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.
Labels: yoga
