Meditative Hindrances

Traditional Five Hindrances

1. Desire.
2. Aversion.
3. Sloth & Torpor.
4. Restlessness.
5. Doubt.

13 Meditative Hindrances in MIDL.

These 13 hindrances are a breakdown of how the traditional five hindrances from the Buddha are sequentially experienced during mindfulness of breathing due to their relationship with the development of samadhi.

(Progressive hindrances to calm). 

00: Stress Breathing.

01: Physical Restlessness.

02: Mental Restlessness.

03: Sleepiness & Dullness.

04: Habitual Forgetting.

05: Habitual Control.

06: Mind Wandering.

07: Gross Dullness.

08: Subtle Dullness.

09: Subtle Wandering.

10: Sensory Stimulation.

11: Anticipation of Pleasure.

12: Fear of Letting Go.

13: Doubt (present at any stage of mindfulness of breathing until Sotapanna: Stream Entry).

Understanding Meditative Hindrances and Meditation Markers.

Each Hindrance impedes the development of calm in its associated Meditation Marker. Creating the conditions for developing a particular Meditation Marker will calm the hindrance that impedes it. 

Progression Map for Mindfulness of Breathing

Meditative Hindrances.                     Meditation Markers.

(Hindrances to calm).                        (Signs of deepening calm).

00: Stress Breathing.                →   00: Diaphragm Breathing.

01: Physical Restlessness.     →    01: Body Relaxation.

02: Mental Restlessness.        →    02: Mind Relaxation.

03: Sleepiness & Dullness.      →    03: Mindful Presence.

04: Habitual Forgetting.           →    04: Content & Happy.

05: Habitual Control.                →    05: Natural Breathing.

06: Mind Wandering.                →    06: Length of Each Breath.

07: Gross Dullness.                  →    07: Breath Sensations.

08: Subtle Dullness.                 →    08: One Point of Sensation.

09: Subtle Wandering.             →    09: Sustained Attention.

10: Sensory Stimulation.         →   10: Whole-Body Breathing.

11: Anticipation of Pleasure.  →   11: Sustained Awareness.

12: Fear of Letting Go.             →   12: Access Concentration.

13: Doubt (absent at Access Concentration).

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00) Stress Breathing: Short, shallow stress breathing in the chest.

Stress breathing refers to taking short, shallow breaths in the chest when the stress response is activated, preparing the body to respond to danger by fighting or fleeing. When we are exposed to stressful situations repeatedly or have experienced trauma in our lives, our stress response can habituate, and stress breathing can become our natural way of breathing. This habituation puts our mind and body in a hypervigilant and hypersensitive state, making the development of samatha calm very difficult in meditation. It is because of this that many meditators have trouble being mindful of their breathing. By changing our breathing patterns from stress breathing to rest and digest (diaphragmatic) breathing, our mind more easily enters a relaxed state, and the pleasure of letting go in meditation becomes more accessible.

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01) Physical Restlessness: Unable to experience physical comfort.

Physical Restlessness refers to the feeling of being unsettled in your body, which prompts you to move around and fidget to find comfort during meditation. It occurs during meditation due to the build-up of energy from stress, aversion, or overstimulation in our daily lives. Simplifying your life and relaxing with slow, softening breaths will lower your experience of stress and anxiety and weaken your desire to distract yourself with sensory stimulation.

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02) Mental Restlessness: Unable to experience mental comfort, leading to thinking about the past and the future. 

Mental Restlessness refers to when you feel mentally unsettled due to high energy levels from excess effort, stress/anxiety, or overstimulation. This may be experienced during meditation as a sense of mental unease, accompanied by scattered attention, sleepiness, and constant mind wandering. Withdrawing energy from your mind by softening your mind engagement plus simplifying your life will lower your experience of stress and weaken your desire to distract yourself with sensory stimulation.

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03) Sleepiness & Dullness: Loss of clarity of body sensations and a sleepy, dull feeling in your mind. 

Sleepiness and Dullness refer to a state of relaxation during meditation where you feel sleepy, and your mind drifts and floats, causing you to lose clarity of the elemental qualities of your body as you sit in meditation. This happens because your skill in relaxing your body and mind is improving; however, your skill in mindfully and clearly comprehending your present experience is still weak and needs to be strengthened to bring balance back to your mind.

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04) Habitual Forgetting: You forget your meditation object and that you are meditating.

Habitual Forgetting refers to when your mindfulness grows weak, and your mind forgets your meditation object and even that you are meditating. This lapse into forgetting during meditation is a survival mechanism of the mind, designed to conserve energy by following repeated patterns, much like a screen saver on a computer. You may first notice that your mind has forgotten your meditation object after you realise that you have been off thinking or fantasising about something for some time.

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05) Habitual Control: Your mind habitually controlling your breathing.

Habitual Control refers to the experience of your mind interfering with and changing the natural flow of your breathing. Meditators usually experience this as a tight and uncomfortable feeling in the breath. This grasping of the mind to control the breath appears as tightness, tension and unease. As long as your mind has a habit of controlling your breath, your ability to develop deeper calm and tranquillity will be hindered. It is also important to observe your mind control things in daily life, as your breathing during mindfulness of breathing will reflect this. See this as an opportunity to learn to let go, and you are already halfway there.

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06) Mind Wandering: Your mind finds distraction more enjoyable than your meditation object.

Mind Wandering refers to your mind seeking something more entertaining than your meditation object. When this happens, your mind will shift a thought, memory, or fantasy to the foreground of your attention, and your meditation object, in this case, the breath, will be resting in the background, peripheral awareness. If you do not pick this up, your mind will eventually drop your meditation object from awareness altogether and slip back into Hindrance 04: Habitual Forgetting.

Sleepiness & Dullness, Habitual Forgetting and Mind Wandering are connected.

The process of the mind is this: Your mind becomes sleepy & dull > You habitually forget your meditation object > Your mind wanders and becomes lost within thoughts, fantasies, memories, etc., for a while (like entering a daydream). The important part in working with this is to first remove Hindrance 03: Sleepiness & Dullness, then shorten the length of time you habitually forget your meditation object in Hindrance 04: Habitual Forgetting, then completely remove your mind's habit of forgetting to lower the stickiness of Hindrance 06: Mind Wandering. When Mind Wandering is weakened, it becomes background, random thoughts that no longer capture your attention.

In dealing with the wandering of your mind, sometimes you will find that your mind wanders to thoughts, memories, or fantasies that are very sticky in nature. This means that your mind has difficulty letting them go. These are opportunities for deeper insight. Sticky thoughts, memories and fantasies weaken by observing responses within your body, such as tensing or emotions, until you can experience the underlying pleasantness or unpleasantness. Applying the GOSS Formula by softening and relaxing the effort held within your mind and body towards these distractions while finding enjoyment in letting them go re-grounds awareness within your body and rewards your mind for letting them go. 

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07) Gross Dullness: Loss of clarity of both your mind and meditation object.

Gross Dullness refers to the experience of an extreme lowering of your ability to be aware of any experience. This is experienced as a loss of clarity in both your mind and your meditation object. Gross Dullness is a sign of progress in meditation and reflects the deepening of a meditator's samadhi (unification of mind/collectedness). 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 rite of passage for the meditator. It refines the meditator's skill in relaxing while maintaining a clear comprehension of their present experience. As you learn to balance the effort, the Awakening Factor of Right Effort will mature, and you will no longer experience gross dullness.

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08) Subtle Dullness: Loss of clarity of sensations in your meditation object.

Subtle Dullness refers to the experience of the disappearance of your ability to perceive sensations within your breathing (or meditation object). While Gross Dullness is defined as dullness in both your meditation object and mind, Subtle Dullness is defined as dullness in your meditation object and clarity of your awareness. 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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09) Subtle Wandering: Random, brief flickering of attention towards experiences. 

Subtle Wandering refers to the experience of little flickering movements of your attention away from your meditation object during meditation. 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. When Subtle Wandering is present, you may have thoughts and other distractions arising in your background, peripheral awareness, but they do not draw the focus of your attention from your meditation object. As samadhi deepens, this flickering will naturally calm and come to an end for the period of the meditation by itself.

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10) Sensory Stimulation: Background sensory stimulation within peripheral awareness. 

Sensory Stimulation refers to the experience of the subtle habitual grasping of the mind onto sensory experience within background, peripheral awareness during meditation. This subtle habitual sensory grasping disturbs the unification of the mind because of the dispersal of mind energy and, therefore, hinders the development of upacara samadhi (access concentration).

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11) Anticipation of Pleasure: Desire for pleasurable states. 

Anticipation of Pleasure refers to the subtle excitement that arises within the mind as it starts to glimpse and 'look forward to' the possibility of blissful pleasant feeling. Anticipation calms with repeated exposure to the pleasantness 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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12) Fear of Letting Go: Fear of giving up all control.  

Fear of Letting Go 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.

13) Doubt: Absence of faith or trust in anything.

Doubt refers to the absence of faith on the technique, path, teacher, Buddha, your experience, or your ability. When a meditator experiences doubt, their mind slips into delusion and rapidly bounces between desire and aversion. In this undecided state, the meditator's mind becomes paralysed, and they are unable to commit to a decision. When doubt becomes strong, the meditator will stop practising or begin to cycle between techniques and teachers, not able to find rest anywhere for long. To crate gaps in doubt requires developing skill in observing the anatta (autonomous, impersonal) nature of the narrative that drives doubt. The antidote for doubt is devotion to the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha and the support of the community. It is essential for the meditator with doubt to be skilfully guided toward small successes within their meditation and life. As these successes accumulate, faith and trust based on their own experience grow, and doubt weakens. When verified faith grows (saddha), it becomes strong enough to be one of the conditions for Sotapanna that uproots the conditions for doubt permanently from the meditator's mind.

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“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.

The Buddha's formula for insight looks like this:

1. Recognise the presence or absence of (X).
2. Recognise the conditions for (X) to arise.
3. Recognise the conditions for (X) to cease.
4. Apply the conditions for (X) to cease if it is akusala (unwholesome/unskilful).
5. Apply the conditions for (X) to arise if it is kusala (wholesome/skilful).

The important part of this formula is that it develops insight into the conditions that support both the akusala and the kusala. This formula is designed to recognise the conditions that support the hindrances, and to weaken them so that they cease. And to recognise the conditions that support the wholesome, and develop them so that they flourish.

Nothing personal here:

Hindrances are not personal; they are simply two things:

1. A sign of an imbalance in energy/effort.
2. A sign of an imbalance in the structure of your attention.

Tip: Clarify the anatta (autonomous, by themself) nature of hindrances by watching how the experience of hindrances comes and goes by themself. 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.

GOSS Formula: How to Develop Insight.

To practically apply the Buddha's formula for insight in a way that weakens the hindrances and develops wholesome qualities at the same time, in MIDL, we have the GOSS Formula.

GOSS Formula: How to Develop Insight.

1. Ground.
2. Observe.
3. Soften.
4. Smile.
5. Repeat if needed.

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