in fact, it is our meditation. But also, it’s a simple question of mind training, of accepting challenges of difficulties.
It takes some courage to practice Dharma. Takes some courage to confront your mind, to work with your negative emotion, your afflictive emotion. We have to expect difficulties if you’re going to try to sincerely practice. And we can become We have to develop some attitude, some skillful attitude to the difficulties that we’re going to confront in working with our mind, in practicing Dharma in general and trying to raise the level of our consciousness. The result is not the point.
It is the effort to improve ourselves that is valuable. So this is Suzuki Roshi, a great Zen master who lived for a number of years in the United States. He died perhaps seven or maybe ten years ago. So he’s talking from the Zen tradition, but it doesn’t really matter. The result is not the point.
It is the effort to improve ourselves that is valuable. There are four Buddhist vows. These vows are, Although all sentient beings are innumerable, we vow to save them. Although our evil desires are limitless, we vow to be rid of them. Although the teaching is limitless, we vow to learn it all.
Although Buddhism is unattainable, we vow to attain it. If it is unattainable, how can we attain it? But we should. That is Buddhism. Would you close the door, please?
To think because it is possible we will do it is not Buddhism. Even though it is impossible, we have to do it because it is our true nature wants us to. But actually, whether or not it is impossible or not is not the point. If it is our inmost desire to get rid of our self centered ideas, we have to do it. When we make this effort, our inmost desire is appeased and nirvana is there.
This is the basis within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of training, what we call training of the mind, transforming the mind. That we see all adverse circumstances, all adverse conditions as a path to develop ourselves, to gain enlightenment as a way of growing. And therefore, who has developed this attitude, no matter what difficulties confront them, no matter what problems, the mind is always happy because they see us as a chance, an opportunity for growth, to develop the courage, to develop their understanding, to develop patience, love, whatever is necessary, to work through this problem. Without adversities, without difficulties, there’s no growth. Without irritation, there’s no evolution.
I think His Holiness, the Dalai Lama said, in a way we have to be thankful to the Chinese for invading Tibet. They forced us to develop courage, they forced us to develop strength, they forced us to practice compassion. They gave us an opportunity to learn very valuable lessons, and therefore the Chinese have been extremely kind to us. Now this shows a trained mind, doesn’t This is the spirit of Dharma in practice, in reality, the person who thinks this way. It shows the understanding of the essence of Dharma.
So in the Zen tradition, they look upon the afflictive emotions not as obstacles but as opportunities, sources of growth. A Zen gardener supposedly, I’m not sure, a Zen gardener, he doesn’t get rid of the weeds in his garden. He appreciates the weeds just as much as the vegetables or the flowers. What he does, he cuts them down beneath the soil and he folds them over and puts soil on top of them. So the weeds themselves become a source of nourishment for the flowers or the vegetables.
So he appreciates the weeds in his garden as a source of growth. Likewise, we can begin to appreciate our afflictive emotions as a source of awkward qualities. We can appreciate our enemies as a source of patience, for a source of showing us where we’re really at. If you can love your enemy, then you’ve truly developed love, haven’t you? It’s quite easy to love your friends the way we usually use the word love.
So we can use difficulties, we can appreciate them as opportunities for growth, To think, I can’t stand this mind of mine, this garbage mind of mine, I can’t meditate, I can’t stand myself, is not only to indulge in egotism, but it’s also to misunderstand essentially what it means to practice Dharma. Positively stated, we can say that the practice of Dharma is to cultivate uninterrupted skill states of mind or negatively stated to oppose negative states of mind, to actively oppose negative states of mind. Therefore, if we look at it from this point, to actively the practice of Dharma is to oppose, actively oppose negative states of mind. And even at those times when anger arises in our mind, attachment arises in our mind, jealousy arises in our mind, then we have a chance to practice Dharma. If at those times we actively in some small way, just knowing that this is a negative state of mind, in some small way beginning to oppose it, then we’re practicing Dharma.
The mere fact that we have anger or hatred attachment doesn’t mean we’re not practicing Dharma, that we shouldn’t get upset because this that you think, oh, I’ve been practicing all these years. I’ve made all this effort, and look, I I get angry. You know? I’m a failure. It’s useless.
It’s worthless. In fact, having that anger and opposing it may be a more powerful practice than someone who just simply never gets angry. He may in fact not be practicing at all. He just may never be meeting the conditions for his anger to arise. He may, in fact, be practicing extremely well if you’re opposing it.
This is the practice of Dharma, actively opposing it. You know, it’s said that we cannot practice the ten virtues unless the the motivation, unless the intention to commit a non virtue arises in our mind. So someone who has never had the intention to kill can never practice the virtue of non killing. So we aren’t trying to be perfect Dharma practitioners. You know, the people who get upset with themselves because they get angry, because anger arises in their mind, because they have a lust, they say, I’m a failure.
This is because they have a preconception that they should be some kind of Dharma robot, preconception of what their mind should be like. They aren’t actively concerned with trying to improve their mind. It’s simply by the practice of Dharma we mean when these states arise we actively oppose them. That’s our practice. That’s a preconception of what we should be like.
Also, this applies to our meditation. We have, as I said, we may outline our meditation program. When we go to sit down, we have a series of meditations that we’re going to employ. So we have to take the attitude that this is a learning process, a transforming process, and therefore whatever arises can be used as my meditation. I can learn, I can work through it, I can transform.
And we may have to set aside our complete program, And it may, in fact, be more beneficial than anything we had preconceived. Maybe we just work with desire. Maybe we just work with anger. That entire meditation period. But in fact, it may be more productive than having gone through mindlessly and mechanically this whole series of meditations that you had worked out in advance.
So we have, know, we we design a meditation program for ourselves knowing what our particular problems are, but we have to be open and fluid to what is actually happening at that moment when we sit down. What is the state of our mind at that moment? Because that’s the only time we can practice at that moment. We can’t can’t be anybody else other than who we are now. So we take that, who we are at that moment, and we work with that, that is opening to all the aspects of ourselves.
Whatever is happening, that becomes a part of our meditative process, a part of our learning process. It’s like we begin to work with the raw materials of who we are now. Not how we would like to think we are or how we think we should be or what we think a meditation session should be like, but what is going to be of most benefit? That is working with our present states of mind, actively opposing negative states and skillfully cultivating productive positive states. That’s essentially what we’re doing.
So when you sit down and you’re, you know, even if you don’t feel like meditating within a wholesome self discipline, we sit down and you’re still lazy so you can start to investigate lazy mind. What is a lazy mind like? How to work through lazy mind? How can I get through it? What’s its quality?
You can become an expert on laziness, not by indulging it, but by looking at it and beginning to work through it. So in general, we should be looking and learning, you know, all the time. But especially when we sit down to meditate, this is the specific time that we set aside to look and to learn about ourselves. Usually, we’re extremely externally orientated. Sometimes it’s quite necessary.
Know, you’re driving a car. Probably it’d be difficult to examine the state of your mind without having an accident. So here we don’t have to worry about anything external to our minds. We can just begin to really take a look at our minds and learn about ourselves. So when we sit down to meditate, our mind is restless, or you don’t feel like meditating, You’re lazy.
Your mind is heavy. You’ve got a lot of desire, fantasies that keep coming. Memories. You feel angry. Some angers that you can’t some object, an unpleasurable object you’re holding, your mind won’t let go of.
Then you change your object to meditation. You look at those things and you learn about that. That’s part of yourself. So of course, such an attitude of taking everything that arises as a as a source of learning, as a challenge, is going to spill over into your everyday life. And in all our situations, all our relations, we’re going to be less bound by our beliefs, our opinions, our preconceptions, and we’re going to be more open and fluid because we’re going to be examining what is the real situation as it exists now rather than how we think it should be going, how we imagine it to be going, fantasize it to make a life.
So specifically in terms of the five hindrances. Desire. So it’s something which is attractive to the mind, something which is alluring. The mind is moving towards it, feeling of being drawn toward the object, something very bright about the object. We want to draw that object towards us.
There’s a feeling of its complete desirability as if it can completely satisfy all our needs. We’ve lost the discriminative power. We’re no longer discriminating. It’s not operating. We overlook any faults of the object in this state of desire, as if the object only had good qualities.
So there’s an imbalance. Hatred, anger, aversion, you know, there’s this wanting to destroy, to get rid of, to push you away. It’s very exciting and hatred makes us feel very alive. It’s very sharp, very clear, hatred, the energy of hatred. It gives our mind some temporary direction and purpose.
It’s characterized there’s no patience, there’s no forbearing with the object. You want to destroy it, push it away. So it only sees it’s also there’s no discriminating no discrimination operating. It it only sees the negative qualities of the object, the displeasing qualities of the object. So there’s we’ve gone through these five hindrances, giving some of the feeling qualities of these five hindrances, and we’re going to talk about the antidotes.
Now the last three hindrances are less are more boring. They’re less they’re more subtle. They’re not quite as interesting from the point of view of the mind. Restlessness and anxiety. So there’s a mental and physical agitation.
You want to get up and do something else, impulsive action. Feeling that you want this whatever that you occupied with at that moment, you want it to cease. You want to go on to something else, to move on to something else. You’re impulsive, you’re shifting around the side of it. Then there’s the sloth and torpor.
So the mind is bored with the object. It’s not being stimulated, it’s not being entertained, it’s not being excited by the object, there’s no interest in the object. We develop, because the object isn’t interesting, there’s no desire to penetrate into the object, it becomes a little less clear. And as little as clarity, the object leads to fuzziness, some fuzziness about the object. Mine is like feeling the cotton, And this fuzziness leads to as grows and grows, begins to the mind becomes dull.
Slowly the dullness leads to kind of a stupor, makes the mind very unserviceable, because that’s why it can’t do anything with the mind and eventually leads to sleep. So it’s this progression of the mind just simply closing in on its own self because there’s nothing that takes no interest in the object. And there’s the fifth of the five hindrances, doubt and indecisiveness. So this is the sinking mind constantly churning out questions. That’s all it does.
This is churning out questions. Am I doing it right? Is this the right meditation that I should be doing? Maybe I should try another tradition, Zen Buddhism. And then Christianity altogether.
Or can women attain enlightenment? Can men attain enlightenment? Is there such a thing? What am I doing? Maybe I’m doing it all wrong.
So there’s no real question. It’s simply a state of doubt. It has to be recognized as that. There’s no real questions to be answered. Even if you were to answer your questions, another question would arise.
Yes, but what about the case and the questioning doubt would persist even if we supplied answers, we started answering every doubt that arose? It would be this but if, or maybe, but or, yes, but, this kind of mind has a state of doubt, indecisiveness. So there’s just an uneasiness of not knowing, conflicts about not being able to decide. So these are give you some feeling about these five, what we call the five hindrances. So last time we discussed the first of the antidotes, the method to help us work through them, through these five hindrances, ways to deal with the five hindrances.
So that was simply recognizing hindrances as hidden hindrances. Recognizing hindrances as hindrances. So, again, the hindrances are only hindrances if they’re an obstruction to learning, to growth, to development, to raising the level of our consciousness. So we’re only saying that desire, they’re not inherently hindrances. They can be a source of learning.
But if when they become an obstruction to learning, an obstruction to raising the level of our consciousness, then they are hindrances. When we identifying with the hindrance, when we aren’t identifying with our desire, when we aren’t identifying with our hatred, when we’re learning from them, when we’re investigating them, making use of them, then of course they’re not hindrances. They’re actually a valuable object of meditation. They’re an object for us to learn from. So the first is recognizing the hindrances as hindrances, recognizing that they are obstructing our development, are raising the level of our consciousness.
But in fact, we have to appreciate the fact that there are other levels of consciousness to which we can raise our mind to. We talked about the fact that we have to appreciate our Buddha potential, if you like, the nature of our mind, that we have this clear knowing quality which is limitless in its capacity. Appreciate what we have, the potential. If we don’t appreciate this, if we don’t appreciate the fact that there are higher levels of consciousness, that there are more healthy, sane ways of being, happier states, more loving states, more authentic states, if we don’t have a real feeling that these things exist, then of course, we’re never going to be recognized that the hindrances are hindrances because they’re not obstructing anything, because we don’t think we don’t see there’s anything that’s being obstructed. Desire’s okay.
Hatred’s okay. Some people think hatred’s a is a viable mental state. It’s the first line of defense when you’re going to you know, you’re in a conflict. Desire is quite, you know, exciting state. It makes us alive, feel very energetic.
It’s only when we begin to appreciate that there is something more than what we’re experiencing now that we’re going to recognize desire, hatred, and all these others’ hindrances as obstructions. Otherwise, we’re not, and we’re not going to deal with them as obstructions. We’re not going to see them as hindrances. So this was, in general, the first enigma, recognizing the hindrances and hindrances, appreciating the fact that there are higher levels of consciousness which these hindrances are obstructing and it’s necessary to begin to work with them, to deal with them, to work through them. So the second method of dealing with the hindrances, working with them, is to cultivate the specific antidote to each of the hindrances.
So we can in general, we can say about the afflictive emotions is that they’re they’re objects. The object of afflictive emotions, desire, hatred, jealousy, pride, miserliness, whatever, ignorance, does not exist the way it appears. In fact, we can say it doesn’t exist at all. The object of desire doesn’t exist, which will make it a little bit simpler. We just say the object of your afflictive emotions, the object of desire and hatred does not exist the way it is appearing to that mind.
The mind is always exaggerating or depreciating the qualities of that object. This is one of the marks of afflictive emotions. This is one way we can tell whether we’re under the influence of afflictive emotions. Does, in fact, the way the object’s appearing to us, does it really exist that way? Why?
Because at the moment the afflictive emotion arises, we lose our ability to properly discriminate the nature of the object. We lose our ability to the object in a balanced, realistic fashion. Sexual fantasies. You know, what appears to your mind? Definitely not the pimples, the blemishes, the smell, the dirt.
Obviously not. It’d be a hell of a sex sexual fantasy, wouldn’t it? It’s only the desirable qualities, only the beautiful, alluring, attractive qualities are appearing in mind. The mind is depreciating all the negative qualities. It’s becoming imbalanced, indiscriminate.
It depreciates any negative qualities, overlooks any faults, any flaws, and exaggerates any sort of desirable qualities, you know, whatever whatever desirable qualities you might be into. So this is the mark of an afflictive emotions in general when we see an enemy. We can’t see its good qualities when we see him as an enemy. It wouldn’t be an enemy if we were looking at his good qualities. We can’t see him in a balanced way at that moment.
That’s whatever, sexual fantasy. It doesn’t have to you know, just thinking of your girlfriend. It doesn’t have to be sexual or boyfriend or some food, whatever. So there’s some only the desirable aspects of the object appearing to you. The images, through the force of memory or fantasy, imagination keep arising in your mind, consummate.
What does it do to this desire attachment to? It feels good. It feels pleasant to see these desirable qualities. And if you get completely involved in them, then, of course, it becomes an obstruction to raising the level of your consciousness. We can look at it and we can see that in fact we’re only seeing what is it that is rising to our mind, what is this feeling of desire, what it that object appear like.
You know, we go back to the example of the body, sexual desire, you know, only these desirable qualities are appearing to us, only these beautiful qualities. So as an antidote, a way of bringing the mind back to a balance and working through this desire, we can simply begin to think of the undesirable qualities of the object. In the case of the body, we can think about all the pimples and blemishes, all the smells of the body, the dirt of the body. Now it’s not that we’re trying to develop aversion toward the body. That would be also an obstacle.
But we’re simply trying to bring the mind to a balance, neither aversion to the body nor attachment to the body. So we simply use our discrimination, seeing both the flaws and the indesirable or, let’s say, the beautiful aspects of the object. This is a balanced because this is the way the object really exists. This is not an object of emotion. The way we see that with discrimination, with a balanced mind, is in fact the way the object actually exists.
And so we we work through the desire, the lust, the attachment, and we brought our mind back to a balance. Same is true of hatred as in the case of the enemy. We’re only seeing the negative qualities, what he did to me. He may be a fine fellow to somebody else, but we can’t see that at that moment. We only realize how he hurt me, how she hurt me, something about the object.
And then we can get angry at anything, actually. You know? You bump your head on the you stub your toe on a stone or something, get angry at the stone. Anyway, it’s a lack of patience, lack of forbearance, but it’s not being it’s an imbalance, lack of discrimination. So, again, we can look at the object from a more balanced point of view, use our discrimination.
And with respect to sentient beings, people, we can meditate on love. That would be the specific antidote to this feeling of anger or hatred that you might have to a person, to bring the mind back to a balance, to see his desirable qualities, to see her desirable qualities. Restore balance to the mind. As the strength of our love increases, the strength of the anger, the hatred must decrease. At the same time, in one mind, we can’t have these two emotions.
Love and hatred cannot exist at the same time in the same mind. Attachment and non attachment, hatred and non hatred, whatever. A positive state of mind cannot exist simultaneous with a negative state of mind. So as our love increases toward this object to cultivate, our hatred must decrease like the scales, like the balance scales. So that’s how we can begin to deal with hatred, when we feel some anger, and it just keeps reoccurring.
We can’t let go of it, you know, with this guy, you know, this guy pulled in front of you when you’re driving or something. You sit down and meditate and just keep you sinking how and you honked your horn and didn’t pay any attention to you and and you felt very impotent about the whole thing and whatever. You could go on and on now. You’d like to see that guy one more time, one more time, and could go on forever, couldn’t it? Your mind becomes completely involved in.
So if we can simply relate to that person as a human being in a more balanced, discriminating manner, we can get rid of that hatred and we can develop that he’s simply from the point of view of forgiving him, but also from the fact that he’s in human pain. He’s got his problems. He wants to be happy. You know, we we talk we go through love and meditation every every Friday night. There’s areas of possibility.
The third object of emotion is restlessness and anxiety. Restlessness and anxiety. So we have to develop the mind just won’t settle down. We’ve talked about the qualities of restlessness and anxiety. It has been tracked.
It’s gone wild. It’s purpose to the mind, a new direction to the mind. So we have to deal with the patience, a willingness to abide with the uncomfortable sensation of restlessness. Restlessness is very uncomfortable. It doesn’t feel very good to be restless.
You want to immediately give into the restlessness and be absorbed in something else. Restlessness arise when the mind can’t get on a track, when it wants some purpose. So what do you do? You give it a purpose. You turn on the television.
You get up and you order a pizza or something. You give it something interesting. Give it some tract. To sit there with restlessness isn’t very pleasurable. It’s uncomfortable.
So you have to develop a patience with this uncomfortable sensation of restlessness, with the discomfort of restlessness, being willing to bear with it. So we accept the agitation instead of running away from it as we normally do whenever you become restless, you go do something else immediately. That’s what you would naturally do. Nor do we so we don’t we’re not going to run away from it. Nor are we going to suppress it, which would try to which would only serve to increase it, you know, sometimes push down your restlessness, sit still.
This only feeds it. This is just energizing, because this energy that we use in trying to suppress our restlessness will simply bounce back at us, and we’re going to become more restless, more agitated. We’re trying to push down our restlessness. We just bear with it. Accept So, you know, obviously, the antidote to restlessness is a calm mind, isn’t it?
That doesn’t take too much imagination. So we bring about a calm mind by repeatedly bringing the mind back to rest on the object. We sit in very gently as we’ve been doing in our breathing meditation, repeatedly bringing the mind back to rest on one object. On a single object, the mind begins to calm down. So this requires some patience, some accepting.
We can also use methods of, you know, the mind is more or less in an excited state. We can bring the mind down. We can, for example, we can contemplate suffering. We can contemplate death in order to bring the mind from an excited state, sober it up. Thinking about death is very sober.
Thinking about suffering brings the mind down, doesn’t it? You would only want to do this when your mind was excited. If your mind was down to begin with, it probably would not be advisable to think about death and suffering. It would only probably depress you. So that’s the way we can begin to work with restlessness and anxiety.
Sloth and Torpor. So the mind is dark. There’s qualities, there’s feeling qualities of the mind. It’s dark and heavy and depressed. It’s very unserviceable.
Like you’ve been working all day, and you’ve got to lift this fifty pound pound fifty kilo bag of cement up in your shelf. It’s just it’s just too much to lift. You know, you’re tired, it’s is like the whole weight of your existence. Is like there’s no way that you can summon up the energy to get this big bag up on a ship or something. It’s just kind of there’s no energy heaviness, there’s no serviceability.
So we have to uplift the mind, we have to energize the mind, we have to make it lighten, strength. So the way we can the main antidote is bliss. The main antidote to sloth and torpor, to laziness, is bliss. So if we’re willing to work through the hindrance, the hindrances in general, we’re going to reach a level of our meditation where our meditation will be pleasurable, where the experience of meditation is enjoyable, it actually can become blissful. You know, we talked about the natural quality of mind as being blissful.
As the hindrances begin to decrease in their strength, as our mind begins to settle down, we can become we begin to experience the natural peace, the natural bliss of the mind. So this becomes the antidote to sloth and torpor, this natural bliss, the natural peace of mind. And the mind willingly rises to the occasion, you might say, because it enjoys the fruits of meditation. Sangharakshita. He’s talking about meditation.
When we are completely happy and all of our emotional energies are unified, then we are concentrated in the true sense. Hence, we may say that a concentrated person is a happy person. A happy person is a concentrated person, and the happier we are, the longer we shall be able to stay concentrated. We find it difficult to stay concentrated for very long because we are not happy with our present state. If we were really happy and truly happy, we wouldn’t need to do anything else.
We would just stay still enjoying that happiness, but we are not happy. We are dissatisfied, and so we get restless and go searching for this, searching for that, for some distraction, some diversion, and in this way there is no concentration. So when the mind becomes happy in meditation, through meditation, then naturally the qualities, the difficulties of sloth and torpor, laziness, restlessness, all the various hindrances are going to decrease. So in a way, bliss is the way we can ultimately arrive at a meditative state. It is called is a method.
You know, we talk about wisdom and method, especially in the terms of tantra. Tantra makes use of the method of bliss in order to induce meditative states. How do we arrive at this? Obviously, if our mind is so gross with desire and hatred, we’re never going to be able to get in touch with the natural bliss of the mind. So we have to work with grosser methods initially, know, actual the antidotes as were just explained, you know, the specific antidotes for desire and hatred.
But as our mind becomes more subtle, then we can get in touch with bliss from time to time. And this induces the mind to go deeper into meditation, to become more and more subtle. So the mind becomes more in tune with its own bliss, drawing it into concentration, drawing it into the meditative state naturally. The mind will begin to naturally go into a meditative state. In order to develop the bliss, we have to make effort.
In order to make effort, we have to aspire. That is, we have to believe in these higher states of consciousness. In order to aspire, have to have faith. We have to have faith that they exist and that we can actually attain them. So it comes down to understanding, appreciating our mind and the possibilities for developing it.
And we can talk about more specific types of antidotes to sloth and torpor, laziness in general. And then we can, for example, visualize light. You can visualize a small pea of light at the tip of your nose shining brightly. The light is, the whole body is filled with light. We’re trying to lighten up the body, the mind, energize the mind so we can visualize light.
There are many, many antidotes that we can work with. We can try to enliven our mind, for example, ourselves by thinking about our spiritual teacher, for example, his example, his patience and compassion, think about all his excellent qualities to inspire us. We can think about the the potential of our mind, the higher states, the development of our potential to inspire us, to help to uplift ourselves. So we can sit up straighter. We can partially open our eyes if you’re usually meditating with your eyes closed.
You can let in a little bit of stimulus of light coming into your mind. You can get up and walk around, wash your face, and then go back, sit down. You know, whatever is required to keep working with this state rather than giving into it, letting it completely overwhelm And we have to be patient. And there’s the vast of the hindrances, which is doubt and indecision. So we have to clarify and determine exactly what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.
You to actually come to some kind of decision in your mind, some determination as to if you want to develop your mind, if in fact you think it’s possible to develop your mind. So you have to develop some direction and some confidence in yourself to overcome this doubt. And doubt in yourself and what you’re doing is why you have to clarify, and then you decide to get on with it. By clarifying, coming to a determination, coming to an understanding of what you’re doing and the possibility of of attaining, of achieving the goal of what you’re doing, then doubt will not arise, indecision will not arise, and you can get on and work through the hindrance. So this is the second antidote, that is cultivating a specific antidote to each of the hindrances.
With respect to desire, gaining a more balance, using discrimination, seeing the object both and as it actually exists. The same is true of hatred. But with hatred, can use specifically with respect to sentient beings meditating on love. With respect to restlessness and anxiety, forbearing patience accepting the discomfortness the discomfort sensation of restlessness itself, and repeatedly bringing the mind rest on the object again and again. With sloth and torpor, energizing the mind, Ultimately, want to develop bliss.
But in in that process, developing faith, aspiration, effort in order to develop bliss. Using a specific more specific, visualizing light, thinking about your spiritual teacher, for example, enlivening, uplifting your mind, sitting up straight, making a firm determination in your mind to get on with your meditation. And then doubt and indecision, clarifying what it is you’re doing and what you’re trying to get out of your meditation if in fact there’s anything to be gotten out of it, then you can get it out and you can get that benefit. Developing confidence in yourself and what you’re doing so doubt doesn’t arise. So the third method we can begin to use is considering the consequences of allowing this hindrance to continue.
If you allow it to continue in a sense allowing it to grow and then to eventually completely take over your mind. What are the consequences if you allow this hindrance to completely overwhelm you? Then you’re completely lost, aren’t you? Desire, you sit there daydreaming about some fantasy for the next hour of your meditation session. Or hatred, sit there totally unproductively in a negative state, wasting your time in this fantasy, in this anger, allowing this anger to continue.
In general, it would be better to get up and do some kind of work than to sit there allowing this state of mind to completely overwhelm you, allowing desire to completely overwhelm you, allowing hatred to completely overwhelm you, restlessness, doubt, sloth. Because two things are happening. Three things. One, you’re wasting your time. Two, you’re collecting negative karma.
And three, you’re creating bad habits in meditation that are going to be that much more difficult to develop your mind in the future. You know, if you sit there and allow your mind to wander, not uncaring them, allowing yourself to dwell in indulgent fantasies, hatreds, whatever, Then at some time in the future when you perhaps do want to develop your mind, you’ve developed these bad habits which you’re going to have to begin to break. So you have twice the work to do someone who had never tried to meditate before doesn’t have. At least that person is starting off fresh. He doesn’t have bad habits that he has to break first and then develop good habits.
So it’s very destructive to yourself to allow yourself to become overwhelmed by these hindrances. If we don’t allow them to overwhelm us, then we can work with them. And then they’re quite useful, but if they overwhelm us, then they’re quite destructive if we allow them to go to the consequences. We consider the consequences of them completely overwhelming us. So that’s a third antidote, is consider the consequences of allowing ourselves to be overwhelmed by the hindrances.
The fourth is passive observation. This is more or less what I’ve been advising you to do to some extent, passive observation. This is simply not identifying with or grasping at the hindrance at any particular state of mind. You know, whatever states of mind, whatever feelings, thoughts that arise, you simply don’t identify with them. You don’t grasp to them.
You simply, for example, note them, thinking, feeling, pain, pain, and then you go back. You don’t indulge in the sensations. You don’t indulge in the thoughts, the states of mind, the feeling. It’s like you’re watching the sky. The sky is beautifully clear blue, And as these clouds passing passing over, they come, they pass by, you just watch the clouds, and they drift on.
And the sky remains perfectly clear and blue. It’s in no way affected by the clouds passing through it. And likewise, we can simply watch, observe, note, the rising of thoughts. They pass, they go, and we don’t become involved in them. We don’t indulge in them or feelings.
We don’t indulge in desire. And desire arises, fantasies. You can simply note thinking or desire, lust, hatred, anger, anger. And by not indulging it, by not feeding any energy, it by itself will diminish and pass away. And then you can return to your object of meditation.
So this is one of the techniques that we’re using in which simply say noting. We know that a thought has arisen. We can use the technique. We think thinking, feeling, seeing, smelling, touching. This is one device that’s used by Mahasi Sayadaw in Burma, this noting technique.
People practice this all day long. They know exactly what their mind is doing every moment. They’re seeing, seeing, seeing, raising, raising, raising, moving. And then you’re sitting, feeling the buttocks on that cushion. Moment by moment, they’re noting, knowing what they’re doing.
The mind never becomes involved. And it develops just like just these all these sensations, all these thoughts, feelings, states of mind just pass like clouds, and the sky remains perfectly clear, unaffected. In the practice of meditation, the way to become daring, the way to leap is to disown your thoughts, to step beyond your hopes and fears, the ups and downs of your thinking process. You can just be, just let yourself be without holding on to the constant reference points that mind manufactures. So it’s like sitting on a railway bank near the track and the train’s going by.
You’re watching this train going by. You’re watching the train going by. And just knowing that the train is going by, just being aware of the train going by, watching the train going by. And then one moment, you find yourself looking out of the train at the countryside going by. It’s where you got on the train.
You got on this desire thought. You got on this hatred thought. Rather than simply knowing that there was desire, you became involved in the desire, and you were lost. You no longer know that you’re experiencing desire, you became desire, you became hatred, you became restless, you became doubt or whatever. We don’t have to get on the train.
We can simply know these states, observe them, and they will pass on. So this is a fourth way that we can begin to work with the hindrances, a way to work through them, to deal with them, simply knowing them, noting them, and letting them pass on. And this is the development of awareness, simply knowing. So the fifth method, This is the last resort before you become overwhelmed by the hindrance in particular, before you fall asleep for the fifth time, before you jump up and run out to get the pizza or whatever. Suppression.
Most unskillful. Of these. You generally, we can use these methods. I’ve given you five methods. We can use them from the top down.
Is the least skillful of the methods, but at least it’s something. We haven’t we aren’t allowing our mind to become completely overwhelmed by the hindrance. We’re at least still working with it. We’re making some effort to oppose it. That’s why we’re practicing Dharma.
It’s not the most skillful practice, but it is practice. So we can simply force the mind, force the object out of our mind, force the desire, the hatred out of our mind, push it up, shift shift the mind away from it constantly. No. I’m not gonna think about that. I know.
Yeah. Suppressing. Going to something else, shifting your mind completely, pushing it away. This is, you know, the least skillful, but we’re working with it. It is a practice.
The willpower, you know, when I first started meditating, I was trying to do what they call a Samatha meditation, I remember calm abiding. And I had the idea that it was like knocking your head against the wall, persistence. Persistence. Sometimes we mistake persistence for patience. There’s a difference.
I thought if I just kept knocking my head against the wall, not literally in my meditation, I thought there would be some breakthrough. You know, I was trying to get single point concentration. I pushed, pushed, and I it’s a frantic effort. It was simply that I thought willpower alone was going to get was going to help me develop my mind. It’s simply through you know, this is an ego trip, isn’t it?
Just through my own willpower, my own strength, I’m going to develop my mind, I’m going to achieve enlightenment. But in fact, willpower alone is not going to get you to enlightenment. We have to learn about our mind. We have to develop the abilities to work with our mind. We have to cultivate uninterrupted, skillful states of mind and we have to learn how to do that.
That is we have to develop some wisdom, some skill. We have to learn how to work with our mind. Willpower in itself is not going to develop our mind. It is not skillful. So in meditation, we should be looking all the time, checking to see whether we are really meditating or not.
There should be some kind of should be an element of purposefulness in our meditation, direction to our meditation of knowing why we are doing what we’re doing and whether we’re actually achieving what we’re setting out to do, knowing what we want and knowing whether we’re achieving it. The world can be explored. It is workable, wherever you go, whatever you do, but I would like to plant one basic seed in your mind. I feel that it’s absolutely important to make the practice of meditation your source of strength, your source of basic intelligence. Please think about that.
You could sit down and do nothing. Just sit down and do nothing. Stop acting. Stop speeding. Sit down and do nothing.
You should take great you should take pride in the fact that you have learned a very valuable message. You actually can survive beautifully by doing nothing. Think about your problems, your difficulties. But you want to be happy. Whatever you’ve done in the past, whatever mistakes you’ve made, you can regret them and determine not to repeat them in the future and begin again.
And however you may conceive of yourself, whatever identity you may hold onto, you can change. You can begin again. And for the moment, forgive yourself. Accept yourself. Become friends with yourself.
Quit torturing yourself. And wish yourself well. May I be happy. May I grow. Maybe well.
Just radiate out positive feelings to yourself. Generate good feelings towards yourself. Now imagine someone of the same sex, someone you like, that you love, that you have natural feelings of caring for. Imagine that person in front of you. Just feel that that person is in front of you now and think about how happy they make you, how much you care for them, and let these natural positive feelings grow.
Radiate out these positive feelings towards that person. May you be happy. May you find everything that you’re looking for. Think of someone you neither like nor dislike. You feel indifferent toward a stranger.
Imagine that person in front of you. You’re trying to go beneath the superficial appearance and superficial difference, Beneath the appearance of age, sex, beauty, ugliness. Beneath personality, intelligence, education. Try to go deep down into that person to see the very being of that person. A person is just like us, just like you.
They want happiness and don’t want to suffer just like yourself. No difference whatsoever. Just as you wish your own self happiness, wish that person deep down happiness. It was how we feel, how we relate with that person deep down. Is how we really feel about ourselves deep down.
If you can’t wish that person happiness, you really can’t wish yourself happiness. Now think of someone who disturbs your mind, that you have problems with, an enemy. Imagine that person in front of you. This person is just trying to find happiness just like yourself. And perhaps their method of finding happiness has come in conflict with your method of finding happiness.
But that’s just a conflict of interest. You’ve hurt others either intentionally or unintentionally in the past in trying to find your happiness. And just as if you have to begin you have to begin to forgive yourself, you have to begin to forgive this person for wanting happiness. If you look deep down in that person, there’s someone lost and alone, trying their best to find some happiness in life. Just for a moment, see that deep person and set aside your grudge, your anger, your hard feelings, your hurt, And forgive them just like you have to forgive yourself for the hurt you’ve caused others and wish them happiness.
Now imagine all four people together, yourself and these three people. Just feel that they’re there. They all want happiness. They all equally don’t want to suffer. No difference whatsoever.
So really adopt positive feelings equally to all four people. And all the people in this room, all the people who are taking responsibility for their lives, their happiness, seeking some real method to help themselves and to help others. May you radiate positive feelings to everyone in the room. May you find everything that you’re seeking. May you find peace.
And may you help others to find peace. And everyone on the block, eating the dinner, watching television, getting ready for bed, sleeping, They’re all trying to find happiness. It’s a really tough positive feeling that’s touching everyone on the street. Everyone in Adelaide, driving in their cars, walking in the streets, coming home in their homes, factories, wherever. And spreading out, extending out to all of South Australia, all the people, animals, insects.
It’s spreading out further and further. Alice Springs, Perth, Darwin, Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Melbourne, entire country. Further, Asia, Africa. Entire southern hemisphere, enveloping the whole world and you’re carrying your positive feelings in your heart.
All the people red, black, white, yellow, all the animals, insects, everything in this. Take them in your heart. Finally, without any boundaries, without any center, pervading all the space, I wish may all things be happy.