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Dharmette: Satipaṭṭhāna (47) Hindrances: Doubt

Guided Meditation

Hello, my friends, and welcome. I've posted near the top of the chat the Zoom link for today at 7:45 when we end, and I'll post it again at the end. I'll talk more about it at the end as well.

Imagine that you're going for a walk in the woods on a road that you've never been on, maybe a place you've never been. Someone gives you instructions of how to walk through these woods. The instructions are: in this large wilderness area, there is only one six-foot dirt path for you to walk on. However, there are lots of small, little paths that leave this large, six-foot-wide path.

Stay on the wide path. Don't go off; only walk on the wide path. As you walk on this wide path, there might be all kinds of signs saying, "Go this way," or "That way," pointing down some of the small side shoots, side paths. Some of them will say things like, "Easy way," or "You're going the wrong way, go this way."

Some signs will say, "You're not able to walk this path, go this way instead." Or some will say, "Why don't you stop here and debate what you're doing? Take this path to debate what you're doing. Take this path to have doubt about what in the world you're doing in the forest. Take this path for questioning the authority of anybody who knows what path you should be on." There are all these signposts that are pointing you off. Mostly, these side paths take you to little spirals where you kind of go right around and around in circles, and you're lucky if you manage to get out on the main road again. But the main road, the six-foot-wide path, just goes straight. As long as you stay on that, you're fine.

The same thing happens in meditation. There is a wide road to walk, and then there are all these other ideas and thoughts that point us in different directions, taking us in a different direction. The instructions in mindfulness practice are: stay on the main road. Don't get off. And what is the main road?

The main road is not a road, literally, but the way that we walk in mindfulness. We acknowledge—the primary thing we do is we recognize—the obvious thing that's happening in the moment, without believing it, without pushing it away, without being for it, without being against it. Just recognize there's a loud sound. Just recognize the sound instead of, "Well, that's an interesting scratching on the wall, maybe I should go investigate that." Or, "The neighbor is having nice music, I'll go over there and listen with them." It's just scratching, sound, music; that's what's happening now.

Breathing; that's what's happening now. Don't take the path that says, "Maybe there's a better way of breathing. Maybe my breathing is not the right kind of breathing, and maybe I should hyperventilate, then I'll get concentrated." These are all sidetracks off the main road, which is simply to recognize: I'm breathing, my breathing is this way.

There will be thoughts that arise about, "Am I doing the right thing?" If you take those roads, then you're off the main track. If you simply recognize what's happening now is, "I'm questioning whether I'm doing the right thing," then you're on the main road. Don't get involved in those thoughts; just recognize them. So, just recognize what's happening. That's the main road. Stay on the main road.

One of the side roads is thinking about what just happened a few seconds before; that's a side road. Thinking about what's going to happen—"Oh, if I just do this meditation practice for another few minutes, I'll get concentrated"—that's a side road. Just be present. If you're not concentrated, then notice, "Oh, this is not being concentrated. This is beginning to get some signs of being settled." No need to go down the road that says, "I wonder how long it will take until I get concentrated." Stay on the main path.

So that's the plan. If you could somehow track for yourself the twenty minutes, we'll stop in case the video goes on and off again, and then I'll try to fix it in between. Okay, thank you. Let's just sit quietly now, on the main road.

Reflections

As we come to the end of the sitting, what we learn from staying on the main road is how to just stay present for what's in front of us, what's here and now and obvious.

Sometimes there are other people who are standing in front of us that we're with. The ability to have them be the road, meeting them, being present for them, where we take them in. We see them clearly in their humanity. We see them clearly in their capacities for suffering and for happiness. We see them with our hearts.

The main road is just to see and allow that to gently affect us, independent of the side roads of: "I need to take care of them," "I need to get away, this is too much," "What can I get from this person?", or "Will the person accept me or reject me?"

To be able to be present on the main road with others is one of the great gifts we give them, give the world, and give ourselves. To be present, to see what's here in front of us clearly. Is there a stirring of care, of love, of kindness?

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free.

The Hindrance of Doubt

The last of these hindrances is usually called doubt, but it involves a world of uncertainty, indecisiveness, and confusion about things. The opposite of this kind of doubt, confusion, and uncertainty is—I think of it as—trust.

For the practice of meditation, it's trusting the main road. The main road is this wide road that, if you stay on it, you're on track. But when you take a lot of those short, little side paths that go off, the little, thin, narrow side paths that branch off from the big wide road, then you go off into the thickets of the jungles, the woods, and the wilderness. You may not come back so quickly. It puts you in circles, or you're wandering around for a long time before you can come back to the main road.

But trusting the main road of practice is just to show up. Just be present for this, be present for this, be present for this. When the mind starts going down a side path, remember, "Oh, that's a side path, just be here." One of the side paths is doubt, confusion. It's wondering what to do: "Where am I going, and am I able to do this? Is this the right teaching? What about this teaching of not-self?^[1] It doesn't make any sense. The Buddhists teach it, and what do they mean by it, and I have doubts about it." All these are side paths.

The path to trust is the path of just being present for this. It's kind of like the path arises as we step on it. If we are looking beyond our next step for the path, then it's easy to get into a world of confusion and doubt. But if we trust that next step, then the path arises, the path appears in the step, with the step. And the steps in mindfulness practice are simply being present for the obvious experience of the moment, the recognition of it. If anything happens: "Okay, this is happening, this is happening, this is happening."

One of the forms of doubt, and one of the side paths people might take, is, "Well, how then will I take care of myself? How will I take care of the world if I'm just so simplistically taking this moment, this moment?"

There are two answers to this. One is that the primary reference point we're talking about right now is meditation. How we are in meditation might be different from how we are in daily life. We're mindful in both, but in meditation, that's where we can have this radical simplicity of just being with the obvious, being present for this. We don't have to solve the world's problems while we're in meditation. We want to solve our problems with what we're doing in meditation. How we're present for our experience doesn't have to be directly connected to solving all the problems around us.

But being present in meditation prepares us to be able to be wise, considerate, and kind in how we respond to things outside of meditation. This ability to just keep it simple also teaches us how much we complicate things unnecessarily. The radical simplicity of meditation highlights the complications; it highlights how we veer away. When we go back into our daily life, we're wiser about that. We'll notice the kinds of getting preoccupied in thoughts which are not useful, and be able to recognize the way to be in thought that is useful, and how we can engage in problem-solving if we need to.

So, to have this deep trust: just be present, just be present. Certainly, doubts, uncertainties, hesitations, and confusions will arise. The path of mindfulness in the Satipaṭṭhāna^[2] is simply to know, "Oh, this is confusion. This is doubt. This is uncertainty. This is vacillation. This is a lack of commitment." This is what it looks like; this is what it is. To see it arise, to see it be present, to see its absence. To see it as a hindrance. In meditation, it's a hindrance for continuing to walk on that main road.

There could be all kinds of healthy doubts that we have in our life, of discovery, and doubts in daily life. There's the blinking... and there's doubts in daily life. Now we have one. This happens quickly. Then we'll switch over to Zoom.

So, I'm back. I'll try to finish quickly now. This is what's happening. This is what we're present for. In a sense, we're kind of in this Dharma^[3] mode. Here I am talking and meditating after the meditation, but this is a time to not make anything a problem. We can have problems later that we have to address, and certainly, this technical issue will be something we'll look at.

But there are all kinds of healthy doubts that we can have. Healthy doubts are ones that encourage us to look more deeply, to consider a question more deeply in an appropriate way. Unhealthy doubts are the ones that keep us indecisive, confused, or hesitant in a way that lacks forward-leaning or forward-going questioning and wondering what's going on. It is important to be able to distinguish healthy and unhealthy doubts.

This meditative way of Satipaṭṭhāna gives us an opportunity to see the arising of doubt. We can see it when it's not there. We get a feel for the sense of trust and clarity when we're just staying on the main road. Also, we can see how we can let go of it when it comes, because we don't have to debate it or justify it when we're meditating. We can trust the main path. Just be present. Just be present. Just be present. Things like doubt arise and pass, and they're not our business. We pause for them briefly, maybe like with the blinking of the video we have today, and then we continue on the path.

So, thank you for this, and thank you for hanging in there with us. I think it's kind of wonderful that we have an issue like this where we don't lose the connection for more than a few moments, and then we can just practice the main path with it and continue.