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The Hindrances

My friend Denise has been offering classes on the Dharma. I’ve been attending.

For anyone who doesn’t know, the Dharma is the teachings of the Buddha. A topic that came up in a recent lecture is the five hindrances to awakening. They are the inner qualities that make calm and clarity difficult:

I sat with each of them for a while. What follows is what came up.

Sense Desire

Astrology would blame the day I was born. The generalization goes that Taurus is a slave to its senses, and I am no exception.

The sound of running water. The sun setting behind an alpine ridge. Fine fabrics. Wildflowers in spring. Good food.

That last one in particular has been a twelve-year project. I was in a self-inflicted car accident that severed my olfactory nerve. I lost my sense of smell for years. I’m grateful to have recovered, and now find myself chasing the most delicious food this world has to offer.

I don’t think the indulgence in the pleasures of the senses is the actual hindrance. I think the greed, the wanting of more sensory pleasure, is what gets in the way.

Aversion and Ill-Will

There is a natural human inclination to avoid discomfort. Behavioral economics has landed on what I think is one of the most important results of the field: humans are more motivated by the avoidance of pain than they are by the pursuit of pleasure. My life is no exception.

Three days after that same car accident, I was back at work with a huge gash running down the middle of my face. Public embarrassment was easier to stomach than the internal shame I carried from almost taking my own life.

Ill-will shows up in me as jealousy. Denise would describe it as the “othering” of another being’s experience. Jealousy has bitten me more than once in my life. Every time has caused real suffering.

Both of these hindrances come from the refusal to sit with discomfort. The delusion that a life can be built without uncomfortable feelings in it.

Restlessness and Worry

For me, these are anxiety about the future and regret about the past.

Both come from the same delusion. That there is any moment other than the present.

The conditioning runs deep in America: grab life by the balls, exert the full force of your will, bend the future into the shape you want. The truth is we have very little control over the future. Deep acceptance of that fact leads to more peace of mind in the present.

The past is the other direction. I find myself bound by perfectionism, beating myself up over mistakes I’ve made and people I’ve hurt along the way. I’m working through it. The reminder I keep coming back to: remember, but don’t dwell.

Sloth and Torpor

Sloth and torpor was the one I was most surprised to be reckoning with.

I think it’s a feature of human nature, to resort to laziness when we feel overwhelmed. I am no exception.

For much of my childhood I used video games as an unhealthy coping mechanism to avoid sitting with the discomfort of my own inability to advocate for myself in the face of challenge. Recently I’ve had a tough go of it on the job market. Rejection after rejection, week after week. Over the last few months I’ve felt the familiar pattern pulling at me. Throw my hands up. Sink double-digit hours into alternate digital realities where I can feel in control of my character’s destiny.

I’ve found some relief in physical activity. In working out. In doing hard things on the days I don’t want to do them.

The antidote for sloth and torpor looks a lot like discipline.

Doubt

Denise said something beautiful last night. That many of us carry a fear we are unworthy of awakening.

That’s the essence of doubt for me. Questioning worthiness is a form of othering, and it’s most potent when it’s directed inward.

It’s a human tendency to clamor for control, to minimize the doubt we feel in ourselves and especially the doubt directed at us by our peers. The truth is there is a very narrow aperture of things actually in our control.

Something else from the lecture that resonated: mindfulness is acquired gently. The harder we grit our teeth and white-knuckle to hold onto mindfulness, the faster it slips. I’ve found love and kindness to share this quality.

The breath flowing in and out of our lungs is evidence that we are worthy of awakening.

Knowing the hindrances, and still choosing self-kindness, is the foundation for learning to love ourselves despite the ways we self-sabotage our own awakening.