Shaila Catherine: Hindrances to Meditation

I am interested in meditation, but am not ready to commit to a ten day Vipassana course. At this time, I'd prefer to use a week of vacation to visit Iceland or India or Turkey. Thankfully, a local group called Insight Meditation South Bay runs weekly meditation courses near my home in Mountain View, California. This group practices in the Vipassana tradition, which means they follow the Buddhist meditation teachings. Despite the connection to Buddhism, the group and Vipassana meditation are both non-sectarian. In fact, the meeting location is an Episcopal church.

Tonight was the first class in a six-week series titled Overcoming Hindrances to Meditation. The teacher, Shaila Catherine, and the courses were recommended to me by two trustworthy friends. Judging by the first class, the format is 40 minutes of seated meditation, followed by a 60 minute lecture. Shaila provided guidance at the beginning and middle of the meditation period, and finished with a chant. Her first lecture was well thought-out, clearly presented, and immediately applicable to meditation -- and to daily life. The subject was an overview of "the five hindrances" to meditation: desire, aversion (ill will), laziness, restlessness, and doubt.

Shaila suggested that we use our breath as the object of the meditation. I'm not sure whether Vipassana meditation requires and object. As part of her guidance, she asked an interesting and useful question: "take a moment to evaluate the quality of the mind -- why can't you observe your breath clearly?" In context, the answer is clearly that one of the five hindrances is in your way, distracting you from your breath. I find value in the question even without the hindrance framework, because it immediately makes you an observer of your mind, and gets right at where you are "resisting" (to borrow from Hatha Yoga practice) your own objective.

The lecture introduced the five hindrances, and gave a useful example of each. I feel that this hindrance framework is useful, though an obvious question is why there are exactly five hindrances, and why would every distraction to meditation fall into one them. With a little thought, I made my own answer to the latter question. Hindrances are anything which take you out of the present, which in this case is meditation on breath. If you are not in the present, where are you? Nearly any answer can be cast as inappropriate desire to do something different than what you are doing now, or be somewhere else. Don't take this too literally, because loose language is part of definition of the hindrances, and it seems they are defined more by example than denotation. Similarly, laziness and restlessness are simply symptoms of wanting to do more or less than meditating on your breath. You can frame any distraction from the present in terms of the hindrances. As another example, I'm comfortable defining desperation (a possible hindrance) as doubt plus restlessness.

At this point, I ask myself if the hindrance framework is over-complicated, since any distraction from breath might be cast as any of the hindrances if you use some imagination. Consider that you could have just one hindrance -- deviation from the present. What is doubt besides nonconstructive speculation about the future? What better example of ill will is there besides ruminating on a negative past encounter with a troublesome coworker? The future and past are clearly not the present, and that is problem. However, my simple definition of deviation from the present isn't always easy to apply, and when applied, it provides little guidance on why you left the present, what is fueling your departure from the present, and what you need to do to return to the present. The five hindrances model addresses all of these things, by making broadly applicable categories with familiar examples and concrete remedies.

Shaila gave an example of how Buddhist monks might have been taught to counter desire. I'm going to mix in my own understanding, and if this doesn't make sense it is all my fault. Suppose you find yourself thinking of a beautiful woman (I guess Buddhist monks are male) instead of meditating on breath. This is only a problem when you become attached to your desire. This constitutes "[improper attendance] to a beautiful object". What is improper about it? My take is that your desire for the beautiful woman relies on a mental model of the woman -- what you desire is not the woman, but what you think of as a woman. It's something in your head. Where Krishnamurti might tell you to simply return to the present before you hurt yourself with thoughts, Shaila told us the monks might deliberately recall unavoidable repulsive aspects of a beautiful woman. For example, her flesh will rot after death. By properly attending to aversion, you counter your improper attendance to aversion.

I am looking forward to more detailed consideration of the following questions for each hindrance, which are a standard part of this study: is the hindrance present, is it absent, what is fueling the hindrance, how do I remove the fuel? Actually, I thought there were five questions, but it's late and I'm tired. For me at least, these questions are part of aware living, not just seated meditation.

One final note. Recall that there are five hindrances, and hence we can't just pair them up to counter one another. The odd man out is doubt. The materials Shaila gave us tonight say only that doubt is countered by "proper attention", unlike the other hindrance which are countered by proper attention to something in particular. Until we discuss doubt five weeks from now, that leaves me with the simple "return to the present" advice that Krishnamurti gives. I tend to think abstractly and get along okay with Krishnamurti's advice, but on challenging days I wouldn't mind having a few Buddhist tricks up my sleeve.