Saturday Shinzo Sangha Talks by Will Holcomb, St. Louis, MO
April 9, 2016
The Five Hindrances: Part 1
Good morning. Last week we had a guest here to speak, Hoko Karnagis, who talked about
Zen Master Dogen’s spin on the Satipatthana Sutta – how he viewed those teachings.
Satipatthana Sutta is the sutta (sutra) about mindfulness training and is very central to the
Theravadan tradition. Clearly, Dogen was familiar with these teachings but he had a special
way of looking at them. Contained within the Satipatthana Sutta is a discussion of the Five
Hindrances. There’s a section in our little Essential Buddhist Teachings book about the Five
Hindrances.
So what are these Five Hindrances? The Buddha considered them to be very important. They
were mind states that interfered with one’s vision – they cloud the way we see things. They
interfere with the cultivation of wisdom and compassion. Mind states that any meditator should
be aware of. But they also occur outside of meditation. They occur all the time. Probably some
of them you experienced within the last 30 minutes. Maybe all of them. So what are they?
The first is sometimes called sensual greed or covetousness – basically wanting what you
don’t have. A desire of the senses, seeing something, feeling something, hearing something,
whatever that arouses the sense of desire and want.
The second is a state of ill will, anger, or resentment. And the third is sloth and torpor.
Sloth being slackness of mind and torpor being slackness of body. A lethargic state.
Drowsiness, low energy. The next on the list, the fourth, is restlessness, remorse, worry, a
state of mind moving around, looking at a mental video – preoccupation with the past, some
unpleasantness in the past, worry, preoccupation with some anticipated unpleasantness in the
future. Just a restless mind. Thinking, thinking, thinking. And the fifth of the hindrances is
skeptical doubt. Sometimes this is referred to cynicism – not believing in what you’re doing.
Thinking that your efforts are not going to work.
Today I’d just like to introduce the five hindrances and talk about one particular paradox that
they present when you’re meditating. Hoko, last week, talked about an attitude of acceptance
during meditation. An attitude of letting in, of being aware of mind without discrimination of
what might be called “swallowing the Mississippi.” Just letting it all in. Letting it pass through –
not grasping, not pushing away.
How does that center with these teachings of the Five Hindrances? The Buddha indicates that
they really get in the way. They’re really something to deal with and get rid of, in a way. Not
accept. Is everything that goes on in your mind during sitting, during the last 30 minutes, is all
of that zazen? You could say it is.
But you could also say that, if you’re just thinking about your grocery list and what you need to
get at the store on the way home, then it’s not really zazen. If you’re lost in memories of the
past – not zazen. If you’re thinking about ways you could have responded to Fred when he
insulted you last week – not zazen. Or when you’re dozing off, just drowsy, a dreamy state,
probably not zazen. Now, noticing these things happening, that’s zazen. But being lost in
them, probably not.
A paradox that comes up with these is, if you get too heavy handed about it, you can develop
anger and aversion to these hindrances. You can fight with them, try to conquer and overcome
them. You can be in a state of war trying to deal with what your mind is doing. And then you
get into a never-ending circle of aversion. The practice of dealing with these hindrances is a
subtle one.
According to the Buddha, the rewards are great. It says here in one passage from the sutta,
“But if a monk has overcome these five impediments and hindrances, these
overgrowths of the mind that stultify insight, then it is possible that, with his strong
insight, he can know his own true good, the good of others, and the good of both.”
In the Satipatthana Sutta, there is a brief description of how one deals with each one of these
hindrances. The content is repetitive, so I’ll just read the one about ill will. It says, “When ill will
is present in him, the monk knows there is ill will in me. Or when ill will is absent, he knows
there is no ill will in me. She knows how the arising of non-arisen ill will comes to be, and
knows how the rejection of arisen ill will comes to be, and knows how the non-arising in the
future of the rejected ill-will comes to be.” So it comes down to really paying attention to the
causes and conditions that feed or nourish these states, how they come to be and how to let
go of them.
In thinking about this, I was caught by a section from this book of talks by Dainin Katagiri that
have been transcribed by his students; I’m sure it was a great task to transcribe them. Dainin
Katagiri was Shoken Weincoff’s teacher. Some of you may have met Shoken when he was
here for the ordination ceremony a couple weeks ago. Kalen was a student of Shoken.
He’s talking about anger and ill will here and how to work with it. It goes, “Next, how can you
turn the poison into the wheel of anger? In the Shobogenzo, Dogen says, ‘when the demon
becomes Buddha, you should subdue him and let him become Buddha by dealing with the
demon as Buddha. When the Buddha becomes Buddha, you should intend to become Buddha
and let him become Buddha by dealing with the Buddha as Buddha. When the person
becomes Buddha, you should harmonize him and let him become Buddha by dealing with the
person as Buddha. You should know that there is a passage to freedom from the moment
when you deal with something as Buddha.’” That’s the end of Dogen’s quote.
Katagiri goes on. “As long as demons exist in the world, they have their own reason to exist.
That reason is completely beyond our human speculation. The demons exist in buddha’s
world; so we have to find the realm of buddhas within the realm of demons. In other words, in
the realm of pain and suffering, we have to find the realm of peace and harmony. This is
religious practice. You cannot find any peace by escaping from human pain and
suffering. You have to find peace and harmony right in the midst of human pain. That is
the purpose of spiritual life.”
We’ll go through these Five Hindrances in other talks individually. But I wanted to introduce
them. They’re practice aids – just being able to identify these states so that you can gain some
facility with how to work with them is the practice.