I said that this week I would talk about the five hindrances. Is that right? The five hindrances is often taught as... The first one is... I might say... sensual desire. The second one is ill will. The third one is sloth and torpor. The fourth... Sometimes they say... dispersion and worry.

[01:04]

And the fifth is doubt. Did you get those? These five hindrances are five hindrances for any kind of training of your attention. unless you're training your attention just to be wild, you know, and jump all over the place. But in particular, training for tranquility or stabilization, in that process, these five are often raised. So they're, they can occur at any time in the practice, well, not at any time, but they can even after practicing stabilization for a long time, some of these could come up. But when you're actually involved in a fairly consistent practice of stabilization or tranquility, when the tranquility has been well established, is fairly consistent, these don't come up much.

[02:25]

So these can come up for anybody, any person they could come up for, but they particularly... we're talking about them in the context of coming up when you're trying to train your mind, train your attention in this mode of stabilizing, calmly abiding kind of training. Again, they could also be hindrances for the practice of insight, but that would be in the case where you were practicing insight without already establishing calm abiding. If your calm abiding is established, these are basically not coming up much. So if you practice insight based on calm abiding, you don't have to deal with these.

[03:28]

if you tried to practice insight without stabilizing first, you'd have probably these would be involved. And so actually if you are practicing calm abiding and then you start practicing insight and then in the process of practicing insight you get a little excited can arise again, and then you deal with them in a slightly different context. So I'm going to first of all talk, so in that case you deal with them in the context of there would be topics for insight. I'm dealing with them in the context of hindering or obstructing stabilization. Okay? So there's, you know, over the centuries people have said a lot about how to relate to these, but I'll just say a little bit for starters.

[04:35]

I'll just introduce five modes of dealing with these hindrances. The first way Before I say that, I want to say another thing. And that is that if you're practicing stabilization, if you're trying to train your focus of attention onto basically a narrow, single topic, like the breath, or trying to train your mind into the mode of no conceptual life, You're focusing your attention onto things as they're given to you. You're focusing on a non-analytic topic, non-analytic object.

[05:49]

an unanalyzed topic. In other words, it doesn't have parts. Or you could also say an undifferentiated topic. So you have an undifferentiated single idea or a single concept. For insight, we pay attention to, we contemplate differentiated objects, wider wider number of things, or the world as it appears in parts. But in tranquility meditation we're focusing on undifferentiated concepts, which I call, you know, take what's good and that's it. So when something comes, if you deal with it this way, these hindrances don't arise, But if you do slip into elaborating on what's happening or if you do say no thank you to what's given to you as an experience, then you open the door for these to arise.

[07:07]

And once they arise, it may be difficult to immediately snap back to the mode of, thank you very much for whatever is arising. So you may have to go with them before you can go back to what you just slipped from. If you could just snap back, then it would just be a momentary flash of one of these things and then you'd be back on track and then they wouldn't be there anymore. But they usually hang around for a while and keep you away from your meditations. Okay, so first one is called sensual desire. I would also maybe say it's like sensual indulgence or sensual elaboration. But when something happens and you desire more of it, or some sensual thing happens and you desire less of it,

[08:29]

It's a kind of elaboration. Does that make sense? And then you can like elaborate and elaborate. In other words, you can work the elaboration on the sensory event. You can switch back and forth from I want more, I try to change my mind, I want less. No, no, that's too much. Like people, like sometimes in our meditation retreats, people are trying to get just the right amount of food. They try to actually the food is given to us during our meditation retreats in this meditative way of your your offering is given to you and if you say thank you very much you enter into samadhi but sometimes people say no thank you or you know yes no a little bit more not so much a little bit more they don't talk of course they do it with hand signals you know like And you can see the person who gives lots of hand signals is just about ready to or the server is about ready to get them out of the room.

[09:45]

Anyway, so in that sense, you know, being really concerned with getting just the right amount of food is a little bit of indulgence in I think they all say sense pleasure, but it's not just indulgence in sense pleasure. It could be indulgence in sense displeasure, too. Sensual desire is probably... Could it be the mind, too? Sure, sure. Like you could think of something, like you could think of an image of a person's face, and you could say, well, let's just keep that there for a while. Something like that. The idea of justice? Well, let's see. You've got an idea of justice and you're holding on to it, you mean?

[10:53]

Yeah, that could be a kind of... You're into elaborating on this thing. But actually what you're talking about is more like slipping from the meditation. See, so the idea of justice comes up and you start elaborating on it, you open to these five hindrances. So the elaboration that you're referring to is a defect in your meditation. But that defect then opens you up to these grosser phenomena which it's like you slip and then in slipping you open the door to all this other junk coming in. So holding on to some idea rigidly is a kind of elaboration.

[11:57]

Grasping is a kind of elaboration. rather than just becoming, just training your mind so that when something arises you just, you train your attention into being just knowing the presence of the object without grasping any and then playing with them. So what you're talking about maybe is getting grasping it. So that opens your door and following that kind of grasping I could imagine you might slip into doubt from there You might slip into sloth. You might slip into a pill. That would be quite likely. Again, like in a meditation retreat, you didn't get enough for lunch, your sense of justice, you grab it, and then you hate the servers. Whereas, you know, if you don't grasp, if you have a sense of justice, like, you know, I think I deserve, you know, a pretty full bowl of this food, and the server doesn't give it to you, or the kitchen didn't make enough, right?

[13:10]

And you feel like, so the thought arises, injustice in the distribution of food to the monks. That thought of injustice just arises, and you just... Don't elaborate on it, you'll calm down with that thought. If you grasp it, then you're going to have some ill-will developing. And then for some people, what happens is they feel terrible if you have this ill-will towards the hard-working kitchen staff. So then they go from hatred to being really upset. So then they go and complain to the practice leaders and blah, blah. It gets to be a major thing because they just didn't say, thank you for this, you know, So you can easily get into, from that one of grasping, sense of justice, you can easily get into ill will. You could even start doubting the whole practice because, you know, any meditation center where they don't give me enough food must really be, you know, an evil empire.

[14:17]

This must not be a good place to practice. Or the practice isn't working, probably not worth doing, and so on. Anyway, you can imagine how that particular grasping would lead to lots of trouble, open the door to a lot of trouble. So sensual desire, so a way of dealing with each of these five hindrances, the first way to deal with that I would introduce to you is to have a kind of like a reciprocal or opposite or contradictory With sensual desire, you have a contradictory response, which is, if it's something attractive, think of something unattractive. Too big for people.

[15:22]

Especially women seem to not like this approach. But anyway, it's one of the ways that's offered. It's when you feel brought up about something attractive and you're elaborating on it. Think of something unattractive. Or think of something unattractive. And sometimes the unattractive thing can be something unattractive about what you're attracted to. But another way to do it is just think of something unattractive that's not necessarily related to what you're thinking about. So traditionally they have some, you know, in the Buddhist texts some horrific images, some very sad scenes that you can imagine. or some, you know, sad or shocking scenes that you either have heard about or you've experienced in your life.

[16:29]

So the one I mentioned before that I used to do, like, you know, over a quarter of a century ago when I used to be sometimes bothered by these things, I used to think of my teacher, how he looked right after he died, which wasn't particularly gory. But for me, it's not that gory to think of him. But when I thought of him, right up here, you know, up in that room there, in his room, lying down, right after he died, just see him lying there. I usually would snap out of messing around with sensory stuff. And then there's heavier duty things that I could imagine, like I used to sometimes imagine out on this page street getting run over by a truck and see myself on the street with my abdomen opened up on the street.

[17:34]

So those kinds of images would usually map me out of the little game I was playing basically it's just like, basically something to remind you that this is not exactly totally playtime here. But actually you did sort of make an effort into the meditative posture to focus on something. You actually don't need to go to the zendo to, you know, wallow in in sensuality. It's not actually necessary to go there to do it. You do go there for another purpose which you have temporarily forgotten. So it's just something. Like in the hospital, sometimes when people are being administered, particularly men when they're being

[18:39]

...administered to by nurses, male or female nurses. They sometimes forget they're in the hospital. They think they're in like, you know, I don't know what, a massage parlor or something. And then the nurses have ways of, you know, reminding them that they're actually sick and they're in the hospital. And then they go, oh, oh yeah, right, thanks. Just, you know, little ways, you know, like get serious, Sonny, or something like that. Or, you know, this is really not what we're doing here now. Or something, I don't know. Anyway, sometimes they use their... Anyway, just snap, you know, kind of like snap out of it kind of thing. You're trying to focus here. That's kind of a direct opposition to it.

[19:43]

Because it's a kind of, you're kind of fooling around is what you're doing. In a lighthearted kind of fun, fun on the ton kind of thing, you know. Fun on the cushion time. This is a good time to play around. lost sight of what a special opportunity this is and how much work you got to made to get here like sometimes this happens to people who are like way up in the mountains you know they just travel hundreds of miles and to be in a situation where they could like focus and then they act like they're you know in a movie theater you know what i mean anyway this is kind of one way to deal with it hill will is um basically the antidote to ill will is basically loving-kindness. And I was talking to someone who did loving-kindness too, and he was having trouble doing it. So sometimes you may have trouble finding a really loving way to address your ill will when it arises.

[20:55]

If it's really strong, find a loving response or a loving way to feel toward yourself. So this can be expanded quite a bit, this loving-kindness practice, starting with yourself and so on. To be able to say to yourself, think to yourself something which really feels genuinely loving, genuinely kind towards yourself and towards others until you actually are relieved of this ill will. And for sloth and torpor, torpor means kind of like to be dull. And sloth doesn't just mean, sloth can be not just, you know, like being kind of a slouch, because this is like, this is sloth vis-a-vis concentration practice.

[21:59]

So in relationship to that kind of focusing, you could be very actively thinking of other things. And particularly, you could be actively thinking of unwholesome things like, you know, how to hurt your neighbor or how to take revenge on the servers. Or, you know, not even how to take revenge on the servers, but how to, like, steal some stuff from the kitchen so that you could have it, like, packed away in case they don't serve you enough next time. These kinds of, like, kind of unskillful uses of your brain are part of sloth, you could also be telling yourself, well, this practice is actually too hard for me. I don't have the ability to do it. It's just too hard. So I think I'll just be kind of like a softball here until this period's over, and I'll get through the session because it's too embarrassing to leave, but actually this practice is too hard for me.

[23:08]

I don't have the ability, I'm a jerk. This is called sloth by self-deprecation. And another one is I'll do it next period or later in this period. So the antidote to this, to being dull or slothful in this way, well, ...to fill yourself with God, you know, practice enthusiasm, to think about, you know, what you seem to remember, what your reason was for coming to this period of meditation, why you were interested in practicing concentration. Maybe you started practicing concentration not just to get concentrated, but as part of a big program to become very helpful to people and perfectly enlightened.

[24:16]

Maybe that's actually sort of what you started with a few minutes before this started happening to you. That's why it's good at the beginning of periods of meditation to check your aspiration, check your motivation, Because then if you get into sloth during the meditation, it won't be so difficult to remember it and bring it out and look at it. Look at your aspiration until you feel really happy about having the aspiration. It may take a while, but it'll be useful to you to get over the kind of like, you know, well, I can't do this, or I'll do it later, or blah, blah, blah, or I have better things to do. Actually, if you think about this, you realize you do not have something

[25:20]

As a matter of fact, not only do you not have something better to do, but this is like much better than anything else you do have to do at the time. Now, maybe after the period's over, you can go off and do something helpful to people. But during this period, you probably don't have anything better to do than what you decided to do. And what you decided to do is pretty good, probably excellent, if you could do it, if you could practice it. So you think about that until you feel like full of joy at the prospect of doing the practice again. And there's, you know, I could elaborate on that, but basically it's pause yourself by meditating on how good it would be to do this good thing. And so anyway, that could be expanded a lot. That's the practice of enthusiasm or, you know, generating or courageous effort.

[26:22]

And then for the dispersion or worry, what's often recommended is just follow your breathing. Now, you might have been following your breathing before, and that may be what you got distracted from and started elaborating. So in that case, if that's what you're already practicing, you just go back to it. for worry, for thinking about the future, what's going to happen, how long is this period going to be, or just being dispersed and excited. And basically you doubt that this is a good way to be spending your time. You might even doubt that doubt's a good way to be spending your time, but you don't doubt it too much because that's what you're doing. But you doubt that it would be good to do the practice which you just took a break from. The practice of doubt can come and start to make it harder to go back. You're not sure anymore it's a good idea, so you have to create what I mentioned a few weeks ago, you have to sort of create an area of moral clarity.

[27:34]

You have to clarify for yourself that it would be good to return to the meditation. it might not be clear to you that it would be good to return to the meditation for like the whole period, or even for a week, or for a week, or even for the whole period. But you might think, well, at least it's good to return to it for five minutes. You could try a little bit to return to it. So those are like direct antidotes to these five. You want to stop now for a little bit, or do you want me to go on to the next aspect? Did you get those five antidotes? It can be applied to all of them, which is similar to some of the things I already said, but it's focusing in on a certain aspect a little bit more. All skillful states of consciousness have these...

[28:42]

these two factors. Having these two factors doesn't guarantee you have a skillful state of consciousness, but all skillful states of consciousness have these next two factors which are called self-respect and decorum. Those are words which... I guess I'll just use those words because those words aren't so obnoxious to people. There's some other words that they use which people have a hard time with, but maybe I'll talk about them some other time when you're in a better mood. Self-respect means you're practicing meditation, you have just slipped... You know, you slipped off into, you know, saying no thank you for what's happening. And now the door opens. Or, probably not all five, but one or more of these have now entered your mind.

[29:46]

So maybe you have doubt and ill will, or actually no doubt you're sure you should hate this person. Or you have ill will and you're excited. Or you have your ill will and you're worried that you're going to get in trouble for your ill will. Got this kind of situation, and then you think self-respect, you know, in other words, well, you know, I can do better than this. I don't have to be, I don't have to live like this. I don't have to be sitting here hating somebody. You know? I have potential to better than this. I don't have to sit here and just fool around. I don't have to sit here and worry. I can do better. I mean, I have the ability to return to the meditation. I have the capacity, and I'm going to stop wasting my time and go back to work. And this is kind of an inner respect, inner principle of what you kind of know, you kind of know, we kind of know what's maybe.

[31:02]

If you don't, then this one won't work. And if you don't, then That's a big problem, not even knowing what you think. So we have on our hands a psychopath, if that's the case. And you need to start worrying. Psychopaths don't worry. To some extent, worry does go with some sense of self-respect. Often you think, you know, this is not really good to what you're doing. You're worried. But anyway, the other one is sort of an outer thing called decorum. In other words, you're concerned with how your behavior works for other people. and you're concerned, which I often find among meditators, I find somehow more about the decorum than I do about the self-respect.

[32:10]

In other words, people are concerned that their goofing off is going to hurt the other people in the meditation hall, that they're wiggling, that if their practice isn't good, that it might discourage the other people, which I think is So it's not so much practice just to look good. Like if people knew about what I'm doing, they wouldn't like me. But more like, you know, a quality and beauty of the practice because, you know, you respect it. You respect the other people you're practicing with too. So you do your best for them and for the whole practice. Plus also, you wouldn't like if they were disappointed in you They look good, but you wouldn't like if you disappointed them and discouraged them, and you wouldn't like if they hated you for doing it either. And they would hate you if they knew what you were doing.

[33:13]

Well, some of them would. I wouldn't, but some of them would. I'm here for you to come and confess how bad your meditation is, and I promise not to hate you. And then, yeah, so that's the second kind of way of dealing with these things. So it's direct antidotes, and then decorum. That's the second way. Did you have your hand up there? Yes? It seems to me that the antidotes are sort of mental elaboration. So it seems to me that you're fighting mental elaboration with mental elaboration. Yep. So it's kind of like fighting fire with fire kind of thing. So that's how it gets sometimes. And if you could just snap out of that without doing anything and just go back to no elaboration, that would be best.

[34:19]

That's the... Well, I could make it the third one if you want, or I could make it the fourth or the fifth one. But that is one of the ways of dealing with it, is just face the hindrance, face the obstruction. Just look at it. Just contemplate it. And then what you do is you go back to the meditation which you slipped at. you just look at it with, and that's it. And then that usually, it disappears. Because you just return to the method of how it to arise. So it will go away on its own if you don't keep fooling around, generating new opportunities for it to arise. So that is one of the methods would be, don't elaborate. But sometimes it's so, the fire is so big that people can't remember, they're too scared to like just worry without, like, getting into it.

[35:26]

Like, you know, this is worry, and this is well-justified worry, and I'd better worry. And if I don't worry, like I'm a bad mother. Did you know that some mothers think that if they don't worry, that they're bad mothers? So what if they worry? Like when your kid's out late at night, right? And you don't know where they are. You're a bad mother or a bad father if you don't worry, right? Don't you agree? Yeah. Well, it's not true. People think that, but it's not true. Actually, what you should do is you should get yourself into an enlightened state so you can help your kid. So if they ever do come home, you can say, thank you for coming home. I love you. you made my night. Or, just incidentally, I don't mean to promise anything, but in your state of enlightenment, you could see where they were and send a ray of light out to them and fix them, put them in a little bulb of light and bring them home.

[36:38]

But you could actually keep them out there safe wherever they were and wake them up. So the best thing to do is not worry. That will just incapacitate you so that you'll do some foolish thing. Plus, when they come home, you'll probably kill them. Because why do you kill them? Because I've been worrying all night. So I'm going to punish you. Makes sense, right? Kids expect this, so they won't argue. They've heard it enough times so they know it makes perfect sense that they should be punished for what the mother did to herself while they were out. But anyway, it's hard sometimes just to like look at the worry and just say, hi worry, hello worry, hello cutie, and it's gone. But that's really the best thing. But it's hard because, again, we think you can't just look at worry. You've got to worry. You're a decent person. You have no feelings if you don't worry.

[37:46]

Caring about people doesn't equal worry. I've heard that Buddha does not worry about you. Buddha loves you but doesn't worry about you. You can be Buddha, but Buddha doesn't worry about when you're going to be Buddha. Buddha has better things to do besides worrying about you. Buddha is concentrating on your well-being rather than worrying about you. So, concentrate on the well-being of your kids while they're out there in the unknown. Generate this well-being energy for them, which is good for you too, and make so that when they get home, You could say, oh, my well-being meditation worked. You survived. Plus, you loved them the whole time you were waiting, rather than hating them the whole time you were waiting. Just, damn, chitter, grrr. So, worry and ill will go nicely together. But if you just face them, they drop away. I mean, if you face them with no elaboration, they drop away.

[38:49]

But then again, People doubt that they should do that because, again, you're not human if you don't do this stuff, right? You're not human, you're Buddha then. You're not a human anymore. You're Buddha. And then, okay, next one is, next one is denial. You know, denial, in other words, don't look at it. Don't look at it. The next way of dealing with this stuff, like, if there's worry, you know, don't, like, stick your head in it, which is closely related to the other one, which is be upright with it. Now, specifically mentioning, don't bend into it, you know.

[39:53]

almost lean back from it a little bit. Sometimes that helps because you're about to lean into it, so leaning back. The problem is you're leaning into it, so now lean back a little bit. It's not the best, but sometimes it works because you're leaning into it, so now lean back. And the last one is fascism. Fascism. Fascism. Just say no. Just say no. Say no. No. No. No. But don't say it too roughly, otherwise you'll get injured. Nice, firm, clear way to say no. Suppress it. That's the worst way, but anyway, you might want to do it sometime rather than be stuck in this situation for, like, whatever.

[40:59]

And it can be kind of like for whatever. So those are the five. Did you get them? Those five ways? You didn't, did you? But I told you, and they're on tape. And I can go over them again, or I can quiz you. Did you get them, Patty? You probably got them, because you're... Aren't you? Sorry. So what are the five? Jordan. You can start with that. Yeah, that's one of them. Self-respect and decorum, that's one. And fascism. Fascism's two. Kind of like dropping the worry. Hmm? Like dropping the worry. What's dropping the worry? Yeah, just stop it. That's two. You've got two of them. There's three more. Denial. Three. Denial. It's a little bit different.

[42:01]

It's like, it's like, it's a little different. Like, again, this is, this is like controversial, but anyway. Here it is, folks. Ananda said, Ananda was supposed to, Ananda liked girls. It was his thing. And they liked him. he was kind of pudgy. He looked kind of like my grandson. You know, fat cheeks and stuff. Anyway, he was kind of a chubby, real smart monk. But he did have a kind of like... He wasn't supposed to be hanging out with ladies, but he kind of saw them. He felt like doing so. So he said to the Buddha towards the end of his life, he said, towards the end of Buddha's life, he said, what should I do if I... If I meet women, he said, well, don't talk to them. I said, what if they talk to me? He said, don't look at them. I said, what if I look at them? Go away. Take a walk.

[43:02]

So it's more like don't look at them rather than like say no. Sometimes saying no works, but sometimes saying no gets you more involved. So it's a little bit different. One time I was... I was in a Zen monastery one time, and during one of those meals, a lot of things happen during the meals. During one of the meals, when they were serving the food, the guy next to me, who I, by the way, went to high school and junior high school with, so we happened to wind up in a Zen monastery together in our early 20s. So there we were in a Zen monastery, and they brought the food out. It was like oatmeal or something. And you know how at Zen Center, when the servers come, they have these ladles and they stick them into the oatmeal and then they pour the oatmeal or whatever into your bowl. Did you know that? Did you know that?

[44:05]

Now you do. You can even come sometime and have a meal. They'll serve you into the oatmeal and scoop it out with his hand and plop it into his bowl. I think there were visiting monks, but in particular there was a visiting teacher. The teacher for that practice was Japanese, so he got to walk this, too. I was right next to him. So he did these things to entertain me, right? So I developed this defense mechanism, which was... So he was all like sitting next to me, kind of going like this. Or, you know, reaching in, sticking his hands in the food, you know, putting gomaki on his nose.

[45:11]

He was like, he thought he was like there to see if he could distract me. Right? And if I looked at him, I couldn't help laugh. Plus, not only if I looked at him would I not help laugh, but then I had this image, which the image would come back to me in my meditation. So I just didn't look at him. I didn't say no to him, because that would just... more, right? So in his case, I just didn't look at him, and it worked quite well. Because looking at him was not only... You know, he'd just keep going until he got me to laugh. You know, that's one style of humor. You know, you try something, if they don't like it, you try again. And you just... What's funny is just how hard you're trying, right? That was his method. If it didn't get me on the first two tries. So that's an example of not looking. Just don't look at it. And this person is not there. And I wouldn't say no to him, because he would just love that.

[46:19]

Then he'd say, isn't this endo, right? Oh, no? No? Why not? What did the teacher do? He survived. Oh, and one added detail is this monk who I went to school with, he was also the head of the meditation hall. A position we call Eno. He was Eno. And again, quickly, gently, this is not the sexual elaboration. The word eno, we had these little cards, these little Japanese boards by our seat. We had this board that said eno. If you take the eno board and turn it up the other way, it says, it's supposed to read oni. And oni means a demon in Japanese. So we turned the card the other way.

[47:22]

And after he did these kind of things, he went to the teacher and he tried to resign from his position. The teacher wouldn't let him resign. You've got to finish the job. So he completed the practice period. If you want some time, I'll tell you more stories like this. It was an exciting, exciting practice period. Huh? Many funny stories, yes, many. And the one before that was also funny. But anyway, he tried to resign, the teacher wouldn't let him. But then the next practice period, he signed up to be able to go, and the teacher wouldn't let him in the monastery. So that's sort of the spirit, you follow through, you don't get kicked out for these kinds of things, but then... get back in again to try another period of training, because obviously you don't want to do it.

[48:25]

So, once you get in the middle of the meditation period, please finish. But then, if you do too badly, you should think about whether you're going to do it again. Because you're, you know, if you don't get back in the meditation period, you haven't got back in touch with your aspirations. So the next time before you start meditation, maybe you should think about whether you really want to do this. And if it's a longer period of meditation, teacher probably would ask you, do you want to do this? The last time you did it, you were really kind of like, then how do you want to do it? You got in the middle of it and you started like, you changed your mind, do you really want to do this? It's very important to reiterate your commitment, to clarify your intention over and over. Otherwise, in the midst of the heat of who you are, sometimes you forget. And when you sit still, you start to realize What a wild person you are. What are you doing now?

[49:27]

Off and on, he did. But, you know, I would say about him that he became very knowledgeable about the practice, but didn't apply it. He was even knowledgeable about how to distract others from practice. Very bright, clever guy, but didn't like the simple, straightforward work doing the practice. And a lot of us don't like it. That's why we have to like develop this meditation on the aspiration until we think it's really great. because it's not that much fun sometimes just to sort of sit there, elaborate and jazz up your life. And just sort of say, basically, thank you very much for everything that comes and just accept it as it's given.

[50:31]

That's not that much, it's not that exciting. Matter of fact, that's why you're doing it, is to not get excited. To get really, really... And one of the demons that comes to distract you from this besides the entertainment demon, is the boredom demon. Boredom is a demon. Things aren't really boring. Things are just what they are. But there's a certain part of our mind which sends this demon in which says, boring, you're wasting your time, you have better things to do, don't be a schnook. It's like no one, this is getting, now this is getting seriously boring, now come on. You can bring something a little bit more interesting into this situation than what's happening without getting really that wild. And even if you argue with boredom and say, I don't agree with you that they got you. Yes?

[51:32]

Are you getting bored? What sounds like elaboration? All of the above? To you? Okay, so? Pardon? Some things can be just out of love. Some things can be out of love? It doesn't have to be disrespect or lack of decorum. X, Y, and Z. Yes, that's right. It's just really simple. It's just really simple. Do you know, have any idea about what led you to say that in the history of the world? Well, I'm just thinking, you know, you're talking about not elaborating. Yeah, I'm talking about not elaborating, yeah. So what I'm saying is, somebody else's expression...

[52:39]

Someone's take on a certain behavior. Yes, could be different from another person's. Yes. For example. decorum and disrespect. It doesn't have to be decorum, disrespect, or self. Would you say disrespect or... I said self-respect. So, what are you saying? So, what I'm saying is that sounds like elaboration to me, concepts. What's the elaboration? You don't understand disrespect?

[53:47]

No, it's just a concept. Disrespect is just an idea. You don't have to elaborate on it. So that in itself is just a concept. It's not an elaboration. But you could elaborate on it, but so far it's just a concept. What I was saying is that if you are trying to practice having this simple focused attention, and you're not able to do that, you start getting into arguing with what's happening or whatever, then these obstructions to the meditation arise. And one of the obstructions to the meditation is .

[55:01]

So one way to calm these obstructions is by practicing self-respect. So if you're thinking hateful thoughts towards someone, to get over that is to practice self-respect. If you're involved in hating somebody or wishing someone ill, The ways to become free of that kind of thinking is to practice self-respect. Because if you practice self-respect, you realize that actually you don't want to go around hating people. That's not who you are. You actually would prefer loving people.

[56:02]

That's more who you are. Self-respect is quite an antidote to Well, it could be. I mean, I myself have sometimes had ill will, and I've thought, this is really not the way, this is not appropriate for me. I mean, you know, like I once told that story of where I was, I pulled into 7-Eleven near Green Gulch, you know, and I looked over to the people in the car next to me, and I This woman said, what are you looking at? And then her bodyguard got out of the car and started screaming at me all kinds of strong profanities. And I didn't get into ill will, but I was in the verge of it.

[57:03]

But the thought crossed my mind, you know, I was also wearing my robes. a thought crossed my mind that this would not be appropriate for me to get into, like, really hating these people. It's like, this is not around hating people on the street who obviously are living in hell. And when they see somebody look at them, they think this person's attacking them or disrespecting them or whatever. Just look at them. So then they come back with, I hate you, you know, or swearing, threatening. So I looked at them, but I didn't get into ill will, but I was on the verge of getting angry because they were treating me so aggressively. But my self-respect protected me from, because I really did not want to get in a fight with this guy with my robes on in the parking lot. And this is not, this is 7-Eleven, you know, the 7-Eleven you go to on Green, so people drive by to Green Gulch, right? They're driving by to Green Gulch and they see me in the parking lot.

[58:12]

My robe's getting ripped off and stuff. This is an example of self-respect. I have not chosen to spend my life fighting in parking lots at this point. And I probably never will because I think I have better things to do with my time. That's still self-respect. So that self-respect, if I get involved in ill will, self-respect I can use to snap myself out of it. Kindness, that could work too, but self-respect, I didn't actually switch to loving kindness in that case. Although I could have. I could have started saying, oh, may you be happy. You want to go again? May you be happy. May you be at peace. May you be free of anger. Not out loud, of course, because if I said it out loud, he really would have come at me. But I could have switched to that loving kindness. But what really protected me was a sense of decorum, that people, for self-respect, I don't want to.

[59:19]

And decorum is, it would really upset people to see me, you know, all bloody with my robes and getting blood on them right there on the highway. So both decorum and self-respect protected me from getting involved. So what I did was, I just started the car and drove away with the guy. Or his car. Like, back the car up very carefully and drive forward into his car. So I shouldn't, you know, I'm not supposed to be fighting in the parking lot, but a little car accident, that would be fine. You know, I somehow, I had a blackout, and next thing I knew, their car was like, you know, out in the street. I didn't get into that, because even that, I thought, people actually don't want me to get in car accidents either. So both decorum and self-respect worked for me vis-a-vis ill will there. More on the other side, you know, like you might be attracted to some, you know, like something very delicious to eat, you know.

[60:28]

But you don't just reach down with no hands and start eating it because, you know, I can eat it in a more elegant way than that. I can use my hands, maybe even a fork, to eat this cake. So anyway, I'm just saying these are different ways to address not getting involved in kind of things that interfere with the meditation, not to mention things that would interfere with survival. Does that make any sense? Good. Yes, well, because if the 7-Eleven had been in Nevada, in the middle of the desert, no one would have seen the priest. They just thought, this is a weirdo. This is a bald cult member. And, you know, so out there, you know, if I got in a fight, they probably would have thought, hey, this is cool, look at this guy go.

[61:34]

But, so then in that case, the quorum maybe wouldn't have played a role because they'd who I am and stuff, but self-respect still might have. Another time I was just down the street here, and I had this guy, and he started tugging on it. So there I was, and he was just a little tiny guy, but he had a hold of my bill phone, my wallet, Matter of fact, it's this one right here. Where is it? No, I don't have it. Anyway, my wife gave me. I still have it. This was like 17 years ago this happened. 17 years ago this happened. And this guy was tugging on my wallet. I think he was trying to... He's also biting my hands to get me to let go. And he's a small guy, you know? Small street guy.

[62:36]

And... I'm like, what am I doing here, pulling on this wall? It's partly that my wife gave it to me. I didn't want to let go of it, you know. I'm just tugging back and forth, tugging back and forth. But the thought did cross my mind of just raising my fist and just pounding him into the ground, you know. Or some kind of activity like that. But somehow I got myself to hit him. It was such a... It was just such a sad situation. I just kept tugging, and finally he gave up, and the willful was all misshapen. But I wanted to tell you that it has recovered. I gave it to a leather therapist. Over the years, it's sort of recovered. Pardon? I wanted it. That's why. I wanted my wallet. Huh? He wanted it, yeah, but I didn't want to give it to him.

[63:38]

But I wanted to give it to him. I also wanted, I also thought of hitting him, but I thought, I just thought, no, I just, this is too much, you know, for me to like beat this guy up. I just couldn't do it. It just didn't, it just seemed beneath me. So I didn't. But it wasn't so much that I wanted to beat him up, but I just wanted to, you know, have him stop pulling on my wallet. And that seemed like that would be one way to get him to stop. He was losing his spirit anyway because it had been going on so long. And he could see that I really probably wasn't going to let go. So that was kind of a self-respect thing. And then the decorum thing too. I just thought, again, it just seemed like to be beating up some little street person on the street, even if nobody saw me, I just... So I didn't.

[64:45]

I didn't act on that ill will. Yeah. Yeah. I think that When worry at this level of practice is something to basically get over for the moment, so you can concentrate. After you're concentrated, worry then can be a topic for insight. Stable, you can study it, but when you're worrying, it's hard to look at worry. It's not impossible, but when you're worried,

[65:47]

You're not very present with what's happening, so it's pretty hard for you when you're not present and you're unstable to see what things are. Once you're stable, then these five hindrances are revisited as insight topics. And then you practice mindfulness with them rather than concentration, and then you have a penetrating contemplation of them. Then you understand how worry works, what are the conditions for it, and also what are the consequences of it. So in this case you don't like convince yourself of how bad worry is, you just stop it. And then you calm down and then later you get to see how it works and understand that it's not necessary and so on and not even really there. Next week I won't be here because there's a session at Green Gulch where people will probably be practicing stabilization and maybe having hindrances or maybe having some hindrances, we'll see.

[66:59]

The following week I'll be back. So, how are you feeling? You okay? You like those stories? Anything else? Just a quick question. Yes? I'm tired. If you can't even put your mind towards enthusiasm, you can't even think of aspiration. Well, in that case, you can take a nap, take a walk, splash cold water. Those are kind of mild things to do.

[68:12]

Well, in the case you're talking about, it's, you know, you could also like look cross-eyed. That sometimes helps. Hold your breath. You know, just hold your breath for quite a while. And at a certain point, you won't be sleepy anymore. And if you keep holding on to that, you actually, I guess, will go unconscious, but not go to sleep. But you'll probably start getting awake before you go unconscious. That sometimes works. What I used to do is threaten myself That worked pretty well too. But now actually what I do more is either rouse my... rouse the aspiration or I try to go completely into the tired. Feel tired. And somehow...

[69:23]

Even when I'm tired, I seem to be able to be completely tired, because it doesn't seem to take any extra energy. And then in the completeness of the tired, somehow there's a kind of refreshment. Feeling anything is more like completely accepting it. Somehow there's a recovery. And at that point, maybe you could get into the aspiration. Okay? Thank you very much.

[69:55]

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