I vow to take straight the love that I trust words. In dealing with thinking about the hindrances to practice. I want to talk today about a category called the five hindrances. There are many, many hindrances. There are many ways to think about hindrance. But this five-fold category deals with some archetypal hindrances, and most of the others are included in these five.

[01:15]

Most of the lesser hindrances are included in these five. First, I'll tell you what the five hindrances are. Sensual desire is the first. And anger is the second. And sloth and torpor is the third. And the fourth is agitation and worry, called flurry and worry. Flurry is good. And the fifth one is called skeptical doubt. Sensual desire is always at the head of the list of every hindrance in Buddhism.

[02:19]

When you look at the four truths and so forth, the truth of suffering and the cause of suffering, desire is always at the top of the list as the cause of suffering. So it's not unusual that it's the first of the five hindrances. I want to talk about these hindrances in pairs, even though the fifth one doesn't have a pair. The first two Sensual desire and anger go together as attraction and aversion. Desire is, the mark of desire is attraction. Something, desire is attracted to something.

[03:24]

And in anger, we're adverse to something. So these are two poles, attraction and aversion, plus and minus. The plus and minus of our life is attraction and aversion. And in the second two, Sloth and torpor is on the minus side, and worry and flurry is on the plus side. Sloth and torpor is the downside, and worry and flurry is the exaggerated upside. Sloth and torpor are like laziness and inability to motivate. And worry and flurry is over anxiety.

[04:36]

It's like the static that's produced by anxiety, which has no place to go. Because we have a problem in resolving our problems, we tend to extend that anxiety, and in unnecessary weary and flurried. And so, and of course, skeptical doubt is the opposite of faith. And all five of these hindrances actually have a positive side. As well as being hindrances, they each have a positive side. Otherwise, What they are is the perversion or exaggeration of what is a normal motivational tendencies.

[05:43]

So desire in itself is not bad. You look at the nature of desire, without desire there's no life. Life itself is desire. So in order to live, we desire food, and we desire shelter, and we desire motivation, motivational objects, object of desire. But there's a norm to desire. And when the norm is fulfilled, there's a tendency to continue to desire more and more.

[06:53]

And this is what's meant by desire. Normal desire is acceptable, but abnormal desire is a hindrance. And in anger, which is aversion, our mind, when we give way to anger, anger is a natural phenomenon. And that expression of anger is normal and positive, actually, because it indicates something about what's unacceptable. It's normal to indicate somehow the unacceptability of something. But when we harbor it,

[07:58]

Or when it becomes an easy way to express our emotions, it causes suffering for not only ourself, but for the object of the anger. So both desire and anger are like a fire. They're extremely volatile. And all you have to do is light a match and they take off. So, desire will burn you up, and anger will burn up somebody else, but you also get consumed by both. And sometimes others get consumed by both. you know, we say get rid of desire, get rid of anger, but get rid of is a little strong.

[09:00]

It means know how to use desire, know how to use anger, know how to balance yourself. So, When we talk about the five hindrances, we're talking about the five hindrances to meditation. But since meditation is our life, we don't use meditation in just a special way, although they are hindrances to meditation in a special way. but in a big way, which means our life as we live it day by day. When these emotions are unbalanced, we don't have that peace.

[10:04]

We lose our mind. So in Buddhist meditation, means to always be in the center of our mind. Mind is a kind of hard concept to grasp. Not just our thinking mind, but means to be in the center of gravity of our mind. without being eccentric. Eccentric means off-center. And when we're off-center, it's hard to spin. Sometimes we use the analogy of a top. When you spin a top, the top is spinning very fast.

[11:13]

right when it's well balanced, and you can't tell that the top is spinning. You look at the top and it looks like it's standing still. But if you touch the top, it goes somewhere and loses its balance. At the top, when it's really spinning, when it's spinning without any eccentricity, you can't tell that it's moving, but it's moving and great dynamic action. And this kind of centeredness is what we mean by samadhi or meditation, to always be in that center of balance. It may not look like anything, But if the top is out of balance, if it becomes eccentric, then as it spins, the more it spins, the wider the spin gets, and it finally loses its balance.

[12:21]

So, sensual desire and anger are two elements which are, when they're not controlled tend to make our balance eccentric and we can't stay in that dynamically centered position. So Sensual desire, one aspect of sensual desire is our sexual desire. Another aspect is our appetites for food or for objects, for delightful things. Whatever it is that's attractiveness, sensual desire, goes out to the object.

[13:34]

is seen by the eye and is recognized by consciousness and the desire is set up through repeated delightful experiences. And we tend to get caught by the various objects of sight, of hearing, touching, tasting, smelling, through the various doors, the sensory doors. But it's very difficult not to be attached to things. Very hard not to be attached to things. But in order to maintain control, we have to make that effort. It's very difficult to detach yourself from things.

[14:39]

If you just try to pull yourself away, you know, and say, oh, I won't be attached, it doesn't work. There has to be some way that you see a reason. So through understanding, you can lessen your attachments. So the sutras always recommend that by studying the reason of the reasonableness of life by trying to understand what's reasonable in life and to associate with people who are studying and that helps you to make the effort to reduce your attachment to sensual things

[15:55]

until you find what is a norm for yourself. Now for a monk, a Hinayana monk, this hindrance of sensual attachment, the way that monk would work on that would be to completely give up all attachments to anything. But as laypeople in the Mahayana tradition, living in the world, you can't do that. That's completely unreasonable. What is reasonable is to find the mean, which means to make some effort to work with things in a way that whatever you have, you respect and take care of.

[17:21]

And not to overdo your, not to create greediness. You know, if a person doesn't have anything but craves constantly, it doesn't help. It doesn't help if you give away everything and are constantly craving. But even if you have wealth and possessions, if you're not attached to wealth and possessions, there's no problem. So it's not so much a matter of what you have or what you don't have, but how you control yourself, what kind of self-control you have, and how you respect what you have and take care of what you have.

[18:37]

If we treat everything in a respectful way, we don't need to have so much. And when we learn to treat things, what we have, in a respectful way, we also learn to treat ourself in a respectful way. And if we study hard, we can learn to control our habits. Anger is just the other side. You know, aversion is just the other side of grasping and greediness. There's a kind of greediness in anger. There's a reasonableness and

[19:46]

Anger is a way of release. Release as a way of resolving conflict. It may be difficult to resolve conflicts, but with anger, It's momentary, kind of momentary release. And we can sustain it for a long time, and it becomes an attachment, real anger. When anger, when we're possessed by anger, we fail to see anything about the object of our anger that's reasonable. I think that you'll find that that's so, if you think about it.

[20:52]

Sometimes, even if somebody says something to us, you know, we may have, say we have a friend, and someone says something to us about that friend, and I'll say, you know, so-and-so did this and that, and you get angry. And you stop thinking reasonably about that person. and you're influenced by what somebody else says. And it's very easy to lose, even if you have a sense of your own conviction. That little bit of influence, that little bit of something influences the way you think. So it's very easy to continue promoting ill-will in the world.

[21:54]

And there is an antidote. The antidote to ill-will or anger is love, which is non-acquisitive and non- without desire in it, just extending yourself for the benefit of goodwill to others, which is the antidote to anger. And it creates a settled state of mind. We're very attached to our anger. It's one of the most difficult things to deal with because anger wants to prove us right and wants to prove someone else wrong.

[23:02]

If you look at what happens when anger comes up, it's mostly self-righteousness. That's at the bottom of it. Righteousness, and we become attached to righteousness. There is a righteousness, but beyond that it becomes self-righteousness. When righteousness is extended beyond its boundary, it becomes an ego, what we call an ego trip. And ego is the beginning of self-righteousness. Self means that you can't, you don't want to be wrong. You want to be right, no matter what. At the expense of everything, you will extend your anger. But one of the rules laid down by Shakyamuni Buddha is not rule, but truth, maybe, that anger

[24:16]

doesn't help anything in the world. There is a help. I won't say that completely, but mostly hinders any kind of progress in the world. And it upsets your own balanced state of mind. So when anger arises as a hindrance to reflect on it and see how you can extend some kind of compassion or sympathetic joy or loving kindness or equanimity, just equanimity. is very hard to attain in that state.

[25:19]

If you can keep equanimity within the anger, that's a pretty good balance. But it's hard. Hard to have equanimity at the same time that there's anger. Depends on what's most important. especially with anger, what is the most important thing to you? It's a good question. For an ordinary person, maybe the anger is the most important thing, expressing self-righteousness. But for a Zen student, equanimity is more important than anger. Equanimity is more important than self-righteousness. And extending compassion is more important than self-righteousness.

[26:24]

So you can actually turn your base. Somehow. It's possible. But when anger comes up, Just to reflect. How can I turn this? When you see that you're caught by anger, how can I turn this? Then anger is no longer a hindrance. Actually, just by reflecting, the reflecting itself, or the knowing of your state of mind. Because when anger comes up, it just comes. Nothing you can do about it when it comes. But after it's there, you can do something. It's like a dream. You can either let it go, or take it up, or build on it.

[27:29]

There's actually a choice once it arises. And sometimes we just can't control ourself and we get caught by the anger. But sometimes if we are strong and reflect, we choose not to get caught by the anger. And if we're in the habit of extending compassion, then we find out how to turn that. So it takes some effort to do. But that effort is called practice. I don't say that there is no reason for anger. Lots of reason for it. I mean, it would be wrong to say that there's no reason for anger arising.

[28:36]

But what you do with it is up to you. So anger and desire, aversion and grasping are both like fire. And you can allow it to burn everything up or you can use that fire. You can use anger and you can use desire. They're both extremely valuable. as tools. Sloth and torpor are a kind of laziness or inability to motivate ourself.

[30:02]

And my experience is that motivation comes from inspiration. Mostly, motivation comes from inspiration. Inspiration is taking a breath, filling yourself. with motivation. But even though we have motivation, sometimes we have doubt. And doubt, sometimes if we have too much doubt, we lose our inspiration with too much doubt. So somehow we have to be re-inspired. I feel that most laziness comes from lack of inspiration or lack of some reason to do something in most people.

[31:08]

We can complain to people and say, oh, you're lazy or something, but there's always some reason behind it. There's always some some way that a person is caught, usually. If there was... But we don't always feel that. We feel that lazy people just... We kind of criticize them. But... there's some reason why they're not motivated. And it brings out our sympathy. So one way to be motivated is to

[32:20]

Find some inspiration. Sometimes people say, well, I get tired. I'm not particularly inspired by Buddhism. And I say, well, do something that inspires you. You don't have to do Buddhism. You don't have to do this practice. Do something that really interests you. Find something that interests you. I don't care what you do. Find something that's really interesting for you. But they say, well, I'm not interested in anything. They get up late, lay around, eat a lot, watch TV. It's a passive state. And of course it's a big hindrance. So in a state of When we see people who are having a hard time and become indolent, we should try to help them in some way, not criticize so much.

[33:38]

But I think the people in that state need help, not so much criticism. Criticism usually doesn't help. And as far as worry and flurry goes, worrying is natural. It's natural to worry. We always have lots of things to worry about. But what's very common is you know what you have to worry about. You don't know what the end will be. But even though you can't do anything about it, you tend to worry anyway, because if you stop worrying, you feel guilty. I think with most people, if they stop worrying, they'll feel guilty. If you know that things will work out in some way,

[34:47]

You can find some calmness within worry because the natural state of human beings is to always have a problem. We always have a problem. Even if for a few minutes we don't have a problem, still the problem will appear soon. So worry and flurry is like not ever being able to settle down in our life because we feel that the problems need attention. They do need attention, but they don't need constant attention. You know, when we worry about, if we think about the state of the world, and the problems, you could spend your whole time worrying.

[36:05]

I mean, without cease. But then you can't exist if you do that. You have to eat and you have to sleep and you have to do many things. If you're a doctor, you're always faced with miserable people, people that are sick. But a doctor has to eat and sleep and do many things. So if the doctor's always worrying, pretty soon he'll wear himself out. So it's correct to worry about something that you have to worry about, but you have to know when to let go of your worried mind and how to come back to equanimity.

[37:23]

so that you can actually carry that equanimity through the worrying, through the problems. Without equanimity, we just get carried off with the problems. So it's just like the spinning top, again. We can exist within our problem. We always have to exist within our problem. But if we lose our balance or our equanimity, then we're like a trapped animal in a cage, shaking the bars, trying to get out. So, cultivating that zazen should help you to cultivate that calm mind through your problems so that you always have a balanced mind, no matter what the problem is.

[39:03]

That's one of the main purposes of zazen. is to help you to have that balanced mind, no matter what the problem is. And eventually, it will be the problem of your death. And the last one is skeptical doubt. And the opposite of doubt is faith. Doubt is a necessary factor. But in order to have any confidence, it has to be balanced by faith.

[40:08]

Faith, doubt, and enlightenment are the three legs of practice. Faith means confidence, and it comes through knowledge and understanding, not just through blindness, not blind faith. But in Buddhism, there's not something that you have faith in. You have faith in yourself and in emptiness and in interdependence. But that faith comes through knowledge and confidence. And doubt is healthy doubt.

[41:17]

It's Not skeptical doubt. Skeptical doubt is something different than healthy doubt. Healthy doubt means that you don't take anything for granted. But even though you don't know exactly the truth, And you don't, you investigate. Doubt is, healthy doubt is the motivation that keeps you investigating. And it keeps faith from going overboard. And so the two always keep each other in check.

[42:22]

If you only have faith, without doubt, then it's easy to, that's called gullibility, to just be taken in easily by things, by spiritual things, in this case. Just to be fooled by things. easily. And doubt, healthy doubt, makes you prove everything. Keeps you on the track. Keeps faith from wandering. Keeps it in the right place. But skeptical doubt is the inability to accept anything. It's the inability to believe yourself. or to have faith in yourself, or confidence in yourself.

[43:29]

Some people say, are always wandering around looking for the perfect practice, or the perfect teacher, or the perfect thing. and never can settle down, because they're always skeptical. So they're just continually wandering. If you have a somewhat reasonable practice, a somewhat reasonable teacher, and a somewhat reasonable circumstances, You can practice because mostly practice is what you bring to it. So people who have skeptical doubt are mostly people who want something given to them. And if what's given to them is not perfect, they have skeptical doubt.

[44:41]

And that type of person is usually someone who doesn't want to work for something. But even if you have a lousy teacher and a lousy place to practice and lousy circumstances, if you really work hard and bring something to the practice, you can do a lot. You can get a lot of confidence. and arouse your own faith. The whole practice depends on yourself. Teacher is a help, helps to guide you. But it doesn't give you anything. Teacher can't give you anything.

[45:48]

And practice can't give you anything. But you receive. What you receive is what you give. This is why Generosity is the first paramita. It doesn't mean just giving things, but it means how you give yourself. How you give yourself is how you actualize yourself. If you hold back, nothing happens. If you think that something is going to come to you, that won't happen. You already have everything you need.

[46:50]

But how you manifest what you have is through your effort. That's the whole secret of practice, how you actualize what you already have. There's nothing that you can gain or get. If there's something that you can get that you don't already have, then it's not yours. We all already have it, but in order to make it manifest, we have to do something. So even if you have a lousy teacher, a lousy place to practice, lousy circumstances, you do something. You can do something.

[47:58]

Lousy circumstances are very good for us. Oh, I have to go to work every day and blah, blah, blah. Lousy circumstances, but we have to be able to turn lousy circumstances into good circumstances without changing the circumstances. Using the lousy circumstances that we have to practice with turns them into good circumstances. In that way there are no hindrances. Desire is not a hindrance. Anger is not a hindrance. Laziness is not a hindrance. Worry is not a hindrance. And doubt is not a hindrance. If you know how to use them. If you know how to use the circumstances. It's just a matter of turning.

[49:02]

Enlightenment is not a different place. It's just a way of using, understanding how to use what you have. We're always looking for better things and better circumstances, but it won't help. Do you have a question? running away from some problem through eating very calmly.

[50:45]

I think we've all done it. You know, and the same with other things, you know. Maybe there are things we're worrying about or considering, you know, carefully. But sometimes I guess we have trouble turning it off. which is served by the activity, whether it's desire or worry or... Well, I think that's a really good way of putting it. When we do something, to say, well, what purpose is served by this? And then to reflect on that. Why am I doing this? Even though you may be compelled to do it, to reflect, what am I doing?

[51:48]

That's practice. What is it that I'm doing? What is this? Why am I doing this? Another way of doing it is to say, how is this saving all sentient beings? So actually this kind of questioning is a practice. It doesn't mean that you can stop doing the things that you're doing, necessarily, but you question them. A healthy doubt. And then, little by little, you can come to some place where you can actually turn it It seems to me that

[52:51]

A salesman talked me into buying something which did not suit, which was very expensive and did not suit the purposes which I bought it for at all. I found out from someone else later that it just happened that the only reason he talked me, you know, he told me it had all the qualities of something I needed. The only reason he told me this was because he had a lot of these items on hand. By going back and acting, you know, just saying, well, I'm returning this, and not saying anything, and not showing any emotion, he's not really getting input onto the reality that he's going out and cheating people, whether consciously or unconsciously. Well, there are several, there are ways to let somebody know something. Anger is one of them. But without anger, there's a way of saying something too. But I thought I did say that anger was not necessarily wrong.

[54:22]

I thought I said that. I don't think you said necessarily wrong, but I just have this feeling sometimes, you know, anger, you know, by building up and holding on and just letting it go, That's a natural reaction. Yeah, what I said was that you can't stop anger from arising necessarily. Sometimes, but it arises. And then you have a choice of what to do. Second stage is what your choice is. And that can be anything. How you choose to do something with what arises. is your field of choice, will, free will. Sometimes it's free, sometimes it's not, usually it's not, but it can be, if you choose how to respond.

[55:32]

But the problem is that we are usually caught by the emotion, and then we're not free to choose, we just react. So responding, on the one hand, is having choice. Reacting is not having choice. And we can talk about those, but it's too late to do that. Okay. This will be the last question. I just wanted to share, I went to a union lecture a while ago, and a man said that Anger is the destructive energy of the universe, and the no energy, and love is the creative and yes energy, and both are essential for the universe. That is very powerful. There is a place for the no and a place for the yes.

[56:36]

I think that practice has helped me enormously to learn that I just have to be willing to sit with the fire, whatever it is, the fire of whatever emotion, I'm a very emotional person. And not... It has its life and it will change, but not to go be run by it. I think that's a lot of what's in it. Yes, that's right. To have... not be run by things. Such a big size.

[57:20]

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