Hindrnaces to relaxation & calm are opportunites for insight.
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There are 16 habits and disturbances that may occur within your mind during mindfulness of breathing, known as the 16 Meditative Hindrances. These Meditative Hindrances are defensive qualities of the mind that are signs of imbalance within effort and are opportunities for insight.
Hindrances are signs of an imbalance in either your effort or the structure of your attention that reflect the strength of attraction and aversion.
They are called hindrances because they hinder the development of calm & tranquility. However, they do not hinder the development of insight. They are its content.
YouTube Dhamma Talk: Hindrances as a Path of Insight
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AVERSION BASED
DELUSION BASED
ATTRACTION BASED
DELUSION BASED
EFFORT BASED
CONTROL BASED
01) Stress Reactions: Habituated stress/anxiety reactions of the mind.
Stress & anxiety reactions are the first hindrances experienced by new meditators.
Stress and anxiety are also hindrances that you will see a significant reduction in through practicing MIDL.
Stress Reactions are the experience of stress, anxiety, depression, etc. Deconditioning these in a safe and skilled way is the purpose of Cultivation 01.
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02) Physical Restlessness: Unable to experience physical comfort.
Physical restlessness refers to fidgeting and the urge to move to get comfortable during meditation.
Physical restlessness reflects strong aversion in your mind and is part of the stress response. It is one of the easiest hindrances to weaken and the second hindrance that you will see a significant reduction in through practicing MIDL.
It is important to note that this is separate from body movements and twitching from physiological responses.
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03) Mental Restlessness: Unable to experience mental comfort.
Mental restlessness refers to the mental agitation experienced as your mind rapidly scans the six senses looking for impending danger.
Mental restlessness is also part of the stress response and is a fear-based hypervigilance. The experience of mental restlessness is like a mental shaking and is the prerequisite for physical restlessness.
Mental restlessness is the next easiest hindrance to weaken and the third hindrance that you will see a significant reduction in through practicing MIDL.
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04) Habitual Forgetting: Habitually forgetting your meditation object.
Habitual forgetting refers to the experience of forgetting what you are doing during meditation and daily life.
Mindfulness, the ability to keep your present experience within your short-term memory for a period of time, is the opposite.
Habitual forgetting occurs when mindfulness lapses and your mind drops your present experience, replacing it with a habitual, mind-created one such as thinking, worrying, fantasising, etc.
This lapse into forgetting is simply a survival mechanism of your mind designed to save energy by following repeated patterns, like a screen saver on a computer.
05) Gross Wandering: Attention habitually scanning the six senses.
Gross wandering refers to your mind's habitual scanning of your senses that continues in the mind after anxiety-based mental restlessness has calmed.
Gross wandering is experienced as your attention continuously wandering and can feel like being inside a washing machine with different experiences constantly arising within your mind.
Gross wandering within itself is not a problem as long as your mindfulness itself is strong enough so that you do not become lost within it.
By rewarding your mind with the pleasure of letting go each time you notice you become lost (GOSS) and abiding in the pleasure of it, gross wandering gradually settles by itself.
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06) Directed Thinking: Thinking regarding past and future events.
Directed thinking refers to your mind absorbing into thinking focussed on the past and future.
Directed thinking is a habitual relationship towards thinking, fed by addiction toward its pleasantness or unpleasantness.
Directed thinking weakens by observing responses within your body, such as tensing or emotions, until you can experience the underlying pleasantness or unpleasantness.
Observing effort held within your mind and body re-grounds awareness and withdraws attention from feeding directed thinking.
Reapplication of the GOSS Formula is very effective for deconditioning directed thinking because it has the ability to relax the focus of habitual attention and reward your mind for letting go.
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07) Wandering: Random, meaningless thoughts, images, and fantasies.
Wandering refers to the random wandering of attention that has no specific target. Wandering is experienced once gross wandering and directed thinking have settled down.
You do not need to do anything for wandering during meditation other than notice it's autonomous (anatta).
As long as wandering does not make you lose your meditation object, it is enough to be aware of it as a background experience and keep doing what you are doing.
As calm develops and becomes pleasurable, wandering of your attention will naturally settle down.
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08) Gross Dullness: Complete collapse of clarity of awareness.
Gross Dullness refers to the experience of an extreme lowering of the ability of awareness to be aware of any experience.
This results in a loss of clarity in both your meditation object and your mind.
Gross dullness is a sign of progress in meditation and reflects the deepening of a meditator's samadhi (unification of attention).
It occurs as the meditator develops physical and mental relaxation, and they inadvertently over-calm the ability for awareness to know an experience.
Gross dullness is a right-of-passage for the meditator and refines the meditator's skill in relaxing while maintaining clear comprehension of their present experience.
As you learn to balance the effort, the Enlightenment Factor of Right Effort will mature, and you will no longer experience gross dullness.
09) Doubt: Losing trust in meditation practice, technique, or teacher.
Doubt refers to the rapid flickering of your mind between attraction, aversion, and confusion that occurs when your mind fears not getting it right because everything feels out of control.
When doubt is present, the meditator finds fault in themselves, their current teacher, and their meditation technique, causing them to cycle between meditation teachers and techniques to escape discomfort.
Doubt becomes strong in correlation with gross dullness & gross restlessness. As gross dullness develops, these three come as a trio.
Doubt is weakened by daily gratitude reflection and by regular contact with a community of fellow meditators and/or teacher.
Doubt is a regular visitor in insight meditation until the meditator has reached the level of Stream Entry (Sotapanna).
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10) Gross Restlessness: Restlessness towards your meditation session.
Gross restlessness refers to a momentum of aversion that builds within the meditator's mind due to the unpleasantness of long periods of gross dullness.
Gross restlessness is expressed as early breaking of meditation sessions to go and have a sleep. Both gross dullness & restlessness clear at the same time with increased effort towards curiosity and meditative joy.
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11) Subtle Dullness: Loss of clarity of meditation object (sensations).
Subtle dullness refers to the experience of the disappearance of your ability to perceive sensations within your breathing.
Telling them apart.
While experiencing subtle dullness, your mind will be clear, lucid, and tranquil. Because of this, it is easy to be deluded into thinking that you have entered an absorption state.
If not addressed, this experience will repeat, and you will not reach more refined levels of samadhi.
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12) Subtle Wandering: Random, brief background thoughts.
Subtle wandering refers to little flickering movements of your attention away from your meditation object.
Flickering of attention is observed at this stage because of deep relaxation and letting go of control.
This is simply habitual scanning of your attention towards your six sense fields that occurs because you are no longer controlling your mind.
As samadhi deepens, this flickering will naturally calm and come to an end for the period of the meditation by itself.
13) Subtle Restlessness: Shaking due to effort in applied attention.
Subtle restlessness refers to the habitual flickering of attention towards the six sense fields pulling against the momentum of attention as it sustains on breath experience.
This calms by continuing to calm the desire 'to do' and increases intimacy with the growing pleasure of seclusion.
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14) Subtle Instability: Shaking due to desire to control.
Subtle instability refers to the final shaking experienced in the stability of attention due to the continued action of vitakka (applied attention).
Attention will naturally become steady and firm by calming all effort 'to do' within your mind.
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15) Anticipation: Desire for pleasurable states.
Anticipation refers to the subtle excitement that arises within the mind as it starts to glimpse and 'look forward to' the possibility of blissful pleasure.
Anticipation calms with repeated exposure to the pleasure that arises at access concentration until the mind is no longer excited by it.
Anticipation is weakened by refining contentment in all aspects of your life and developing a heart connection (saddha) with the meditation path and practice.
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16) Fear: Fear of giving up all control.
Fear refers to the deeply seated fear of giving up control to the momentum of letting go within your mind.
Like a child on a slide, even though previously excited, once they gain momentum, fear arises within their mind, and they hang on.
In the same way, the meditator's mind, feeling the uncontrollable nature of entering the flow state that is the doorway to jhana, tenses in fear and hangs onto the sensory world.
Developing Saddha: Faith, confidence, and trust in the Buddha, your teacher, and your meditation community is the key to completely letting go.
Reflecting: You are not the first. Others have walked this path before you.
In this simple map, you can tell what Meditation Skill (left column) you should be practicing during mindfulness of breathing by the grossest hindrance you are experiencing (middle column).
The maturity of each Meditation Skill develops specific Experiential Markers (right column), and the maturity of the Markers fulfills each Meditation Skill and is the method you should use to calm/weaken the present hindrance.
An individual map is supplied with each meditation in Cultivations 01-04 so that you will always know where you are in your meditation and what you need to do.
While these hindrances occur when developing samatha (calm) based on letting go, if approached skillfully, the hindrances will sequentially:
Meditative Hindrances are defensive qualities of mind that are not to be overcome, but to be understood.
“And how does a meditator dwell contemplating dhamma within dhammas in terms of the five hindrances?”
“When sensual desire (***) is present within them, the meditator knows: 'there is sensual desire present within me’. When there is no sensual desire present within them, the meditator knows: 'there is no sensual desire present within me’.”
“They also understand how the arising of un-arisen sensual desire comes to be, and how to abandon sensual desire once it has arisen, they also understand the conditions for the non-arising of sensual desire once it has been abandoned.”
(***aversion, dullness, restlessness, doubt). The Buddha MN10.
Treat each meditative hindrance that arises as an opportunity to develop insight by using this simple formula:
The formula for insight:
Nothing personal here:
Hindrances are not personal; they are simply two things:
TIP: Clarify their anatta (not-self) nature by watching them come and go autonomously.
As an insight meditator, it is your path to understand and deconstruct the conditions for the arising of these hindrances.
Hindrances are opportunities for freedom, not barriers.
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