An Introduction to Nuancing and Overcoming the Five Hindrances
As a support for the important practice of journaling your mediation sessions, studying the doctrine of the Five Hindrances in the nuanced way that I present here will serve you well. You can understand and track in real time how the Five Hindrances subtly shade into one another. You can then relate the Five Hindrances to the Five Spiritual Faculties, as will be elucidated in a future post.
The Five Hindrances are thoughts, emotions, or sensations that impede your focus on your intended meditative support (“object”). After journaling a main time-order narrative of your practice session, identify any of the Five Hindrances that arose during the session. You can discuss them in your main narrative to clarify context. Otherwise, note them under a separate heading.
The Five Hindrances track to the Three Poisons (attraction, aversion, and ignorance). The high-level categorical distinction to make among the Five Hindrances is that each is either (1) a form of agitating distraction, or (2) a form of avoidant dullness. We will look at each of these two categories in turn.
All Distractions Manifest as Agitation
Distractions arise as agitation, indicating a mind that is restlessly seeking some other time and place than the meditation session:
Ill-will (vyāpāda, also spelled byāpāda). Aversion is the Poison. Ill-will takes the unambiguous forms of hatred, anger, bitterness, resentment, annoyance, frustration, fear, or like negative affects.
Sensuous desire (kāmacchanda). Attraction is the Poison. Sensuous desire takes the forms of lust, greed, pleasure-seeking, craving, clinging, grasping after, guarding, and other like forms of seeking to fill a perceived or subconscious lack.
Restlessness or worry (uddhacca-kukkucca). Aversion and Attraction are the Poisons. Restlessness and worry are two forms of avoidance. They mark a current inability to calm the mind, each being a combination of ill-will and desire. Restlessness implies desire to escape the present, so aversion toward the present. Worry is aversion toward what might happen in the future, so it is a desirous clinging to the relative past and therefore a regressive form of desire.
Ill-will, sensuous desire, and worry typically arise as fantasies or daydreams. Restlessness may arise as sensations felt in the body, but some semi-conscious narrative underlies this state as well.
Ill-will often arises and intensifies by means of rumination:
mentally rehearsing a past situation
reexperiencing a scene that re-arouses negative emotions
feeling regret over the situation and the consequent negative emotions
Ill-will therefore often focuses on the past. Fantasies that revise what happened or was said also arise, but these fantasies are a form of desire that flows from one’s aversion toward what actually happened. They are a form of ignorance, which is mentally “checking out,” which, in turn, is subtle aversion. Examples of this kind include revenge or reunion fantasies.
Sensuous desire usually focuses on the future and therefore involves fantasy that craves or clings to an object, person, scene, or experience.
Fear is interesting: It can be a form of ill-will when it concerns something pushed away or avoided, but it can also be a form of desire, such as mentally clinging to someone or something in apprehension of future loss. It seems to therefore occupy a place in the mixed aversion-attraction states of restlessness and worry.
Two additions to the Three Poisons (kleshas) are traditionally theorized as outright combinations attraction and aversion to yield Five Poisons. These are (1) pride and (2) jealousy. Naturally, these two poisons can also be conceived as mixed expressions of the agitating three Hindrances.
Agitation Is Also Paradoxically Stupor
The distracting fantasies and daydreams arising from agitation are thought-elaborations: One agitating thought leads to another, which leads to another, in a chain of “free” associations. These chains are are so fixating that the practitioner loses metacognitive awareness of present surroundings and the present moment—not only in daily life, but also in the controlled setting of intentionally focused meditation.
Even though distractions are agitating, their tendency to make us completely lose ourselves in them means that they are also trances, where trance means stupor. We lose awareness that we are even hosting them—that is how hypnotizing they are! And with this intense loss of self-awareness, we forget that we always have a choice to wake up from a trance.
Trance has a central place in meditation practice, but the difference is that, with meditation, we are choosing what to deprogram and what to reprogram. By contrast, distraction means that a subpersonality or “autonomous complex” has taken control of the practitioner. This takeover happens because of weak metacognitive awareness, which in meditation parlance is known as mindfulness.
Mindfulness Offers the Capacity to Choose
The point here is that, at every moment, we have a choice about what thoughts to chase and a choice about how to feel. Because attraction and aversion are expressions of ordinary suffering, as opposed to fundamental suffering, the practice in cultivating samadhi is to cut them off immediately. Calm-staying practice, with the eight jhānas as progressive guideposts, eventually dismantles the Five Hindrances.
The ultimate distracting thought-chain is rebirth into a new samsāric lifetime, which involves self-forgetting of this and all previous lives. If we fail to break this compulsive habit of slipping into trancelike mindlessness, then we condemn ourselves by that choice to ignorance in the next life, which is unlikely to be human or to cross effective teachings, teachers, and practices.
Shattering the illusion that we lack control over our thoughts, emotions, and actions is paramount. In meditation, we practice calming and gladdening the mind. Meditation happens in a controlled environment—a laboratory, if you will, of fabricated supporting conditions—in which we isolate variables and focus our energy on breaking paralyzing casts over our otherwise sovereign choice making. We begin with meditative trances (jhanas) that induce pleasure, which reinforces motivation to practice.
Emotional Shutdown Manifests as Dullness
So much for agitating distractions. Now we examine the other pole of the Five Hindrances, which is the more common one among beginning and sometimes even intermediate meditators. There are two Hindrances, and both align with the poison of ignorance (in the sense of ignoring). Ignorance, you will read in detail in CP2A chapter 1, is subtle aversion:
Sloth and torpor (thīna-middha). Sloth and torpor presents as laziness, dullness, boredom, indifference, dissipation, or sleepiness. It is any state of low energy, half-heartedness, and confusion. In terms of the Five Spiritual Faculties required for spiritual progress, which will be elucidated in a future post, this Hindrance expresses lack of clarity and lack of effort. The antidote is cultivation of clarity and effort.
Doubt (vicikiccha). Doubt is lack of the spiritual faculty variously translated as enthusiasm, conviction, confidence, faith, or trust. Specifically, doubt is traditionally glossed as distrust in the Buddha’s teachings. More generally, in A. H. Almaas’s psychospiritual terms, it is Basic Distrust of reality as it is, here and now.
Both these Hindrances arise as subconscious defenses against seeing reality as it actually is, because the egoic identity is absolutely intent on strategizing against awakening. The practitioner must war against the egoic identity structure by overriding it with mindful choice.
The good news about sloth and torpor is that abundant antidotes and preventive measures exist for addressing this Hindrance. If the practitioner perseveres, then even the sensations of dullness and sleepiness can be meditatively investigated with high interest and brightness of mind, which naturally dispels dullness. Antidotes will be further explored in future posts.
Only Emotion Neutralizes Poisonous Doubt
Doubt is traditionally said to be the most poisonous, the most dangerous, of all Five Hindrances. It typically trips people up at the beginning of the path.
The Antidote of Faith Is a Conundrum
The de facto antidote to doubt—faith—can seem like a cruel “God joke” of a conundrum because, before attainments or at least extraordinary experiences happen for the practitioner, the only faith available is blind faith. True faith is confidence and becomes so only when it is an outcome of quality practice, not a prerequisite. This is the difficulty aspirants must face down with courage or even desperation early on.
Because the antidote faith poses such a conundrum, doubt can be a stubborn challenge for quite some time. If the practitioner has not yet enjoyed experiential proof of path efficacy, that fact may keep him or her afraid of discovering that the path does not work, or that personal capacity is lacking for it to work.
Traditional Dogma Can Sow Doubt
It must be acknowledged that one external source of doubt is rigid traditionalism. Most traditional lineage teachers and centers will tell you that it takes 10,000+ lifetimes to awaken, apparently presuming that this life cannot possibly be the one in which you will do so. This discouragement is meant to keep practitioners humble, but the trouble is that it is not the honest truth.
It does not take even most of this lifetime to reach realization, and it is not particularly difficult to do so once you decide in earnest to take responsibility for ending your suffering.
We are not living in the Middle Ages or feudal Tibet. We have access to thousands of Dharma texts and many teachers of methods and maps, without all the ancient and alien cultural trappings. We each have buddha-nature, too, guaranteeing that awakening is our birthright.
The kingdom of Buddhahood beckons from within. All we have to do is stop arguing with it.
Fears of Both Failure and Success Sabotage Motivation
If the practitioner hosts fear of failure, then he or she may well subconsciously sabotage the entire experiment at the level of motivation. Consequently, subtle aversion will manifest as sloth and torpor, or outright doubt will manifest as distrust of the teacher, distrust of the instructions, distrust that enlightenment is real, or ambivalence about one’s available time and energy to commit to a fair trial.
The underlying fear of failure plagues everyone at some point, or points, on the path. Because it is so preemptively destructive, however, it must be vigorously crushed every time it arises, until it no longer arises. Refuse to passively host doubt, for doing so lets it remain the decider, and then the poison spreads.
You must become the decider. You must meta-decide to be the decider, again and again, reaching deep down inside yourself. This meta-challenge is a high-stakes one and, unfortunately, the first one likely to be encountered on the path.
In addition to fear of failure, nearly everyone has a secret, subconscious fear of path success, as strange as that may sound. Yes, fear of enlightenment is a common experience. But remember this: When the proof of path efficacy emerges, then doubt succumbs to the “hair on fire” urgency to awaken. At that point, Dharma naturally becomes the center of one’s life, practice is supermotivated, and doubt is extinguished.
Motivation Is an Emotion
Default doubt and distrust are why preliminary practices exist and are traditionally emphasized. The antidote to doubt, in the form enthusiasm, means that you need to access inspirational upliftment. You need to gladden the mind. Cultivate bodhicitta, do refuge practice, and call in the buddhas from across space and time for help. Pray to them, even as you mostly distrust that any of this activity will “work.”
Ask all the buddhas, mahasiddhas, saints, and Dharma protectors to support you in your practice. Set up an inspiring altar and meditation spot befitting a regal buddha. List in your journal what gladdens your mind. Then try applying these personal gladdening methods before meditating. Journal your results to track what works and to gain momentum from reflection.
Appointing a nonnegotiable daily Dharma timeslot also helps. When you cannot bring yourself to practice, or when you practice only 10 minutes, then use the remaining appointed timeslot to study assigned Dharma or my recommended psychospiritual texts. Set aside time daily for Dharma, even if a particular day does not include meditation practice. Devotion to balanced study and practice will help you awaken.
Do you feel uninspired to do any of these upliftment activities? Do them anyway. Go through the motions with vigor. Fake it till you make it. Straighten your spine and resolve to remain the meta-decider. In everything you do toward awakening, if you do not currently sincerely feel it, then fake it till you do.
Faking it means play-acting that you are glad to practice. For example, if you feel uninspired as practice begins, smile a little Mona Lisa smile throughout the session or after you redirect attention after a distraction.
Feeling follows any energetic expression symbolic of that feeling—something I learned as a stage actor in my college years. When I had to feel angry for a scene in rehearsal, I would pound my fists on a table until I felt angry enough to deliver my assigned lines with feeling. This action-first strategy works and is in fact a long classic method for stage-acting with true emotional motivation.
In addition to all these cultivated upliftment measures, you can develop the meditative absorptions (jhana practice) to elicit the five jhanic mental factors, which will eliminate the Five Hindrances directly. Jhanas are a potential “wired into” human physiology—so, again, our birthright.
Doubt is the chief Hindrance that practitioners must overcome with all their might if they want to end suffering in this rare and precious human lifetime. Earnestly wanting the fruit is precisely what dispels doubt, for motivation is an emotion. To establish motivation before practice, close your eyes and feel down to the core of your being the sincerity of your desire for enlightenment, for an end to suffering.
The desire for enlightenment is the one wholesome desire, you see, so use it to motivate your practice sessions. Complement this desire by refusing to cloak your own suffering with trivial pleasure-seeking and other forms of emotionally numbing procrastination. With genuine desire to awaken in this lifetime, you gladden the mind in the context of, during, and by means of consistent daily meditation practice.
Future posts will delineate meditative antidotes systematically, as well as the related Five Spiritual Faculties. So stay tuned, or sign up for notifications of new post topics.
Welcome! I’m Jenny. Back in 1982, at the age of 19, I began studying Eastern philosophy and doctrine. In the late 1990s, I authored a 400-page doctoral dissertation comparing Zen koan aporias to the deconstructive rhetoric of silence in modern American texts—an East-West interface that still informs my teaching and writings today.
2010 marked the beginning of my formal Buddhist meditation practice. After engaging Theravadin practices in late 2013, Stream Entry quickly happened in August 2014. Mahamudra Fourth Yoga stabilized in July 2015. I then began practicing within the Bon Dzogchen tradition and began writing content now informing The Critical Path to Awakening (forthcoming). In 2017, I founded Axis Mundi Awakening to offer an intensive whole-path Buddhist awakening program to select, highly motivated students. Interested to learn more? See my teaching approach and curriculum overview.