Day 2 - 2nd Day Blues -Distractions AN5 5.51 July 14

So today is, as Bhante would say, the second day blues, because now you're getting acquainted with the meditation, for those of you who are starting this practice, and maybe even those who are starting with the Six Directions. You'll notice that the first couple of days you will be met with some challenging distractions. And so today I'll be talking about how you deal with those distractions and what are the general distractions you're going to find yourself dealing with.

So the sutta I'm reading is from the Anguttara Nikaya. It's the Book of the Fives. And it's called, well, it's in the section that's called Hindrances. And it's number 51, which is called Obstructions. So the word hindrances or obstructions, they hinder your mind's flow or the flow of your attention. So your object of meditation, if you're beginning, is the feeling of loving-kindness or it's the Six Directions. If you're doing the Six Directions, it's the feeling of loving-kindness or any of the brahmaviharas.

And as you're doing that, what you'll notice is your attention starts to become dispersed. First you had the intention of bringing up the object of meditation, and your mind was resting in that, staying with it, and then before you know it, your attention goes somewhere else. And that's because your attention is divided. When somebody says, I'm giving you my undivided attention, that means I'm listening solely to you, right? So in this case the mind becomes distracted and the attention becomes divided, so now your mind becomes interested in or is deviated towards other things rather than the object of meditation. So how do we bring that back? We use right effort, and the right effort here is basically that you got distracted, letting go of that distraction using release and relax, generating a wholesome state of mind. How do you do that? Bringing up the smile, making sure that you're smiling, and then maintaining that wholesome state by returning back to your object of meditation, and then repeating whenever you need to. That is to say, whenever the mind gets distracted again, use the 6R's.

Now the Buddha has talked about different kinds of hindrances, but there are five main hindrances that we'll talk about, that, you know, a practitioner will deal with at one point or another in the meditation. So I'll begin. Thus have I heard on one occasion. The Blessed One was dwelling at Savatthi in Jeta's Grove, Anathapindika's park. There the Blessed One addressed the bhikkhus. When we say bhikkhus, it comes from the Sanskrit word bhikshu, and it's often translated as beggar, but that would be a mistranslation. Bhikshu is somebody, or bhikkhu is somebody, who subsists on bhikkha. Bhikkha is alms. Bhikkha is something that somebody gives from their heart to someone else, and subsisting on that is called being a bhikkhu. And so whenever the Buddha, he's called the Blessed One, Bhagavan, whenever he addresses his students, whenever he addresses his monks or nuns, he would say bhikkhus for the monks and bhikkhunis for the nuns. "Venerable sir," those bhikkhus replied. The Blessed One said this: "Bhikkhus, there are these five obstructions, hindrances, encumbrances of the mind, states that weaken wisdom."

What five? Sensual desire is an obstruction, a hindrance, an encumbrance of the mind, a state that weakens wisdom. Ill will is an obstruction, a hindrance, an encumbrance of the mind, a state that weakens wisdom. is an obstruction, a hindrance, an encumbrance of the mind, a state that weakens wisdom. Restlessness and remorse is an obstruction, a hindrance, an encumbrance of the mind, a state that weakens wisdom.

Doubt is an obstruction, a hindrance, an encumbrance of the mind, a state that weakens wisdom. These are the five obstructions, hindrances, encumbrances of the mind, states that weaken wisdom. So these are the five: sensual desire, ill will, restlessness, dullness or drowsiness or sloth and torpor, and doubt. So what does sensual desire mean? Here, sensual desire essentially means that the mind gets distracted by, let's, it's met when you're meditating and you have your eyes closed, you have obstructed any kind of light from reaching your eyes, now you're not seeing anything, so generally you meditate with your eyes closed, so that sense base, that field of sensory experience, is closed off, but you still hear things, you can still feel things in terms of your body, and you can still feel or hear the wind, you can hear people, you know, all kinds of experiences that are happening. And so when your mind deviates towards that, and when you open the door, you'll see that on both sides of the door, walking in and walking out, it says, "Please close the door softly and quietly," right?

That's happened because previously people have just basically opened the door like this and then banged it without even knowing it. And it creates irritation in the mind because the mind starts to deviate towards that. Now, you have to get to a point in your meditation practice that even if somebody does that, your mind just accepts it, doesn't deviate towards it, doesn't get distracted by it, doesn't direct its attention to it. For a moment, you feel it, you experience it, but the sound passes right through you.

If your mind becomes very concentrated, you are staying with your object in such a way that nothing else is going on, and then suddenly that sound arises and you get jittered by it, then that means that you are doing wrong effort, wrong practice, because the key here is not to get one-pointed in your focus. When we talk about the meditation practice, the way we are doing the meditation practices, we're using a theme object that is loving-kindness, and we're, in this case let's say, allowing our mind to rest in it. Our mind doesn't become the loving-kindness. Yes, our mind is infused with the feeling of loving-kindness, but we don't look at it so closely that we forget what's going on in the periphery. So one of the analogies that I use is: imagine the mind, or the attention of the mind, being like a satellite around the earth.

And it's orbiting around the earth. And so the earth, the planet here, is the object of meditation, the feeling of loving-kindness. Your attention is unified around it, gravitates around the feeling of loving-kindness. But the moment it becomes very focused, tries too hard, what happens? The satellite gets closer and closer to the earth and gets pulled into the gravitational field and crashes. If you don't have enough attention, if you have sloth and torpor, which we'll talk about later, where the mind is too relaxed, too tranquil, then what's going to happen is the satellite will start to go out of orbit, to deviate, and it's no longer around the earth, it's now around the moon or some other planet, drifting out into space. And this is what happens with the mind's attention. So the key here is to have a balanced approach when it comes to applying your attention. If your mind is arrested calm and collected and there is an in the mind, then you are in the sweet spot. If you start to constrict your mind, your mind becomes too concentrated, too focused.

What's going to happen is you're going to experience different kinds of tightness, tension in the mind and the body. If your mind becomes too open, too wide, then you will attention, your mind starts to sway here and there, and the reason why you want to have that open awareness is because this is how you teach yourself how this process works. There is no teacher here. Your mind is your own teacher. When you observe in the way that allows you to see things as they are, you teach yourself.

When the hindrance arises, your mind recognizes it, but only if there's enough open attention. If the mind is too focused, it's not able to notice what happens in the mind, and if it's too relaxed, again it deviates and doesn't notice this or that. So if you have this open awareness mindset, where it's like you create a space around the idea of that which is observing and that which is the object of meditation, if you create this sort of buffer where you're observing how mind is meditating, then you have the proper amount of attention. Then it's more like, instead of saying that I am meditating, instead of saying I am feeling loving-kindness, it's more like you're observing the mind experiencing loving-kindness. You're observing the mind resting in the feeling of loving-kindness.

You're observing the mind radiating in the Six Directions. And when you do that, then you notice when a distraction arises, or when the mind starts to get distracted, and you can let go of it. So you're just observing how mind's process works. This is how you teach yourself. So when we talk about sensual desire, what is sensual desire? As I said, your mind starts, you hear something, or you feel an ant crawl on your skin, and now your attention goes there. And now you get distracted by that. And now your mind starts to think about this and that. Just because of one sensory input, one contact of some kind of sensory input, now your mind gets distracted and flows here or there, rather than paying attention to the object of meditation.

When we talk about ill will, that's really aversion. Aversion here can mean frustration, irritation, anger, hatred, being upset by something. So being irritated by the noise of the air conditioning, being irritated by that person who keeps coughing, being irritated by the lawnmower, being by the door opening and closing. Again, where does that irritation stem from? How does that irritation arise?

It arises because your attention was deviated from your object and went there. And as a result of that, your mind got irritated because it's no longer on its object. So how do you let go of that irritation? Do you allow the mind to start to get further irritated and go down different lines of thinking that start to strengthen that irritation, strengthen that ill will, strengthen that anger and frustration? Or do you stop it in its tracks? And how do you stop it in its tracks? By recognizing.

This first step of the 6R's, which is Recognize, is what allows you to become mindful again. Remember I said mindfulness is remembering to observe how mind's attention moves from one thing to the other. And the only way you can do that is by having that metacognition, the ability to just observe what mind is doing. So that is the sati sampajanna. Yesterday I talked about sati, which is from the Sanskrit word smriti, which means memory, to remember. Remember to observe how mind's attention moves from one thing to the other.

And then sampajanya, which is another aspect of mindfulness, that essentially means to understand, to comprehend, to know, to realize, to recognize. So what is it that you're comprehending? What is it that you are recognizing? What is it that you are understanding? You're understanding where your mind is in every moment. Now mind is meditating. Now mind is experiencing loving kindness. Now mind is bringing up the feeling of joy. Now mind is radiating in this direction or that direction. Now mind is in quiet. The ability to just see this is what's known as sampanjanya, and that is what allows you to create that space so that you don't become focused, so that you don't become the mind itself, and allow the mind to do what it's doing. So the irritation arises every time you identify with the practice. In other words, you say, I am meditating. This is my meditation. I am bringing up this feeling of loving kindness. I am radiating in the six directions. Let go of that. I am.

And just observe things as they are. As you do that, your mind naturally becomes collected, naturally has what's known as samadhi. What is samadhi? Sama means to be even, to be balanced, to be the same. Dhi is a short form for buddhi, which means the mind, which means intellect, having even-mindedness, right, having the ability to remain equal in all things. And that's because the mind's attention remains collected. That is samadhi. The mind's attention remains undivided and the awareness remains open and relaxed. When you have what's known as unification of mind, ekagrata, or ekagrata, unification of mind, that basically means, again, the attention of the mind remains undivided.

Orbits around its object of meditation. This is the way this process works. And the more this happens, the less there is scope of hindrances arising. It doesn't mean you're suppressing the hindrances. That is the wrong effort here. The moment you suppress and push down the hindrances, what happens? They come back up again. At some point, maybe for an hour, you're sitting there and you're thinking, wow, my mind is very collected. I've suppressed, I've just pushed down the hindrances, and I feel great amounts of joy and clarity and happiness and tranquility.

That's great. Wonderful. And that maybe lasts for a couple of hours, or maybe throughout the day. But then what happens? All of a sudden, something makes contact with your ears that's irritating. And what happens? Irritation arises. Or your mind suddenly becomes agitated or confused about what's going on. And that's because you haven't dealt with the hindrance when it arose in the right way, in the effective way, in the harmonious way.

So this practice is not about suppressing. This practice is not about pushing things down, because what happens when you push down the ball underwater and you let go of it? What happens? The ball comes right back up with full force. You have to deal with the hindrances when they arise. Whenever they arise, you notice it. You try to fight with it, the moment you try to push it, the moment you try to pull it apart, then the mind is unsatisfied with the present moment, and the mind is now in a state of craving, in a state of attachment, in a state of tanha, and that manifests, you will see, as tightness and tension in the body and in the mind.

So when you recognize that and you let it go in that moment, by releasing your attention from that, relaxing the tightness and tension, which is a manifestation of that attachment or aversion, and then generating a wholesome state of mind with a smile, and then maintaining it by coming back to your object in meditation, then you will be doing the right effort, be exercising what's known as right mindfulness, which will lead to natural collectedness of the mind, where then the mind will experience certain kinds of states. So here the Buddha says, because without having abandoned these five obstructions, hindrances, encumbrances of the mind, states that weaken wisdom, it is impossible that one with powerless and feeble wisdom might know his own good, the good of others, or the good of both, or realize a superhuman distinction in knowledge and vision worthy of the noble ones.

What does he mean by that? When your mind gets distracted by these hindrances, you're unable to remain mindful of the reality of existence of things that are happening. What is that reality of existence? Understanding, in that moment, that things are arising and passing away without any involvement from you. But the moment you start to engage with those hindrances, the moment you start to engage with the processes of the mind, now you start identifying with them. Now you have lost wisdom. And by identifying with them and having craving and attachment and aversion, your mind is unable to access what he calls superhuman states, or super mundane states. These are what are known as jhanas, which we will talk about tomorrow.

But these are levels of understanding. These are levels of samadhi that your mind can get into and experience, of joy and relief and happiness. So I talked about sensual desire. I talked a little bit about ill will. The one thing that a lot of people experience during the first few days of the retreat is sloth and torpor, dullness and drowsiness. And that's okay. That's okay. You just have to accept that that's what's going to happen if it happens. A lot of people try to fight with it. A lot of people try to see what can they do about it. And yes, there are certain antidotes that you can use to deal with and alleviate that sloth and torpor. But what is that sloth and torpor, what is that dullness and drowsiness arising from? Sometimes it can arise because of lack of sleep. Sometimes it can arise because of the changes in your schedule, which invariably have happened in the last couple of days as you move from wherever you have been to now, here in this retreat setting, and when there is less stimulation in the mind and in the senses.

Then the mind starts to get bored. The mind has nothing to do, and as a result of that it starts to become dull and starts to experience drowsiness. How do you know you're experiencing dullness and drowsiness? There's a certain level of heaviness in the mind. It's almost like something is pulling your mind's attention, gravitating towards it. And you might think that you're meditating. You might think, yes, here I am with my object of meditation. And then what happens? There are holes that are poked in that attention, and then there are gaps in that attention, and before you know it, your mind starts to dull out. Usually that's followed by a physical action, where your head starts to flop like that, and you don't realize what's going on, or you might. And you start to get back up again and you say, okay, I'll make an extreme amount of effort. I'll try my best to stay with that object in meditation. And before you know it, you experience sloth and torpor again.

So there are a few ways to deal with sloth and torpor, some few practical ways of dealing with it. One is to meditate in the light. Speaking of which, why are the lights not on? You want to meditate in some light. There you go. Because that's going to keep your mind alert and open. Now, it depends on the weather. If it's not too hot, you can try meditating outside in natural sunlight, natural daylight. That can help you with the sloth and torpor. Another thing you can do is go for a walk, go for a swift walk for about 20 to 30 minutes, come back and sit, see how your mind is. That doesn't help? Then walk backwards for about 15 to 20 minutes. Why? Because when you walk backwards, you pay more attention to what's going on so that you don't trip and fall. So your mind's attention naturally starts to get collected. When you do this, do that for about 15 to 20 minutes, and then come back and sit and see if that helps. Now, if that doesn't help, do a combination of those things, and splash cold water on your face and come back.

Now, if that doesn't help, go for a nap. Take a nap. I actually do encourage napping on this retreat, but I'll tell you what kind of napping, because when I said this at one point, two retreats ago, one person said, I'm doing everything, naps, and they're really helping. And I said, how long are your naps for? Oh, about three hours. That's not the nap I'm talking about. I'm talking about 15 to 20 minute naps. That's enough. That's a very good amount of rest for the mind and body before it starts to deviate into grogginess, because anything more than 20 minutes and now the mind starts to fall asleep. But if you give that rest to the mind and body and you come back and you sit, you will notice that your attention starts to become more collected, rather than having a lack of attention.

And then sometimes you just have to go through it. That is to say, if you're sitting for about, let's say, 30 minutes to an hour, but all you do is sit through it, it's fine. You just keep doing it until you go through it, until you go past it. It's like walking into a haze, walking into the fog, and you have no idea what's going on, but you keep walking, and eventually you come out on the other side, and that sloth and torpor starts to dissipate.

Then we have the opposite of that, which is restlessness. Here it's also understood as restlessness and remorse. So restlessness, the analogy for restlessness is like wind-whipped water. Imagine you are looking at your reflection in a still surface on the lake, and then all of a sudden the wind, the breeze, comes in, and what does it do? It creates these ripples. So the ability to see your reflection in the water becomes distorted, and this is what restlessness does. What are the symptoms of restlessness? Restlessness arises and creates a lot of thoughts in the mind. It is a symptom of restlessness, that is to say, when you try too hard, when you become too focused, you will feel this tightness and tension around your head.

It's like a band of tension around here. And that can give rise to a lot of thoughts, a lot of mental chatter and activity, and your mind is unable to do anything with that. When you notice that happening, how do you deal with it? First, you recognize, mind is distracted by this restlessness. Then you release your attention from that, and you relax.

And when you relax, give a couple of seconds for the mind to really feel what that spacious, relaxed awareness is. Because when you relax, your mind becomes like the cloudless, open, clear blue sky. Mundane form of nirvana, of nibbana, where there's absolutely no craving, no distraction, no identification going on. And then come back to the smile. Notice if you're smiling, and if you're not, bring up the smile, and then bring up the feeling, or go into the 6R's, or go back to mind, whatever your object is. The moment you use that relaxed step, it starts to create this openness in your awareness, and when you have that openness in your awareness, the mind starts to become tranquil and serene and equanimous. Now you have pulled your attention back a little bit. You see, when we talk about sloth and torpor, or dullness and drowsiness, and on the other hand, restlessness and remorse. So what does that mean, restlessness and remorse? Restlessness can arise in the form of anxiety about the future, and remorse is regrets about the past, and your mind starts to fluctuate between these two, between the past and the future.

instead of just being here, relaxed in the awareness of the present moment. So when you notice this happening, as soon as you notice that the mind is fluctuating, you have stopped that whole flow of restlessness in that moment. In fact, you have done that for any distraction. Every time you recognize that you were distracted, all of the different distractions that were about to arise stop right there in their tracks in that moment.

And as you do this, you take your attention away from that and bring it back to the present moment by anchoring your attention to the mind and body and then relaxing it. So what does it mean to relax, right? When you feel that tightness and tension in the mind and body, you feel like there is this gripping tightness that's there. It might be subtle, but it's just a matter of allowing there to be space in the mind, allowing the mind to just alleviate any tension in the body. So when you do that and you're relaxed and you come back to the smile, you bring up a little bit of joy because of that smile, and then you come back, you return to your object. But now when you return to your object, you return with regained sati, that is mindfulness, and sampajanna, that is comprehension or understanding, which means now you created enough space. When you have tightness, intention as a result of restlessness, as a result of trying too hard, it's like the aperture of the camera: the camera becomes too focused

and it's not able to see the full picture. Do you bring a little... defocus a little bit, relax the tightness, and create spaciousness then? But when you have that drowsiness and lack of attention and sleepiness and dullness, what's happening? You're out of focus. The aperture of the camera is too unfocused, it's too wide, you can't really see what's going on because there's too much there and there's not enough focus. So you have to bring that back into balance, and the way you do it is using the 6R's. And then finally we have what's known as doubt, vichikicca as it's known in Pali, doubt. So what is doubt here? Doubt really means uncertainty about what state of mind

you're in. Confusion about whether you are in a wholesome state of mind or an unwholesome state of mind. This can manifest in thoughts in the mind as: am I doing this right? Am I actually feeling loving kindness? Am I fooling myself here? What am I doing here? You know, am I actually meditating? Where am I sleeping? What's going on, right? These kinds of thoughts manifest, and these are all related to the hindrance of doubt.

The cousin of doubt is indecision, lack of certainty in things that you do. So what I'm saying is these hindrances arise in your mind during the meditation, but that doesn't mean that they don't arise during your daily life. It's because you have sat down and now you have brought attention to these that they seem more prominent, but in reality these five hindrances and their subsets are there, present in daily life as well. So what does that mean when we say indecision? It means that you're not able to make a proper decision, or you make a decision half-heartedly and then you go back on it. It's a very restless place to be in, right? You might have heard of buyer's remorse, for example: you make a decision to buy something and then you say, oh, maybe I shouldn't have gotten that. What do you try to do? You try to get a refund and try to cancel the order or whatever it is. These are all manifestations of doubt in some ways. When you can recognize the of your thoughts in that way, then you realize, oh, there is confusion in the mind.

And so the antidote for doubt is being certain, having certitude about what is present in the mind, whether it is wholesome or unwholesome. Now, how do you recognize a wholesome state from an unwholesome state? An unwholesome state of mind is one of these five hindrances or their subsets, like anger, like irritation, like hatred, like greed, like jealousy, like stinginess, all of the different kinds of mental factors that cause the mind to become closed and constricted, that cause the mind to experience tightness and tension. These are all unwholesome states of mind.

But what are wholesome states of mind? Wholesome states of mind naturally create a relaxed space in your body and in your mind. A wholesome state of mind is beneficial for you, and it doesn't harm another person either. It's beneficial for yourself and beneficial for the others. This is what is meant when the Buddha talks about: he might not know his own good, the good of others, and the good of both. He doesn't know what is beneficial for himself, what is beneficial for others, and what is beneficial for both, or in other words, what is harmless for oneself, what is harmless for another, and what is harmless for both. So that state of mind which is wholesome doesn't cause harm to yourself and doesn't cause harm to others, and neither causes harm to both.

So how do you know that's a wholesome state of mind? Your mind remains tranquil, your mind remains happy and elated. Your mind doesn't have any thoughts of grasping, any greediness in it. Your mind doesn't have any irritation and hatred in it. Your mind isn't deluded, doesn't have any delusions about what is right or wrong, what is effective or ineffective, what is harmonious and not harmonious. And so this is how you let go of doubt, by essentially comprehending what's going on, by essentially having attention and investigating. And when I say investigate, it doesn't mean you need to analyze what it is that's going on. It's more like just being present, having the presence of mind to understand what is there and what is not there. And then, if it's something unwholesome, letting it go by using the 6R's and coming back to a more wholesome state of mind. Suppose a river were flowing down from a mountain, traveling a long distance with a swift current, carrying along much flotsam. Then on both of its banks a man would open irrigation channels.

But once you start to experience these levels, now you see for yourself what are known as super mundane states, experiencing greater degrees of joy and relief and happiness that is not tied to sensory experience, that is not dependent upon sensual experiences, and that is why they're called otherworldly. So once you have abandoned these states, that is to say, you recognize that there is a hindrance in one or more of these hindrances, you let go of them by releasing, relaxing tightness and tension, bringing up the smile, coming back to your object. What happens now? Your mind gets more collected, and maybe for a couple of seconds, maybe for five seconds, maybe for 30 seconds, maybe for up to a minute, the mind remains with its object of meditation, and then again a hindrance arises. So what do you do? You repeat. You do the 6R's again, and you become collected again. And this is the practice, this is the process of how you go from a mind that is craving, with distractions

filled with identification, to a mind that is let go of creating and experiences freedom in that moment. And then that freedom becomes more and more apparent and prolonged as your mind remains more and more collected. But the moment you start to beat yourself up and say, why is this hindrance arising, and get frustrated with that hindrance, taking it personally and identifying with it, then you're going the wrong path, then you're causing yourself more pain and suffering. But when you realize that and let go of that and come back to a mind that's more collected, you stay there for longer periods of time, and then suddenly the hindrance comes back again. This time it comes back with weaker force.

Why? Because the hindrance subsists on your attention. The hindrance subsists, or is strengthened, by your taking it personally. The hindrance is strengthened by you fighting with it, by trying to push it away, by trying to it. But the moment you use the right effort in the form of the 6R's, the hindrance starts to weaken. It might arise again after a few seconds, but it becomes weaker. And when it becomes weaker, what do you do? You do the six R's again. And then maybe after 10 or 15 seconds it comes back up again. So what do you do? The six R's now. You're staying with your object for maybe up to a minute or so. This time you notice, oh, there's no hindrance at all. The mind is just very collected. And then a hindrance arises again, but this time it's very weak. You let go of it again using the 6R's, and eventually your mind becomes more collected for longer periods. And this is how it experiences these super mundane levels. River were flowing down from a mountain, traveling a long distance with a swift current, carrying along much flotsam.

Then a man would close up the irrigation channels on both of its banks. In such a case, the current in the middle of the river would not be dispersed. In other words, the current that is your attention, the flow of your attention, is undispersed, is not divided, is not weakened, spread out and divided, so that the river could travel a long distance. So that your attention remains with its object of meditation for a longer period of time.

Let's share some merit. May suffering ones be suffering free and the fear-struck fearless be. May the grieving shed all grief and may all beings find relief. May all beings share this merit that we have thus acquired for the acquisition of all kinds of happiness. May beings inhabiting space and earth, devas and nagas of mighty power, share this merit of ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation. Sadhu, Sadhu.