By LYNN J. KELLEY | from ‘The Buddha’s Advice to Laypeople’

Here we are, considering the fourth framework for cultivating mindfulness: principles/phenomena/dharmas. Specifically, we’ll take up how we can practice mindfulness with the hindrances. As a reminder, the hindrances are:

1. sensual desire,
2. anger,
3. sloth-and-torpor
4. restlessness-and-worry, and
5. doubt.

To be clear, we are mainly thinking of our own hindrances, not other peoples’. We can learn from observing other folks’ mistakes, but the errors we make ourselves are the ones most likely to make a lasting impression on us.

Before we get into specifics on each of the hindrances, we should remember that the fourth framework asks us to observe the conditions that lead to the arising of the hindrances and the conditions that lead to the fading or overcoming of the hindrances. Unfortunately, there is not a simple list of things to avoid and things to draw near to us. Because our life experience is unique, we need to figure some specific things out for ourselves.

Ven. Anālayo offers an excellent metaphor in his book “Satipaṭṭhāna Meditation: A Practice Guide” (p. 154). We can imagine ourselves as a chess player…

Our friend has just made a threatening move, attacking our queen (gardez!). We will not get angry because of that. After all it is a game and the other player is our good friend. Yet at the same time we do want to win.

With this type of attitude, wanting to win without getting angry, we examine the situation: “Let me see, how did I get into this? How come I am now in the situation of being about to lose my queen?” On examining how this happened, we keep a lookout for the type of move that will save our queen. In other words, we try to identify the condition that will lead us out of this situation.

Ven. Anālayo goes on to point out that by seeing an arisen hindrance as a chess move, we are less likely to take it personally. That is, we don’t need to see our sensual desire or anger as something to feel guilty about or get annoyed with. It is simply what is happening now. It is also likely that whatever our favored hindrance is will arise in the future. Can we prepare ourselves by changing our attitude to our own obstructions, or by adjusting how we handle them?

The degree to which this particular mental condition can actually function as a “hindrance”, in the sense of obstructing our inner clarity, is inexorably interwoven with the degree of our identification with the images and associations it conjures up in the mind.

That is to say, the more closely we identify with our desire or anger or agitation or sloth or doubt, the harder it is to work with. By creating a little distance between “me” and the present obstructive mind state, we make a space we can work in.

The hindrances obstruct our mental clarity and actually block our pathway towards non-clinging, towards liberation. Only we have the power to mindfully, methodically, remove those obstacles.

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“The moment you accept responsibility for your situation you begin to move in a positive direction.”

~Bhante Gunaratana
“Mindfulness in Plain English” (Wisdom)

The cause of suffering, the Second Noble Truth, is desire (tanha)—attachment to desire out of ignorance. Here we’re not trying to rid ourselves of desire, or become somebody who doesn’t have any desires. We’re recognizing desire: desire is like this, it’s an object. So you begin to notice the desire to have something, desire for sense pleasures. Desire is a kind of energy, it takes us over. If we’re not aware of it, if we don’t recognize or understand it, we become slaves to it.

‘MEDITATION: Because some questions can’t be answered by Google!’

“If anger, despair, or sorrow accumulate in our hearts, we have to do something about it. Exercise, talk to your mentor, meditate on loving-kindness.”

~ Haemin Sunim (from The Bodhi Journal)

“The troubles in the world are always troubles in oneself, while external troubles are mere occurrences which just take place”

~Ajahn Pannavaddho
(from Forest Sangha Twitter feed)

AJAHN SUMEDHO: “The first ordination for bhikkhus (monks) at the time of the Buddha, before it got all complicated, was simply ‘ehi bhikkhu,’ which means ‘Come, bhikkhu‘ and that was it. Now we have to go through a whole procedure … But according to the scriptures the original was just ‘Come, bhikkhu.’ Just like that. You know the kind of immediacy. So ehipassiko: come and see. There is always this sense of ‘wake up, pay attention.’

Sometimes meditation can seem like a cop-out. A lot of people think we are just contemplating our navel or our breath, not facing the real world. ‘You should be out there, trying to make everything right in society, and here you are sitting at Amaravati all these days watching your breath. What good is that to anybody??’

On the worldly level there are all kinds of things that need to be done. There are so many problems at this time, it is overwhelming. You just have total collapse and burnout when you think about it—the problems that face humanity on this planet. And so this is not to dismiss this, but trying to make the world right is an endless process. You are not getting to the source of what is wrong: the delusion, the ignorance, the cause of the suffering.

And now we are looking here, not blaming the government anymore but looking at the cause; we are not blaming someone else, but recognizing the ignorance in our lives, the illusions we create and operate from. We are learning to recognize that which isn’t deluded. That takes a willingness to be patient with yourself, and being receptive and open to whatever you are feeling, whatever results you are having from your practice, whether you feel calm or confused, peaceful or angry. I’m not asking you to become anything, but—this: ehipassiko—come and see, trust this awareness more and more, recognize it. This is the real Dhamma. This is the refuge that I can always be, because I trust it more and more, I tend to be this way more and more. So be aware.

~Ajahn Sumedho
from “The Sound of Silence: Volume 4,” p. 87
NOTE: Book available for free .pdf or e-book reader download here

No doubt, even Buddhist monks have their Ben ‘n’ Jerry’s meditation moments.