June 6 -Day 2 -First Day Blues-Origin of Hindrances

So it's been your first full day of meditation practice. And as you get into retreat mode, you're going to start to see for yourself that this meditation might not be as easy as you thought it might be. And the reason for that is because there's all kinds of things coming and going in the mind. And these things that come and go in the mind, that deflect the mind from its object, are what are known as hindrances, distractions.

A hindrance can be sensual craving, ill will, restlessness, sloth and torpor, and doubt. And they can arise in many different ways. And they're not limited to just these hindrances. In the suttas, in the Majjhima canon, there are a myriad of different kinds of hindrances that arise. There can be fear, there can be anger, there can be lust, there can be jealousy, there can be covetousness, there can be pride, conceit, arrogance, all kinds of things that come and go in the mind. But for the purpose of meditation, and to simplify and make it easy, we're looking at these five basic hindrances.

So the process of right effort, the process of using the 6R's, is the general antidote, the general mechanism through which you are able to recognize and let go of these hindrances and replace them with something uplifting. And ultimately, you are starting to bring your attention back to its object. And you are sharpening your attention when you do this.

In Majjhima Nikaya 44, 43, 44, one of those, there it says that the equipment for right collectedness, there are two things that are needed. Right effort and right mindfulness. Right effort, there are four components to right effort. And this right effort is not necessary just for meditation. It's applicable in every aspect of our lives. What are the four right efforts? The first right effort is to recognize and prevent the arising of unwholesome states. Right? So any unarisen unwholesome states. What is an unarisen unwholesome state?

Any of the hindrances that have come up or are about to come up, to recognize that. The second right effort is to abandon already arisen unwholesome states. Right? Unwholesome states of mind. So I recognize in my mind there is craving. I recognize in my mind there is something that is disturbing me and taking me away from my object of meditation. It might be restlessness. It might be sloth and torpor. It might be whatever it is. So what do I do with that?

I abandon. I abandon it. I release my attention from it. And I relax the tightness and tension present in the mind and body. Then the third right effort is to generate a wholesome state of mind. What is a wholesome state of mind? A wholesome state of mind can be any of the seven enlightenment factors. We'll get into all of that. I don't want to drop anything on you immediately. Or it could be your object of meditation.

Which is in this case loving kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity, or just the mind that is quiet. So you generate that by doing what? First, you uplift the mind through the smile. Re-smile. Second, you return back to the object. And you keep your attention there. And that's the fourth right effort. Maintaining the wholesome state of mind. So when we are doing this process of the 6R's, it is already helping you fulfill those right efforts.

When you have right effort, you have right mindfulness. Yesterday I told you I don't like the word mindfulness. So we're talking about right remembrance. Right observation. Right understanding. Right remembrance, meaning remembering how mind observed. Remembering to observe how mind's attention moves from one thing to the other. So we're remembering to see where is our attention in every given moment. And this is only done through right effort. They are seamlessly fitted together. When you have the process of recognition, your mindfulness is already present.

And as a result of which, your mind becomes collected and the attention becomes undispersed. It means unscattered. Your attention starts to come together and becomes collected. It is collected around its object of meditation. It rests on its object of meditation. So why do these hindrances arise in the first place? What is the reason for their arising?

From where do they arise? In the sutta, it is mentioned that when one does not follow the precepts, when one has unwholesome intentions, unwholesome speech, unwholesome actions, the mind becomes disturbed. And the mind generates these hindrances. It's like an action reaction situation. Maybe not immediately. But as we become ingrained in sensual craving, in ill will, in sloth and torpor, in doubt, and in restlessness, through one of the breaking of these precepts, then it becomes second nature to the mind. It's a process of conditioning. It's a process of conditioning that we have gone through. We may not see it immediately.

We may not see it immediately. We may not even accept that. And that's okay. But as your mind gets deeper, it will see for itself that, for example, when I have an intention of ill will, or I act or speak out of ill will, my mind vibrates at that level of ill will, my mind vibrates at that level of ill will, generates that ill will, generates that ill will. And therefore, the distraction of ill will is prone to arise. When I pursue sensual pleasures, I become engrossed in the pursuit of sensual pleasures, and I become engrossed in the pursuit of sensual pleasures, and I become engrossed in the pursuit of sensual pleasures.

My mind strengthens around the idea of sensual pleasures, and therefore, sensual craving is almost automatic for that mind. When I use false speech, I create doubt. I create doubt in myself. I create doubt in others. And what happens? Doubt, which is the inability to understand and discern what is wholesome and unwholesome, is present in the mind. When I steal, when I take what is not given, what arises, this desire to possess, this desire to obtain, this desire to collect, this desire to keep having. Taking what is not given. Taking what is not given doesn't just mean possessions or objects. Taking what is not given can mean taking undue credit, taking away someone's time, taking away someone's attention, taking away anything really that is not offered, that is not given, that is not freely given.

And so that agitates the mind. That gives rise to restlessness in the mind. When I indulge in intoxicants, what are intoxicants? Surah Madhu is what it is known as in Pali. And this is generally, at the time of the Buddha, referring to alcohol. Anything that alters the mind, that dulls the mind, dulls the senses. And the overindulgence of that, the indulgence in that process, dulls the mind. But it doesn't have to be limited to just alcohol or any kind of intoxicant or mind-altering substance. It could be the overindulgence of consuming something through the senses.

It's not just food. There is food for the senses. The shows we watch, the music we listen to, the books that we read. All of these are different content that our mind starts to consume. We live now in a world that is interconnected through the process of mobile phones. This is the beauty of this retreat. Nobody has your phone here because you're going through a dopamine detox. That's very helpful for the retreat, for your meditation. Dopamine is the craving molecule. It's the molecule that says, I want more.

And what's interesting about dopamine is dopamine arises not in the obtained of the object of the object of one's desire. Dopamine arises in the object of one's desire. Dopamine arises in the pursuit of wanting to obtain the object of one's desire, in the desire itself, in the craving itself. Dopamine arises in the pursuit of wanting to obtain the object of one's desire, in the desire itself, in the craving itself.

So we live in a world where we have social media, and overconsumption of social media has done what? It's made us all stupid, dull. It's made us stop thinking critically. It's starting to deteriorate our discernment of what is wholesome and unwholesome. And it creates sloth and torpor. I mean, not just the overconsumption of media. I mean, you think about people who are scrolling on Instagram, doom scrolling. As we say nowadays. What's going on there? There's so many context switches that are going on. The mind goes here and here and here and here and here and here. And then it feels at the end of that, tiresome.

And of course, that's compounded by scrolling through Instagram late at night. So you don't have enough sleep. And so now you're compounding that sloth and torpor. So you don't have enough sleep. I encourage naps on this retreat.

I generally would advise you to nap before 3 o'clock. Somewhere around, let's say 12:30. Between 12:30 and 2:30. I'm not saying to nap from 12:30 to 2:30. I'm saying anytime between that. 20-minute nap, 25-minute nap at the most. I remember one guy told him, "Make sure you take naps." He was a college student a couple of years ago. And I asked him, "So have you been napping?" He said, "Yeah, it's been great. These naps have been really great." I said, "How long have you been napping?" "Oh, three hours." So that's not what I mean here. And you know, that's the thing. That's the other thing about the meditation.

Don't push yourself. If you feel like you're losing steam in your sitting, and you're just not going anywhere, go for a walk. Go for a walk and do the walking meditation. And when you feel like you want to come and sit down, sit. Some people's sits are great in the evenings. Some people's sits are great in the mornings. Some people's sits are great in the middle of the day. See what works for you and try to sit for as long as you can. But don't push it. The importance of wholesome actions. There are these ten wholesome actions.

There are these ten wholesome actions. They are categorized in three: wholesome physical actions, wholesome verbal actions, and wholesome mental actions. What are the wholesome physical actions? Abstaining from wholesome actions. Abstaining from harming and killing any living being. Abstaining from taking what is not given.

Abstaining from sexual misconduct. The wholesome verbal actions are abstaining from false speech. Abstaining from divisive speech. Abstaining from malicious speech. Abstaining from what's usually seen as unnecessary speech. And then there are three wholesome mental actions. And those are contentment, non-ill will, and right view. Abstaining from what's usually seen as a result. That means not stepping on an ant. If you do it by mistake, that's different. Remember, there has to be an intention.

So how do you cultivate the opposite of that? Loving kindness. Be loving and kind to yourself. Be loving and kind to the beings around you. Send out loving and kind thoughts to the beings around you. Abstaining from taking what is not given. Don't be coveting things around you. You don't need to have this thing that somebody else has. You don't need to think about the things that you don't have that somebody else has. You don't need to feel like you have some kind of lack. That's where it comes from. A sense of lack. Everything here on this retreat is freely given.

The food and resources, the books behind you, all of these things are freely given. So make use of it. So it's very difficult for you to break that precept here. Sensual misconduct and sexual misconduct. They're one and the same in terms of the translation. But obviously they're different in terms of what they mean. Sensual misconduct is: I really identify with my eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body, and the mind. But generally these five physical senses. And because I identify with them, I want more of the things that I consume through these senses.

And in the pursuit of wanting more of these sensual experiences, I cheat, I lie, I kill, I harm, so on and so forth. I break other precepts in the pursuit of sensual pleasures. There's a difference between pleasure and happiness. Pleasure is when I identify with the physical senses and I want more of it. Happiness is different. When I was in South India, I was with my first spiritual teacher. I met him after some time.

He was the one who took me to the Himalayas back when I was 16, after I left school. I was actually expelled from school. But he was my theater teacher at the time. But he was also a yogi. And he would discuss yoga with me. And so the day I got expelled, he told me, "I want you to come with me to the Himalayas. And we'll spend some time there." And I said, "Sure, let's do that." I was already in a pretty rough place. And so I went with him. And we traveled to different parts. We went to a place called Haridwar, Rishikesh, Uttarkashi, and then other places around there.

And he introduced me to many different kinds of philosophies. Anyway, this was the same spiritual teacher that I met after some time in South India. And I went to visit him. And being in the theater world and in the film world, he was invited to go and meet with some kind of his family. So we were invited to go to this person's house. And we went there. And we had a nice meal. And they gave us a tour of the house. Really lovely place and everything. They had all these Buddha statues and gardens and things like that where you can meditate. So these people were very interested in meditation and spirituality. And knowing that I taught meditation, they asked me this question: if you were to tell us in just one line, what do you teach?

What is your philosophy? How do you teach what it is that you do? And I said, I teach the difference between dependent happiness and independent happiness. And they said, what do you mean by that? I said, there's dependent happiness, which is dependent upon externalities of the world. So my happiness is dependent upon the relationship I have. My happiness is dependent upon the food that I eat. My happiness is dependent upon the validation that I get from people, or independent happiness. And that's the happiness that we're going after on retreat. In reality, it's not actually happiness. I'll explain why not. But we call it happiness because we say that we are the happy ones, right?

And the happiness that we are the happy ones, right? And the happiness that we are the happy ones, right? And the happiness that we are the happy ones, right? This is the understanding of sensual misconduct. And the happiness that we are the happy ones, right? That is the happy ones, right? And the happiness that we are the happy ones, right? And the happiness that we are the happy ones, right? And the happiness that we are the happy ones, right? And the happiness that we are the happy ones, right? And the happiness that we are the happy ones, right? And the happiness that we are the happy ones, right? And the happiness that we are the happy ones, right?

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And this process of non-ill will is cultivated through loving kindness, which we are all striving for. And when I say striving, I don't mean pushing. I mean, we're all aiming for that. We're all trying for the cultivation of greater degrees of this friendliness, which allows us to be free of any kind of ill will towards ourselves or towards others. And then finally, we have right view. We'll talk about right view because that's something I want to explore later in a talk fully. When we talk about right view, there's two kinds of right view. There's the mundane right view and the super mundane right view. The mundane right view is all about action and consequence.

It's all about when I do a certain kind of action with intention, it has some kind of a consequence at some point in time. That's the mundane. The super mundane is the understanding of the four noble truths. That's the development of wisdom and the cultivation of vidya or vija in Pali, which is not necessarily knowledge, but it's more actually the realization of this reality, in which all reality, the four noble truths are present. That is suffering, the causes and conditions for suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path leading to the cessation of suffering.

So these are the things to try to cultivate, not just on retreat, but even off of retreat. And the more we do this, the easier it is, for our mind to just slip right into bhavana, the mental development, slip right into samadhi, a mind that is even and balanced and collected. So when we do this, it's easier for us to catch the hindrances. And when the hindrances arise, it's easier for us to recognize, oh, here it is. And we release. We relax, we re-smile, uplift the mind, come back to our object and repeat whenever necessary. You already have the tools.

You are your teacher. Your mind will teach you how to do all of this, one way or the other. We are here just to kind of say, hey, try it this way, try it that way. Have you thought about this? But this mind that you have of yours when you are meditating is your laboratory, is your playground. Do with it what you will, using the tools that have been provided to you, namely the 6R's. You don't need to remember everything in this Dhamma talk. If there's one thing to remember from this talk, it's that if I have kindness, it's in my heart and balance in my mind.

Everything else that needs to arise in my mind. Everything else that needs to arise in terms of jhanas and whatever else will arise. Because that is the beginning process. When I keep and maintain the precepts, my mind already veers towards samadhi. And veering into samadhi, my mind is prone towards panya, towards wisdom. This is what I mean by the mind is your own teacher. It will show you how it works.

Your mission, should you choose it, is to just be a silent observer. You should be in the background observing everything. Making little tiny adjustments when you need to. Generally just the six hours when you need to. And everything will unravel before you. I think that's it. Yeah?

That's your Samarit. 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, Sadhu.