Wisdom Wide and Deep

by Shaila Catherine

  Mindfulness-based meditation practices may emphasize a repeated examination of hindrances, for instance, exploring sleepiness, staying with restlessness, or watching a desire arise and pass away. Such mindful investigation of hindrances will produce valuable clarity regarding the qualities unique to each hindrance.

  TABLE 1.1

  Five Ways to Investigate Hindrances

  Recognize when a hindrance is present.

  Recognize when a hindrance is absent.

  Understand the conditions that cause a hindrance to arise.

  Understand the conditions that cause a hindrance to cease.

  Explore how to prevent the hindrance from arising again in the future.

  During concentration-based practices, however, attention is efficient, precise, and perhaps even curt. When practicing to establish jhāna, it is enough to see a hindrance, let it go quickly, and return to the meditation object without delay. In fact, it is essential to do so, because time spent examining hindrances weakens the single-pointed focus of concentration, postponing absorption. Approach the hindrance sufficiently to understand its rudimentary function and supports; study it just enough to untangle the mind from its grip. You don’t deny the hindrance in concentration practice, but simply recognize it primarily as the result of unwise attention and quickly remedy the error. Later, when you discern mentality (chapter 13), you will apply the full strength of the unified mind to meticulously analyze nuances of all wholesome and unwholesome states. However, in order to efficiently lay the foundation for jhāna concentration, please bypass most of this investigation and diligently redirect attention to your meditation object as quickly as possible.

  The state of jhāna lies beyond the range of hindrances. Therefore, every moment that you spend engaged with the hindrances diverts your attention, postponing unification with your meditation object. You may have planted a garden with tomatoes, daisies, basil, melons, and zucchini; but you may find that among the seedlings you planted, weeds have also sprouted. Although it is important to discern the difference between the weed and the melon and respond appropriately to each, a wise gardener would not spend all his or her time plucking up weeds—energy must also be given to nurturing the plantings. In meditation practice you must abandon the unwholesome states and also give attention to esteemed wholesome states, such as concentration, mindfulness, generosity, patience, and diligence. You learn what to cultivate and what to discard. You learn how to relate wisely to whatever arises in the mind, to consistently and efficiently abandon wrong attention and establish right attention by focusing on the meditation object.

  DANGERS THAT ARE JUST ENOUGH

  Just as an oyster transforms the irritating presence of a grain of sand into a pearl, meditators convert irritants into wisdom. If you know you are susceptible to certain hindrances, guard your mind; be heedful. Convert challenges into assets that will deepen your practice.

  Soon after arriving at a forest monastery in Thailand, I discovered that several vipers lived in the hollow space below the floor of my kuti. Each time I descended the three steps that raised the bamboo hut above the jungle floor I had a flashlight in hand—I was alert to the danger. The Buddha listed several “dangers that are just enough”16—not causing panic, disability, or paralysis, but just enough to inspire urgency, mindfulness, and wakefulness. His list included snakes and scorpions; stumbling and falling; digestion, bile, and phlegm; criminal gangs; and vicious beasts such as lions, tigers, and spirits. What are the “dangers that are just enough” in your life? What conditions demand that you pay attention, even when you are tired or busy? Vigilance protects us from external dangers, and it effectively protects us from the internal threat posed by the obstructive forces of craving, doubt, and fear.

  Continuity of Awareness

  For most lay practitioners, formal meditation averages only an hour or so per day—a tiny fraction of our time. Distraction poses a formidable barrier to concentration. Therefore, to build momentum, we must augment the sitting meditation with careful attention during daily activities. To strengthen the focus on the breath, become sensitive to the breath as you are drinking coffee, bathing, cooking, conversing, slipping on shoes, mowing the lawn, photographing your child, balancing your checkbook, delivering a lecture, or eating breakfast. Notice at any time and during any activity how your mind is disposed, where it wanders, how it apprehends sensory objects; then encourage a composed and calm awareness of the breath as you continue to do your work or engage in the activity. During daily activities, it is not possible to exclusively focus on the breath, yet, whether you are walking, working, talking, or eating, you can use your interest in the breath to encourage a balanced state of calm composure.

  THE FIVE HINDRANCES

  The Buddha compared the presence of the five hindrances to trying to view the reflection of a face in a pot of water. A mind obscured by the hindrances does not produce a mirror-like reflection of reality.17 Each hindrance clouds the mind in a slightly different manner. While extensive examination of hindrances should not be undertaken during jhāna practice, meditators must learn to recognize and abandon these common obstructions to concentration.

  The first hindrance, sensual desire (kāmacchanda), obscures consciousness, as colored dyes will diminish the clarity of water, presenting an alluring field of pattern instead of a clear reflection. Desire has the characteristic of projecting onto an object attractiveness that the object itself doesn’t intrinsically possess. When you are entranced by beautiful appearances, you see what you want to see, rather than what is actually present. The misperception inherent in craving embellishes objects with the illusion of desirability or hate-ability—the illusion that the object can bring or destroy happiness. But desire and craving never actually result in fulfillment. The sense of satisfaction, of being and having the object of your desires, only lasts until you want something else; it is fragile and destroyed by the next desire that arises.

  As you develop concentration and contemplate impermanence, craving will lose its power over you. You won’t need to force yourself to let go. Instead, just as children who play with sandcastles will eventually outgrow a fascination with worlds made of sand, we outgrow the compulsive desires that keep us restlessly seeking satisfaction in external perceptions and activities.18

  Desire arises when there is incorrect attention to pleasant feelings, whether it is a primitive craving for barbecued ribs, a refined attraction for cultural arts, an inclination toward sophisticated intellectual pleasures, or a subtle craving to repeat a perfectly tranquil meditation. Desire removes you from the direct perception of present experience and seduces you into a mental realm of hope and craving.

  One Calvin and Hobbes comic strip illustrated this nicely: The young boy, Calvin, was looking at the ground and called out: “Look! A Quarter!” He picks up the coin and exclaims “Wow!!! I’m rich beyond my dreams! I can have anything I want! All my prayers have been answered!” In the next frame Calvin stands quietly for a moment. And in the following frame he leaps onto the grass searching: “Maybe there’s more.”

  The lustful mind is blind to the simple presence of things as they are. With the senses continually reaching toward pleasurable encounters, the mind is left unguarded and seduction is a constant threat. To steady the mind, you don’t need to change what you see, smell, or feel; you don’t need to eliminate pleasant encounters. You need, instead, to control how you relate to sensory experience. The Buddha taught:

  A man’s sensuality lies in thoughts of passion.

  Sensuality does not lie in the world’s pretty things;

  A man’s sensuality lies in thoughts of passion.

  While the world’s pretty things remain as they are,

  The wise remove the desire for them.19

  Keep your attention focused and be content with the observation of the meditation object. Hold it diligently and stray desires will not have the opportunity to seduce you. Just as when an elephant walks through an Indian market with street-side
fruit and vegetable stands, the elephant trainer will have the elephant hold a rod with its trunk to keep it safely occupied, you can curb a mind that tends to wander toward attractions by firmly holding your meditation object. You may still experience sensory pleasures, but you won’t get lost in them. As the Buddha describes, “He takes his food experiencing the taste, though not experiencing greed for the taste.”20 With the development of wisdom, you will understand that sensual desire is not pleasure; it is suffering; it is a force that inhibits the deep peace and rest you seek.

  The Buddha taught his disciples to divide pleasure into two categories: coarse sensory pleasure, which is to be feared and abandoned, and refined meditative pleasure, which is to be cultivated and welcomed.21 Just as a connoisseur of fine cuisine will not find pleasure in greasy junk food, the consistent attainment of refined pleasures dissolves the prior fascination with coarser pursuits. The subtle pleasures of deep meditative absorption replace painful preoccupation with temporary sensory pleasures, just as sunlight replaces shadow.22 This training progressively abandons lesser happiness to attain greater happiness. Through this quest for real peace, the mind eventually releases into a deep and complete awakening.

  The second hindrance, aversion or ill will (vyāpāda), is compared to water that is heated on the fire. It boils up and bubbles over, preventing a clear reflection. Aversion persists when there is incorrect attention to unpleasant feeling. It can take mild forms such as irritation, impatience, and frustration; chronic forms such as pessimism, pity, miserliness, and anxiety; or dramatic forms such as hatred, rage, terror, jealousy, and aggression. Anything can be the trigger for an aversive reaction if there is unwise attention. You might react to theft with rage, to an illness with pity, to traffic with impatience, to a noisy neighbor with hatred, to cold weather with complaints, to a spider with fear. Aversion has the characteristic of projecting onto an object repulsiveness that the object does not inherently contain. Aversion can never end by replacing unpleasant external conditions with comfortable and agreeable conditions, since the suffering is not caused by the external conditions. The problem is the quality of attention, not the physical situation that you encounter.

  Interrupt the Craving

  You need not wait until the threshold of jhāna or the direct perception of nibbāna before you abandon cravings. In introductory meditation classes I ask my students to pause every hour during their daily activities—just a brief pause, to interrupt the seduction of familiar activities and bring attention to the body breathing. Periodic pauses of this sort can interrupt the stream of habitual cravings that dominate the busyness of daily life. Pausing provides a moment of quiet ease; an intervention in the obsession with activity, productivity, and identity; an opportunity to make a different choice. When “wanting” arises, we question it: Do I really want this thing? Is this a reliable basis for my happiness? What is the price I pay in money, time, upkeep, relationship conflict, health, self-respect? What is the long-term cost? Do I know that I have the choice to say no? You might discover that you don’t even want the things that you crave. If you don’t stop to ask yourself a few questions, you might find unused gadgets cluttering your shelves and useless thoughts cluttering your mind. Craving will pick up anything to sustain itself—whatever or whoever passes by.

  Letting Go

  Become mindful of the early signs of desire—that initial pull or force that propels your attention toward the desirable object. Distinguish between the force of desire and the object or perception that is attractive to you. Is the force of craving as pleasant as you hope the experience of that object will be? Notice that in the moment of gratification, the desire simultaneously ceases. Distinguish the difference between these two occurrences—the attaining of the object and the ending of desire. Once you see these as two distinctive causes of happiness, then explore your experience to determine if happiness comes from getting what you wanted or from the ending of the desire. Does attaining the coveted object bring happiness, or could the happiness result from the momentary subsiding of that desire?

  Observe a desire today. Feel the tug and the yearning associated with wanting something. Make the choice to relinquish that desire. Do not seek to satisfy the yearning. Just observe what happens when you let go of desire. You may or may not still acquire the object, depending upon the conditions already set in motion. Do you feel happy even when you don’t actually get what you wanted?

  When the mind is obsessed by ill will or aversion, we tend to react aggressively, impatiently, or with avoidance. Feel the separation that aversion perpetuates; recognize the suffering that it creates; become mindful of anger. There are many ways to employ meditation to resolve anger. You may soften the tendency toward ill will by cultivating loving-kindness (chapter 8); you may counter the separation that feeds anger by personally giving a gift to the person who irritates you; you may discern the object of your anger as bare elements such as a mere collection of thirty-two body parts (chapter 5), as a conjunction of material and mental elements (chapters 12–13), or as a process of five aggregates (chapter 14). As explained in the Visuddhimagga, “For when he tries the resolution into elements, his anger finds no foothold, like a mustard seed on the point of an awl, or a painting on the air.”23 Through the development of concentration and wisdom, you will understand the danger posed by aversive states. Comprehending the danger it becomes easier to let such states go and peacefully steer your attention back to your meditation object.

  The third hindrance, sloth and torpor (thīnamiddha) is compared to water that is covered over with slimy moss and water plants, creating a murky mental state in which the object of meditation is obscured. Sloth, sometimes described as dullness, refers to a sluggish and stiff quality of consciousness characterized by a lack of driving power. Torpor refers to a weakness or enfeeblement of mental factors. Torpor is characterized by an unwieldiness of the mind and manifests as laziness, boredom, or drowsiness. Arising together, sloth and torpor create a feeling of inertia, a sense that the mind is thick and drooping, a “paralysis due to lack of urgency and loss of vigor.”24 The hindrance of sloth and torpor is a severe expression of not being awake to what is really happening.

  Sleep is not the cure for sloth and torpor. You can distinguish between physical tiredness and the hindrance of sloth and torpor, between the need to rejuvenate and refresh the body and the weariness that wants to just call it a day. The Buddha urged, “To have your mind set on calmness, you must take power over sleepiness, drowsiness, and lethargy. There is no place for laziness and no recourse to pride.”25 Learn what seduces you into the passive withdrawal of sloth and torpor, and conquer the urge to find relaxation through dullness or separation. You will discover that as distractions weaken and concentration develops your vital energy is no longer drained by habitually meandering thoughts. When the hindrances are absent, delight and happiness refresh the mind. Once absorption is stabilized, you will have access to an immense and rejuvenating energy source that intensifies through jhāna practice. Your physical need for sleep will noticeably diminish.

  The fourth hindrance, restlessness and worry (uddhaccakukkucca), is compared to water that is shaken by wind—it trembles, eddies, and ripples. This agitated state precludes the possibility of clear seeing. Restless and distracting thoughts are the principal obstructions to concentration; therefore I will address this hindrance at length and include several pragmatic methods to overcome the influence of mental restlessness.

  It is not easy to stay focused on the breath. Most meditators sit down, apply their attention to the breath, and the mind immediately deviates. The Visuddhimagga aptly describes the untamed restless mind like this: “it runs off the track like a chariot harnessed to a wild ox.”26

  Imagine the horror if thoughts took form, had shape, or occupied space; we would all be squeezed right out of the room! Although invisible and silent, thoughts exert tremendous influence over moods, energy, health, emotions, abilities, relationships, and perceptions. Plans and wo
rries scatter attention like a pile of ashes scatters when a rock is thrown into it. Restlessness dissipates your effort to collect attention; it prevents the cohesion of concentration.

  When you are restless you are more vulnerable to whims and may act in ways you later regret, fueling worry and remorse. Even if the content of thought is beautiful, excessive thinking tires the mind and obstructs concentration.27 As the Buddha remarked, “you are eaten by your thoughts.”28

  The primary method for working with thoughts is to learn to let them go. Clear the mind of compulsive clutter. In fact, much of what you will do when you begin meditation is to abandon thoughts. Sweep away fantasies of future events, ruminations about past activities, and commentary about present happenings. Train your mind to be quiet by not allowing your attention to fuel a constant stream of chatter and interpretation. One of my early meditation teachers compared this basic quieting of the mind to watching a football game on television with the sound muted. You don’t need the opinions of the commentator. Let go of your internal commentary and watch life’s events unfold with a silent mind.

  The networking capacity of the mind is both baffling and aweinspiring. One contact—a sound, a sight, a touch, a thought—may lead the way through a chain of associations, drawn from the archives of memory. A sight of a fruit bowl might trigger the simple thought, “I wonder what I will have for lunch.” It could be followed by a yearning for Thai noodles, thoughts of beaches along the coast of Thailand or the latest advances in diving equipment, memories of the friend who taught your children to swim, the recollection that he died of cancer, anxiety about medical insurance, and financial worries. Any thought can remove you from what could otherwise have been a mindful observation of a peach in a bowl.