Wise Responses to the Hindrances

I think it was Christina who said in the opening session that in the first week we're going to run through standard insight meditation instructions, and then after that, we'll get to take it in different directions. So I want to pick up a little bit and follow on from what Catherine was talking about yesterday, and talk a little bit about the difficulties that can come up in mediation. And of course there are all kinds of difficulties, all kinds -- in life, definitely, and especially in meditation too. Classically, the Buddha drew attention to five in particular, called the five hindrances. And that's what I want to explore a little bit today. These are worthy of extra attention, these five hindrances. You may know them, but let's just list them and then amplify a little bit through the talk.

(1) The first one is sense desire: when the mind is pulled and distracted by desiring this or that, some object of the senses. (2) Second one is -- what could we say? -- ill-will or aversion. The mind is caught up in negativity towards something or other, someone or other. (3) The third one: dullness and drowsiness, the mind enveloped or sunken in a kind of fog of sluggishness, sleepiness, etc., dullness and drowsiness. (4) The fourth one: restlessness and worry, the Buddha translates it, agitation of mind and body. (5) And the fifth one: doubt, confusion, the mind spinning or just paralysed in doubt and not able to engage, not able to harmonize.

So these are what's called the five hindrances. What I want to do is speak very specifically but also quite generally. Both specific and general. And really, as much as anything else, what I want to draw attention to is, so much here is about attitude and wisdom in relation to these five hindrances. So much hinges on the attitude, on the relationship, on the way of seeing them. Can we bring wisdom to these five hindrances? Because we're also able, surprisingly perhaps, to get wisdom from them. They actually can bring wisdom. We'll get to that.

Starting with something quite general about attitude and about wisdom in relation to that. The Buddha, 2,600 years ago, whatever, however long it was, the Buddha talks about these five hindrances, and today we bump into them. So there's something there about the humanity of these things. They are manifestations of our humanity. They're not particularly nice manifestations, but they're manifestations of our humanity. They're not personal statements about who we are or how we are. That's really, really important. The Buddha says they don't disappear, in fact, until full awakening. So it's part of the human condition to have these. Can I learn, can I try at least not to take them personally? When they're around, it's not a personal reflection on me or my practice, where I'm at, I'm going backwards, I'm not getting anywhere, or I'm this kind of person or that kind of person. What would it be to try and not take these personally? Really huge. Because if we take them personally -- "It means this. Because I have this hindrance, it means I'm this kind of person. Or it means I'm not getting anywhere. I'm a failure as a meditator. I'm this, I'm that" -- if I take it personally, it exacerbates the hindrance. It exacerbates the suffering in the hindrance. That's pretty much guaranteed.

This is huge, in terms of attitude. How often the notions of self and progress, and this self progressing on the path, how often that whole view, wrapped up in that, a view comes: we see the present moment's experience out of that constellation, that construct, self progressing on the path. And then how often that view locks difficulty into place. Self and progress, a self progressing. It locks difficulty into place and, to use the Buddha's word, it feeds difficulty. He talks a lot about what feeds the hindrances, and how do you starve the hindrances. So that view right there is a big feeder.

Actually, I think it was just yesterday I got a lovely, very insightful note from someone who was experiencing persistent pain. Not quite a hindrance, but something like that -- persistent pain in the body. Quite intense. Difficult, difficult, difficult, days, days, days, weeks. And then saw, "Oh." Not even a conscious thought, but every welling up of those sensations of pain was being interpreted by the mind, not even verbally, as a sign of my failure: "If I was succeeding, this wouldn't be here. This would not manifest." Saw that, saw the delusion of that. And then what happens? The pain disappears, it lifts. The whole thing was being locked into place by the very view, that wasn't even a verbal view, about self and progressing, and an interpretation of success and failure.

Sometimes we can hear that and say, "Oh, okay, drop the whole notion of progress." Maybe. It's true, progress, I guess, is ultimately not real, the whole notion of progress is ultimately not real. But maybe it's the self piece and the self tied in with the progress that needs a bit more looking at. Anyway, that's another thing. But there's something here about that self-view, progressing on the path, and the way it interprets what's happening, that has an enormous effect. It's not a neutral factor.

If we talk about, Catherine started to yesterday, I don't know, did she use the word samādhi? Yeah? Good. So this word, samādhi. We talk about progress in samādhi. Again, so much is about attitude, relationship, conception of practice. How am I relating to this? What's my attitude? What's the way of conceiving? Very often, what happens in relation to samādhi is that something in the mind contracts and begins to think of it as just about focusing: "How long can I stay with the breath? How many breaths? How long can I stay with the mettā phrases or whatever?" This "how long can I stay focused" ends up being the priority, the thing that gets elevated above everything else. There's a constriction there of the view. Big, big constriction of the view. And again, it's going to have a lot unfortunate consequences. The whole practice will become constricted. Often tightness comes, or it dries up. You're squeezing the juice out of practice, because it's just about "How well am I focusing?" Sometimes we don't see, "Hey, wait, wait! A lot of other stuff is going on here, not just focusing." We're not just learning to focus the mind. A lot of other stuff is getting cultivated. Really important, beautiful things, beautiful qualities -- patience.

So the mind wanders, and you bring it back, and there's patience being cultivated there. It's not just a moment of failure. It's a moment of cultivating patience. Perseverance. That's an interesting word. Sometimes perseverance has a lot to do with determination, with steeliness, with will and fire. And sometimes perseverance needs softening. It's not so much about steeliness; it's about softening. So there's discernment, subtlety of discernment there. Perseverance is cultivated. Mindfulness is cultivated every time we see, "Oh, the mind is somewhere else" -- mindfulness in the sense of knowing what's happening. Mindfulness is cultivated there.

The muscle -- see the mind over there, I bring it back, and I bring it back, and I bring it back. Soon you've got a big muscle there. That power, muscle of mind, is actually a really important factor. Every time the mind is off, there's an opportunity to not judge, to let the judging go. That's huge, huge. Kindness -- all this.

We need to see there's a much, much bigger picture happening than just focusing the mind. That's way too tight and way too narrow. Maybe those other qualities (patience, perseverance, mindfulness, kindness, letting go of judgment, the muscle of the mind), maybe they're actually more important than focusing in the long run, in the big picture of the path. Something in the view constricts, and we don't see the bigger picture, the beauty of what else is happening in the very difficulty, in the very distractedness.

Maybe it's really good at the beginning of a session, or even halfway through, whatever, to remind yourself, remind yourself of the bigger picture, open it out. Because it will tend for most people to constrict. And then there can be a different relationship, a different relationship with practice. Softer, more open, more kind, wiser. Everything depends on relationship. That's absolutely crucial if we can open it out this way.

Sometimes people translate this word, samādhi, as 'concentration,' meaning "How steady can the mind be on this object? How focused can it be?" Actually, I think that's really not what the Buddha meant by this word, samādhi, not at all. It's part of it; it's an element. When he talks about samādhi, he meant more a sense of unification -- body and mind unified, harmonized. The energy feels aligned, it feels open. Something a little bit lovely, or sometimes quite lovely.

As Catherine was talking yesterday, it can be really helpful if you're using the whole body awareness in this. Can be very helpful to be sensitive to what is in that field. What is in this field of the whole body? What are the different currents and energies and vibrations there? And one can be sensitive to that, sensitive to the resonances in that field, picking up on that, picking up on the energies, and a little bit tuning into what's helpful. It's this tuning in that may be more important than the keeping the mind locked onto one place. The sensitivity, the openness, the tuning into what's helpful here -- what's helpful in this body space?

This harmonization of mind and body, this unification to whatever degree, very deep or just beginning, whatever, it comes as much from opening the heart as it does from focusing the mind. You know this, probably. Times when the heart opens, when something softens, the energies come into alignment; something settles. Something very important to notice there. That means that in wanting to come more and more into some degree of samādhi, we need to take care of kindness, of connection, of receptivity. More important than nailing the mind into one small spot perhaps.

So this mind and body harmonizing, also come, they do come from focusing, to a certain extent. Partly they come from the focusing, the steadiness of mind, because when the mind is steady, we're actually letting go of a lot of other stuff. It's the letting go that allows the mind, the body to settle, to unify, to harmonize. Because I'm just here, I'm not being caught up in all this other stuff, and that letting go allows the energy, the whole being to harmonize. That means also an attitude, a relationship with things of letting be, letting be: "What's this going on? What are these sensations in the body? Letting everything be, letting them be, letting them be." Really trying to encourage that attitude moment to moment will also bring the being, the body, the mind, into some kind of samādhi to a degree. Letting be. Why? It's because the pushing away and the pulling towards, and the grabbing this and the wrestling with that, that's what agitates the mind, that's what brings commotion and unsettledness: the very pushing and pulling, the fighting with things. It also saps energy. As we let go of all that, we gather energy because we're not squandering it in fighting and we're not losing it in this agitation.

Having said all that, what that means is that when we come to these five hindrances, what we get is a whole range of possible skilful responses. As we go through some of these, just to make a general point: you can see some of them are specific counter-remedies. When this is going on, you can apply this as an antidote, and it's the kind of the opposite, so it'll help. And some of them are more to do with investigation: actually not trying to fight so much what is going on, but having a closer look at what's going on, coming into a different relationship with this particular difficulty. And sometimes it's a mixture. But you can see that there's a range there.

(1) So let's take the first one, sense desire. Obviously everyone's different, but generally, usually this constellates around food or sex. And sometimes it's just that the mind is not quite settled yet. It's just really reflecting, the mind is going out to look at this or that. It's not quite settled yet. So the simplest possible thing is just to return, just to return, just to return. And have a little bit of faith in that.

Again, picking up on what Catherine was talking about yesterday, if we're using the whole body, or even just with the breath or the mettā, you can pick up on the resonances of pleasure, pleasantness in the breath. When does the breath become a little bit delightful, a little bit lovely? Or when is there in this field of the body, doing mettā or doing whole-body breathing or whatever it is, when is there a little bit of pleasantness somewhere, that kind of vibration? And gently, gently, tending to that, caring for that, picking up on that. Because eventually there will be enough of that there that the mind doesn't want to go and daydream about other kinds of pleasures. It's got what it needs right here. Feels good right here; feels good enough. Tasty, right here. Nice. So that takes a little bit of sensitivity to what the feeling is in the body, with the breath, or with the mettā, with each phrase of the mettā, whatever you're doing. And really being sensitive to those currents, and picking up on them, tending to them.

Just to say one thing about sexual images or fantasies that come up in meditation. Often we don't talk much about this. Of course, it's human. It's going to be part of what comes into the mind, and part of what the mind snags on and gets caught up in a little bit. We could talk a lot about this, but just to say one thing. Oftentimes what happens is when the mind is caught up in that way, we get a little bit hooked on the daydream aspect, on the fantasy or the image of what's going on, and we lose touch with the body. So the mind is just spinning, and it's a little bit disconnected. It's quite possible, and if you realize that's going on, it's quite possible to actually come, to have a look: what's going on in the body at that point? Maybe even let this thing be there, and feel into the body, and it might be that the sexual energy is felt in the body -- something that we're not often usually in contact with because we're too much in the thoughts. Then maybe that energy can be opened to. Open the body to that energy. That energy is actually, interestingly, not too far away from the kind of pleasure that arises as samādhi deepens. This is quite important, to be able to develop the ability to do that and open in that way to the sexual energy. And of course, if nothing else works, there's the cold shower.

(2) Okay, so the second one is ill-will and aversion. I'm just moving very quickly through this, so there's lots we won't have time to say. You know, what's happening here sometimes is the mind is caught up a little bit in negativity towards someone or something. Someone, either in one's environment or elsewhere, the mind has latched on with either wishing them harm or anger or whatever towards them. An obvious antidote there would be the mettā practice, and just beginning -- we say, "This is not helping, this feeling. Let's put something else in. Let's direct the mind in another way."

Sometimes it actually can be helpful to give the mettā to oneself at that point. Even though I'm angry at someone else, I can give the mettā to myself. Mettā will come in and start softening and opening and reshaping, recolouring the mind and the perception.

And sometimes the Buddha talks about seeing the beautiful in what is not beautiful. In other words, here's, for instance, this person, maybe I'm irritated with them, or I don't know anything about them, but the mind has created a picture of them and finds them not beautiful. And the Buddha says, can you actually play with your perception, with your way of looking, and find something beautiful there? Probably don't know much about this person. But actually, what can I reflect on, what can I recognize, and see the beauty in the not beautiful? We're actually trying to gently reshape the quality, the actual perception, in fact.

Third possibility is to feel the pain in aversion. When there's aversion, pay attention, here. Sometimes, with all these hindrances, with desire and aversion, we go there, to the object, and we don't feel so much what's happening here. When I don't like this person, how does it feel here, right here, the heart centre? How does that feel? How does my body feel? You actually begin to see: "Ouch. This hurts. The aversion hurts." And what if I just pay attention to that? You can refine that a little bit, and actually really hone in on the vedanā -- we'll get to talk about this in the next couple of days -- the quality of unpleasantness, the painful quality in the body when there is this aversion. Somewhere right here. It's usually in the heart centre, but it could be anywhere along this central axis. Something will feel tight, constricted, a little bit heavy. And what if, instead of being obsessed with that person or that thing, I just train the attention, and keep it right here on that pain, on that tightness? Really, really skilful. Partly what's happening there is we're simplifying the attention. In a lot of these hindrances, everything gets very complicated. So taking it just here in the body, to just this unpleasantness, moment to moment, it's finding the simplest possible level of what's going on in all this complexity, and then through that, things can simplify.

And sometimes with anger, another possibility is actually that it's important to listen. Something's going on. Something's welling up inside that I need to listen to. It's communicating not just an unskilful factor of mind -- it's actually communicating something important to me. There's a treasure here. I need to listen. Maybe my voice is coming through. Maybe my insight is coming through. Maybe my passion and energy is coming through. I need to listen sometimes. So there's a question: is there something here I need to listen to in the very anger? And again, there's a possibility of some skill here. Anger often has a lot of energy to it. Maybe I can open up the body, so to speak. I open up the space of the body to the energy of the anger. And then sometimes it's possible that, within the anger, I can filter out strength and power, which are wholesome, good, important qualities mixed up in the middle of the anger. So instead of just being a poison, we're actually getting something golden, something beautiful from right from the middle of the anger. It takes a little bit of learning how to do that. It's really, really potentially very important.

With aversion, too, it's interesting. If you start to get interested in these hindrances, it's really interesting to notice how aversion is often a key factor in keeping other hindrances in place. It's actually supporting other hindrances, and sometimes other quite subtly negative manifestations of mind -- for instance, boredom. It's impossible to be bored without aversion. Aversion is coming in to keep boredom in place. There's lots to say about boredom, but if we just pick out one option that gives us, when there's a state of boredom, you could say that's a mixture of hindrances, a state of boredom. One option is actually to pay closer attention to the state itself, this 'blah,' this uninterested feeling, this flatness. Pay closer attention to the very state, and you begin to see, through the closer attention, that it involves aversion to the moment, to what's going on -- subtle usually. One can begin to sensitize to the very state and the texture of boredom. What does this boredom feel like? What's its resonance in the body? How's the texture of the mind? Subtle. Sensitize to that. In sensitizing to it, we're actually opening to it with less aversion. And with less aversion, what was boredom can actually transform, open, morph into calmness, sometimes very lovely calmness. They're quite close together, boredom and calmness. The only thing that's making the difference is aversion and lack of sensitivity.

Someone said to me on the phone a couple of days ago -- I was on retreat somewhere else, and they said, "It's like I can't get to the present moment, and there's a resistance to just being. There's a resistance." Well, that resistance is also a kind of aversion. But we don't need necessarily to make that resistance into a problem. The resistance is what's happening in the present moment. The resistance is the present moment. It's not like it's an obstacle to the present moment; that resistance is it. So what would it be to just take that as what the present moment is, and come into relationship with the quality of resistance?

(3) The third hindrance is dullness and drowsiness, sometimes translated as sloth and torpor. This is really, really common -- probably, with this and the next one, the most common at the beginnings of retreats. Many, many things possible. One is to breathe a little longer, especially if you're doing breath practice. Actually take more breath in, and fill the body with energy that way. Or if you think of it in other terms, you're oxygenating more. You're raising energy in the body; it raises energy in the mind. So breathe longer. Let the breath help you. Be supported by the breath. Usually when we get dull and drowsy, the breath gets very -- if you listen to someone when they're falling asleep, and what their breath is like, it's a very short in-breath and a very short, heavy out-breath. Go against that. Do something else. Bring more breath in.

Also paying more attention to the in-breath is really, really helpful. So with the in-breath, you can feel this energetically: the body is energized. There's actually more energy coming in. Pay more attention to the in-breath and to the quality of energy that it brings, and it raises the whole energy of everything. Sometimes when there's even a little bit of dullness and drowsiness, the body reflects it, as it reflects everything. And it reflects it, even, someone else can see it -- the head nods, etc., the posture, the back crumples a little bit. And just reaffirming the uprightness of the posture, you can feel a different energy come in. If you have to do that again and again and again, really, really helpful. You're reshaping the direction of the mind. You can also, if you have a visual imagination, you can imagine a bright sun in the middle of your head or in your heart, like bright white, white light. Just imagine it there, and keep imagining that as you're doing whatever you're doing. Look at it. Let the brightness come in to brighten the mind.

Something else that's quite important: when there's dullness and drowsiness, the mind contracts. It becomes small. It's what happens when we go to sleep is the mind kind of pulls in on itself; it withdraws from the senses and contracts. We curl up and huddle up. That actually happens when we get dull and drowsy, when the mind gets dull and drowsy. So one thing that's really helpful is opening the senses more, opening up the space of the mind. Right now, you can actually take in the corners of the room, the whole space of the room. And if you're sensitive, you can actually see: just doing that opens up the energy in the mind. Can you feel that? It's quite subtle. If the mind is just a little bit dull and drowsy, it's actually really, really helpful to do that, either with your eyes closed -- be more spacious --or with the eyes open. Take in more space. And if it's really strong, stand up. Just stand up. It's hard to fall asleep when you're standing up. Just stand up, and you're giving a message to others that you're being proactive with this really common hindrance. It's an important kind of intervention sometimes.

Sometimes what also needs to happen is the body needs to move or to open. So walk faster in your walking path, get some energy going. Or it might be you need to go for a run or a brisk walk. Or do something like yoga, and open up the energy channels in the body. It's not so much the mind itself that's tired, it's the energy that's a bit sluggish. So some yoga postures or something like that, qigong or whatever really helps.

(4) Fourth one is restlessness and worry. Sometimes when you read the Buddha originally, you get the sense that he's more talking about the effects on the mind of not caring for our ethical behaviour, etc., and then one is beset by guilt and worry about being found out and that sort of thing. But it has more subtle manifestations. Here the out-breath can be really helpful. Organically, whereas the in-breath tends to have this quality of energization, the out-breath tends to have a quality of letting go. The body is literally letting go, letting go. Again, you can tune into that. You can tune into that quality of letting go and calming that the out-breath brings. And that can help soothe, help calm the restlessness, the agitation in the system.

Here again, spaciousness can be really, really key, really helpful. So oftentimes, again, the mind has gotten a bit contracted over this or that. All these hindrances, the mind is in a contracted state, all of them. So spaciousness is generally really helpful. Sometimes you can give attention to the restlessness and the agitation, particularly its bodily manifestation: there's ants in the pants, the antsiness, the dis-ease in the body. And actually create a space around that, and really allow that. It's like bubbling up of a moment of antsiness, a moment of dis-ease, like a little bubble exploding, and then disappears, then another bubble exploding and disappears, like you're watching a pot bubble, and these bubbles appearing and then disappearing. Giving that lots of space.

What's happening in all these hindrances is the aversion to them is feeding them and locking them into place. And one finds if you can create a bit a space, let that bubble up, allow, allow, allow the bubbling moment to moment in the body, its manifestation in the body, that's taking away the factor of, it's subduing the aversion, taking away the factor that's keeping the whole thing spinning. It's an important principle.

A lot of times with hindrances -- this is a general thing now -- there can be an emotion underneath. It looks like what's going on is this -- it looks like it's sense desire, it looks like it's ill-will, it looks like it's just restlessness, this very unsettledness in the mind or this or that, or it looks like it's dullness and drowsiness, and it is that. But in a way, that's just a secondary manifestation of an emotion underneath that's asking for connection, that's needing us to connect with it. And it's actually that that's fuelling it. The hindrance, if you like, is a bit of a smokescreen or a kind of symptom of something a little bit deeper. So it's always worth having a more gentle look underneath: how is the heart right now? Is there something going on that perhaps I'm not connecting to, or not allowing, or not turning towards? And sometimes that thing is actually a really beautiful emotion; it's not necessarily a difficult one. It might be something really beautiful that we're actually, for some reason, keeping at bay.

And again, to pick up on what we said several times today, very quickly the view -- not even quickly, but oftentimes these things are underpinned by a subtle view: "I shouldn't be feeling restlessness. Or this emotion, whatever it is, shouldn't be there. I shouldn't be having this emotion." Sometimes that view is not even verbal, it's not conscious, and it's operating, and it has enormous power. And it's locking and feeding, locking the whole thing into place, and feeding it, exacerbating it. It can be very, very subtle. But if one can find, "There's this emotion going on, or maybe a constellation of emotions," and connect with that, allow that, hold that, hold it in kindness. What is that, to hold this emotion in kindness and care? Through that, something in the whole being, the body, the citta, the heart, something can soften. Through the relationship with, it can open. Something can warm. And through all that, it can begin to settle. The whole thing begins to settle. And all of it is coming from the relationship with, from the relationship to this emotion. It's not coming from anything else. It's just coming from the relationship to the emotion.

Woven into all this is the whole question of effort, which I just want to say something very brief about, as it's a huge subject. The whole question of effort is woven into all this -- the hindrances and how my practice is going and all that. Just briefly, we can talk about effort on at least two different levels. We can talk about the level of 'the day': the day of retreat, the day of practice. And for example, what happens between sittings? Is there a continuity of practice? Do I need to really take care that there's a continuity of practice? Is that somewhere where I can bring more energy, more commitment in? For every person, every day, it's a question. It's not even a right or wrong answer; it's a question. What's helpful here? What's helpful? Or is it that actually something in the way that I'm relating to this day of practice is actually squeezing too hard, and it's more like the day needs to breathe, so to speak? Maybe there needs to be more time for connection with nature, for appreciation, for just a sense of having a bit more space in the day. And this will change day to day as you go through your retreat. The important thing, again, is sensitivity, openness, feeling: what feels helpful? What's needed? Am I willing to try a bit more, a bit less? That's really what's crucial. What's helpful? Sometimes in the breathing of the day and having a bit more space in the day, more inspiration can come; the heart is more touched. Sometimes squeezing too hard, that stuff gets squeezed out, and there's a bit of dryness that comes in. And samādhi, if that's what we're talking about, does not deepen in a heart environment of dryness. It doesn't.

So there's the level of the whole day, and there's also the level of 'in mediation,' in this moment. And this is very subtle. What does it need right now? Does it need a bit more gas, my foot on the gas, on the accelerator? Or does it need, just back off a little bit? There's a real art here. All these hindrances that we're talking about can manifest very strongly and grossly -- of course; we know that -- and they can also manifest very, very subtly. When they get more subtle -- so for instance, there's this word, 'sinking.' It's not really falling asleep or very groggy; it's just a little bit of dullness come in. The edge, the clarity goes out of practice, a bit of the life, the sense of brightness goes, 'sinking.' And 'drifting' -- it's not really that there's a great lot of agitation. It's more that the mind keeps spinning off into this or that, kind of random thoughts. Subtle manifestation of restlessness. Those two, sinking and drifting, as subtle hindrances, are really interesting, because it's hard to tell in this moment -- let's say it's getting a little bit dull, a little bit of sinking, does it need more effort? We think, "It needs more effort." Sometimes it needs less effort, sometimes it needs more effort. Very subtle. Have to find out in the moment: what's needed here, more pedal, less pedal?

And the same with the drifting. You tend to think, "Oh, my mind keeps going off. Let's just hold things tighter, put more effort in." That can help, but actually, sometimes you get more if you do less. You actually just back off, be more gentle, be more delicate, softer with the effort, and things go deeper. So there's a real art here and there's a place for experimenting, playing. Very subtle. In fact, if there's one thing to emphasize more than anything else, it's exactly that -- it's playfulness and experimentation and improvising. Sometimes we, "Am I getting it right?" For instance, maybe if the mind is drifting a lot, and I try something, and it turns out to be the wrong thing -- well, so what? It's okay. Just come back and do the opposite thing. There are no mistakes, really. There's just sensitivity and playfulness. Again, we go back to attitude.

I don't know what they'll do today, but you know these rooks out here. For some of you, it may be your first time. The black birds, they're like big crows, they're called 'rooks,' and there are colonies of them in the trees around Gaia House. If you watch them, sometimes they're flying, there's a lot of flapping going on. And that's how they need to fly, or that's, in that moment, how they're flying. A lot of energy is going into getting off the ground or going in this direction or that direction. And other times, other days, you just see they're coasting, and the change of direction or the movement here or there is just the barest movement of the wings. Sensitive to the currents, sensitive to the movement in the body field, in the energy, picking up on that. They're a bit like ravens, actually -- they're quite playful, there's a playfulness. You can enjoy the improvisation, from the sensitivity. And yeah, sometimes we need to flap a lot. It's what's needed. We need to bring the energy in.

There's a kind of, sometimes at least, maybe a lot of the time, if we talk about samādhi and settling the mind and harmonizing, there's a kind of opportunism. We're like those rooks. It's like, "Ah! Let's just ride this current. Let's ride that current." You're sensitive to that, and sensitive to where the openings are and which currents can be helpful -- especially, again, following Catherine's thing, if we're using this whole body sensitivity, using the sensitivity of the body to be sensitive to the currents that are available.

So there's more art here than science, more art than formula. "Do this when this happens, do that when that happens." There's an art, there's a responsiveness here. And you know, sometimes -- well, oftentimes -- samādhi is really not as far away as we tend to think. We tend to think, "I'm just so caught up." And actually, somewhere in the currents of what's going on, there's something we can pick up on or relate to differently that allows things to open in a different way. It's not always as far away as we think, not at all. Sometimes it's literally just a nudge away, just a gentle movement away.

(5) The last hindrance is doubt. And again, could say a lot about this. It's an interesting one, because -- actually, before we say that, one can doubt the teachings. One can be confused about what one is doing and why and how it's all fitting together. One can doubt oneself, and that's very common: "Can I do this? Maybe others can, but I can't." And we can doubt teachers. Can doubt all of that, and sometimes combinations. Doubt's interesting, partly because sometimes it's good to doubt. It's reflecting, it's a manifestation of something really important: our ability to question, especially question the teachings. Oftentimes we're too timid in our questioning. There's a kind of, "This or that is out of bounds. I can't possibly," or it doesn't even occur to us to question this or that. Inquiry stops here. We don't even realize that inquiry stops here. Or there are certain assumptions that we're holding, without even realizing, about all kinds of things: self, the world, the Dharma, reality, all kinds of stuff.

So there's something good in questioning and doubting, but oftentimes it's a matter of timing. It may be, in terms of bigger picture, on the path, it's too early. I need to understand what I'm doing, how the path works, how practice works, what the framework is. That takes a while. Then maybe I can start picking at that. So there's timing on that level. There's also the timing of maybe right now in the meditation is not the time to wrestle with this doubt. So one can turn to the doubt in the mind. This is important. It's important to get clear about this. It's important to wrestle with these questions. "Not right now in the middle of this meditation session. I will get to you." You kind of park it, but you give that questioning in the mind an honouring and a reassurance that you're going to get to it. That's important, I think. And then it can hear that and let go a little bit, because it knows it's going to get picked up later on. Otherwise doubt can get paralysing. It's a sense of there's doubt, and then nothing can happen. It doesn't have to be that way; we can do our practice, and question, both. Sometimes you see doubt is just a manifestation of restlessness or aversion or whatever. There's not really a deep questioning there. It's just the mind is restless, and it's moving back and forth in doubt: "This, that, this, that. He says this, she says that."

Okay, last thing I want to finish with is something very general, but in a way, it's perhaps the most important thing. You know, we all know this: when a hindrance, it feels like a hindrance, or they all gang up, and they've got us, they've really got us. We are in their grip. Everyone's experienced that. Actually, we're not in their grip; it's more that we're clinging to them or in aversion to them. At least two things are happening there that are key. One we've already touched on is the taking it personally. That's part of what really needs to be there when I'm really in the grip of a hindrance. I take it personally, as a personal reflection, what I said right at the beginning. That's one piece. Can I let that go? Can I see it differently?

The other thing that happens when we're really in the grip of hindrances is that we believe them. We believe how they colour and shape our perception, and we believe that what we see through the lenses of the hindrances is reality. In a way, that's something here that's the most important piece of everything. When we're really hooked, we're believing that what we see -- there's aversion; I really believe that person is like that, whatever it is. I believe this is reality because I'm perceiving it, because the perception is coloured, shaped. That's why the Buddha says, his primary instruction is, "Know that this hindrance is happening." Just be mindful: "Ah, whatever it is, restlessness, this is the hindrance of restlessness." Very simple. But then you're relativizing what's happening. I know this is happening. It is a hindrance. And then I also know it's colouring. So just that knowing, just knowing, this hindrance is happening, labelling it even, is a big part of unhooking, or getting less hooked at least.

This is huge. This is really huge, because hindrances are not just meditative manifestations. They happen is our lives. I'm walking down a city street, and hindrances may well be happening. They're not confined to obstacles to meditation. They happen in our lives, and they have this effect of shaping and locking us into beliefs and perceptions of what we then think and fall for as real. And that's, in a way, the biggest and most important thing. We get convinced of what we think reality is. The mind state always colours the perception. So through the hindrances, we can actually learn and understand something about the dependent arising of perception. There is no more deep lesson in the whole of the Dharma than about the dependent arising of perception. There is nothing more important in the whole Dharma to learn than about the dependent arising of perception.

And this we can understand and learn through the hindrances. The mind state colours the perception. What I see, and what I believe because I'm perceiving it, comes from the mind state. Actually, the perception also colours the mind state. It works backwards, too, as always. They're not separate. We tend to think they're separate. Mind state and perception are not even separate. There's something potentially very deep to fathom, to discover in all this. There is insight not just in relationship to the hindrances, but insight from the hindrances, as I said right at the beginning. They're not just obstacles. They're golden opportunities to learn about this most deep aspect of the Dharma, about how we colour perception and then we fall for what we think is real. Everything hinges on that. They're not just a nuisance; they're guides, or they can be. So there's real potential here. And again, that can help us in our relationship, our attitude to them.

Okay. Let's have a minute of silence together.