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Guided Meditation

Good morning, everyone. How's the sound? Can you hear me okay? Great.

All right, so we'll begin this morning with a 35-minute meditation together. We can start by finding a stable, comfortable, relaxed, yet energetic posture. So this can be a sitting posture, a standing posture, or a lying down posture. All of these are suitable for meditation.

We might start by taking three deep breaths together. Inhaling... and exhaling. Inhaling again... exhaling. And a last time.

And allowing the breath to resume a normal rhythm.

As we begin our meditation, we might consider setting an intention for practice this morning. Maybe to meet the moment with patience and kindness. Maybe just to recognize what's happening at any given moment and to feel it, to feel it fully in the body.

At this time, you might connect with an anchor for your meditation. That might be the breath, the soundscape, or the bodily posture. Allowing the mind to rest and settle on the anchor, on our object of meditation.

As we begin to settle together, it can be helpful to notice if there's any extra tension in the body. You can intentionally relax the body. Softening the scalp, releasing the temples, softening the jaw. Perhaps allowing the mouth to open for a moment and float closed, so the jaw is relaxed. Softening the shoulders. Allowing the belly to drop down and forward. And releasing any extra tension in the legs, the ankles, and the feet.

And if there's any tension in the body that won't relax, that's no problem at all. Just relax around the tension. No need to ask this moment to be any different than it is.

Reconnecting with your anchor now. Feeling a full breath cycle. Inviting the mind to rest on the simplicity of what's present.

If you've noticed that the mind has wandered, can you gently and kindly return your attention to the present moment? Bringing yourself back to the anchor. Just sliding back to the anchor, no need to contract or judge yourself if the mind has gone missing. Just sliding back to the present moment as many times as is needed.

As we continue staying connected to our primary anchor of attention—the breath, the soundscape—if something else calls your attention, maybe a strong sensation elsewhere in the body, an emotion or mood, a sound, allow the mind to recognize that, such that mindfulness knows what's happening. Sensations in the knee, contraction in the shoulder blade, a sense of peacefulness or disease. Just allowing the mind to recognize what's present if it draws your attention away from the anchor.

And you can take a few moments to get to know that experience. That which is recognized, which is identified. Feeling the sensations in the knee, getting to know them. Getting to know whatever draws your attention for a few moments before returning to your anchor.

May the beneficial energy of our practice benefit all beings everywhere, so they may be free from suffering.

[Applause]

The Five Hindrances

Good morning, everyone. Welcome if you're just arriving. My name is Mei Elliott. I'm coming today from San Francisco Zen Center where I live and work, and it's a delight to be with you today. Today is a special day for those that don't know, it is Gay Pride Day with the Pride Parade in San Francisco, an opportunity to celebrate all forms of LGBTQIA+ diversity and identities. And something for me that feels so special about Pride is it really feels like an opportunity to celebrate and honor all parts of oneself. And so learning to love ourselves just as we are is such an important thing. So I hope that this talk today inspires some of that same sentiment for you, so that we can learn to be present with ourselves, present with whatever is arising for us without judgment. No part left out.

I'd like to begin the talk this morning with a memory. I was just reflecting on how when I was a teenager, one of my favorite things to do was to go backpacking. We'd pack up our backpacks with everything we'd need and take off into the backcountry, and go out to remote lakes and mountains. And one of the aspects of this is we needed to be self-sufficient and we could only carry about two liters of water on us at any given time, so we needed to hike from water source to water source. And so this might be finding mountain streams or creeks or finding lakes. And on occasion, we would travel for miles and miles through the heat and get to a water source and it would be murky, or filled with silt, or overgrown with moss, and that was not good news. We'd have these little plastic water filters with us that we'd pump the water with, and though they did a pretty good job, they were no match for a really funky lake. So what we needed was for our water to be somewhat clear in order to sustain us and to continue surviving on our journey.

And I remembered this experience when I was thinking about the mind. So our mind is a little like the water in these lakes and creeks. When the mind is clear, it can be life-giving. It can sustain and support us, and we can become more free of suffering. We can become more loving and joyful in our lives. But if the mind is too agitated, too murky, too overgrown, we're not able to see clearly. The qualities of love and wisdom are obscured by the silt of the mind, and we're not able to move forward towards greater freedom in our life.

The Buddha named five specific states of mind that create a lack of clarity. These are called the Five Hindrances. I'm just curious, who here has heard of the Five Hindrances? People familiar? Wonderful, great. So this will be a review for some of you. And for me, what I find is the more I hear about the hindrances, the more I'm able to recognize them in myself and to not be fooled by them. So the hindrances are known for covering over and obscuring our wisdom, and typically if we're having a difficult time, probably one of the hindrances is at work.

So the Five Hindrances, for those that could use a review, are sense desire (the wanting mind), ill will or aversion (the mind that doesn't want what it has)—so these first two are two sides of the same coin, wanting and not wanting. The next is restlessness, so this can be a higher energy state, a mental or physical agitation. The next is sloth and torpor, which is sleepiness, and those two are energetic states. And then the last is doubt.

So the Buddha compared the mind to a bowl of water. In one of the early Buddhist suttas^[1], he talks about the hindrances as though they were a bowl of water. So the doubtful mind is like a bowl of water that's murky. The restless mind is stirred up or agitated water. The sleepy mind is like a bowl of water overgrown. The aversive mind is boiling as though hot with anger, and the desirous mind is like water filled with colorful dyes—dyes that can entrance us and distract us in the way that sense desire is so apt to do. So in all cases, the mind is not clear.

So lucky for us, the Buddha offered some wonderful teachings on how to work with these states. And in this talk, I'll share a singular practice that you can use to apply to any of the hindrances. So we could think of this as a one-size-fits-all teaching. And then I'll go through each hindrance individually and share some of the specific practices that you might apply to each individual hindrance, including the antidotes.

And something I find quite helpful to remember is that almost anything I'm struggling with—not everything, but many things—can in large part be distilled down to simply being a manifestation of one of the hindrances. So simple, just one of these five things. Pretty easy, right? So if I can learn to meet these hindrances skillfully, then there's going to be a lot more freedom in my life. So I find that pretty incentivizing for learning how to work with these.

So to begin, here is the one-size-fits-all practice. And if this is the only thing that you remember from this talk, it will serve you well. And it's really simple, just two steps to this. The first is recognize, and the second is feel.

So recognize, that's just recognizing what's present. Identifying what is present in this moment. So that might be, "Oh, this is wanting, this is wanting that's present," or, "Oh, this is sleepiness." And it's really helpful to know a hindrance as a hindrance. "Oh, this is just one of the hindrances." We're so often transfixed by the storyline of what we want or what we want to get rid of that we don't even really know that desire or aversion are present for us, and that those are actually what's fueling the show.

And sometimes just the act of naming something is enough to help it lose its power over us. Sometimes there can be something in us that's asking for attention and piping up in our mind over and over again, and when we can turn towards it and identify it, recognize it, it's as though we're giving it the attention that it's been seeking, and that can sometimes be enough to help it release.

Some time ago, I decided to embark on trying a new meditation technique, and this was taught by a teacher that I really admired. So naturally, I wanted to impress the teacher with my meditative prowess. And of course, as one could suspect, I found myself some time later worrying about, "Well, am I any good at this practice? I really want to be good at this. Am I doing it right?" And so it's no surprise that there was some suffering there associated with that experience.

So one day I was sitting kind of mulling over my sense of insufficiency when the mind stopped and a phrase came into the mind, and it said, "This is doubt. This is doubt." That's it. This is just one of the hindrances. And I know that I don't need to take the hindrances personally. And it was upon the arising of seeing the recognition, "This is doubt," that the whole package fell away. That whole narrative, the whole storyline just evaporated, and in its place, it was replaced by joy. So sometimes just the naming of something can be enough to have it release. And you'll notice when that happened, I didn't make the doubt go away, I didn't get rid of the doubt, I didn't even let go of the doubt. Inner wisdom released the doubt in that moment, and that's what can become possible as we begin to practice with the hindrances more.

And often for us, simple recognition does not cause the hindrance to evaporate. And so what then? So then we have our second step. So we recognize and then we feel. We feel the hindrance in the body, we get to know it, we bring curiosity to it, we investigate it. And this is an opportunity to shift our fixation. So often when we're entranced by a hindrance, there's typically an object that we're fixated on, especially this happens with desire and ill will or aversion. We're fixated on wanting a new haircut or getting our roommate to take out the trash, and so we're so wrapped up in the object—the trash, the roommate, the haircut—that we don't really know what's happening. So instead, in this way of working with the hindrance, we let go of obsessing with the object, and we turn 180 degrees and look inward and identify what's happening. And this begins to pull us out of our trance, it pulls us out of our daydream. So rather than trying to get rid of our hindrance, we turn and look at it, we feel it.

And just to say a little bit more about what I mean when I say feel, when we feel it in the body and we get curious about it, we're actually feeling into the sensations. We're not exploring it with a mental narrative, we're feeling it in the present moment. So that might be experiencing tightness in the chest, or a dull ache at the pit of the stomach, or heat in the forehead, tingling, pressure. We're feeling it from that lens. And we might notice what the hindrance feels like in the mind also. How is it coloring the mind? Maybe there's an emotional tone or a mood that goes with it. You might even notice what sorts of thoughts are occurring without getting caught up in the narrative, but just seeing like, "Oh wow, there's a lot of thought production around this," or "The thoughts are kind of yelling," or "They're maybe really quiet." Just seeing what's happening from the present moment view.

So that's it: recognize and feel. And it's through this experience of recognizing and feeling what's happening in the present, when we're not transfixed by the object that the mind is obsessing over, that the mind and heart can register, "Oh, this is suffering. It actually hurts when I'm caught up in this pattern of these hindrances." And in the same way that the mind knows if the hand touches a hot stove, "Ouch, that burns," and we don't have to convince ourselves to not touch a hot stove, we just know, "That hurts. I'm not going to touch a hot stove." The mind and heart begins to learn that with the hindrances. Because it really feels the hindrances fully, it begins to learn, "Ouch, this hurts. I'm not going to do that anymore." And we can see this in the way that the mind let go of doubt, right? It's like, "Oh yeah, I remember that one, that hurts. I'm not going to touch that stove anymore. I'm not going to do this doubt thing anymore." And the system can learn to release it. And that's a really powerful and inspiring thing when the mind begins to do this, when the mind begins to let go of these patterns, these hindrance patterns.

Okay, so now I'll go through the hindrances individually to say a little bit more about each and provide the antidotes. So traditionally, an antidote is a medicine to counteract a poison, and in this case with the hindrances, the antidotes are no different. They are designed to counteract the hindrance. And to say something about when we would use an antidote, I remember learning about all the antidotes and kind of being confused about how to practice with these things, and when do I do one, and when do I just feel it, and too much stuff. So what I would suggest is start with recognizing and feeling. Antidotes are what can be applied when we're being overwhelmed by the hindrance and we can't just be mindful of it. So we start with being mindful of it, and staying with it, with feeling it, getting to know it, and it's only when we become overwhelmed, when it feels like too much, that we can try something different. That it's a good idea to change the channel and try something new.

So let's go into sense desire, let's talk a little bit about that. So other ways we might refer to this hindrance include craving, wanting, the wish to acquire things, longing, grasping. Sense desire is at work when we are longing for a cup of coffee, or when we are trying to make ourselves physically beautiful, or seeking to go to a gallery to have some visual pleasure. It's at work when there's fantasy about sexual or romantic desire. All different areas that can come up. It even comes up when we are craving to try to repeat a blissful meditation experience.

So as you know, we have the five senses: hearing, seeing, touching, tasting, smelling. In Buddhism, we have a sixth: the mind. So there's these six senses. So with sense desire, it's just that we're craving for pleasant experience at one of the six senses. So that's what's happening, and it can happen at any of those senses. It's the craving for what's pleasant and agreeable to take place at any one of the given sense doors, if not all of them. And often when we have free time in our life, say maybe a Sunday afternoon, we're often trying to fill that free time with back-to-back pleasant sense experience. There can be the illusion in our culture that a happy life is one where we've been able to string together back-to-back pleasant sense experiences and avoid anything unpleasant.

And generally, what's at the heart of sense desire is a feeling that something could make this moment better. That this moment is insufficient, and that happiness resides out at the next pleasure, the next pleasant experience. And I do want to note as I say this, because desire can get a pretty bad rap in Buddhist circles, that not all desires are problems. So there's the desire to be free from suffering, the desire to be compassionate or patient—these are all wholesome desires. Then we can also have what I might call innocuous desires, like the desire to go for a walk outside or to put on a sweater. These typically don't manifest as hindrances, and what shifts an innocuous desire into being a hindrance is when we're gripped by it, when we're preoccupied by it, when it runs the show. So often desire, it's as though it gets in the driver's seat and we're in the passenger seat and it's taking us for a ride, so we're subject to the wishes of desire.

But it is possible to hold sense desire lightly. The Dalai Lama was in Germany and getting a tour of an abbey there, and this was an abbey that was known for producing cheese and fruitcake. So the Dalai Lama is getting toured around to the different sites and seeing all of the things, and that night the Dalai Lama got to sit down with the monks that toured him around, and he was recounting his experience of the tour. And he shared that, "You know, it was great, but you know, I kept being offered cheese. 'Here, try this cheese, try that cheese.' Cheese, cheese, cheese. But the whole time all I wanted was fruitcake."

[Laughter]

And of course, upon saying that, he threw his head back and laughed and laughed, and he held his sense desire so lightly, not owned by it in any way, really at peace with it. So how can we do that for ourselves? How can we meet our sense desire without distress or disappointment?

[Laughter]

So we can do this practice of recognizing that desire is present and feeling it in the body. And I want to say something about feeling it in the body because something that's interesting about sense desire is it often feels pleasant in the body when we think about it. So for me, if I think of something enjoyable that I want, often it has a sort of sparkle in the mind, and that's an indicator for me that sense desire is at work if I have that little sparkle of feeling enticed by something.

Under the surface though, what I've discovered as the mind has become more settled and more peaceful is that the state of sense desire, even though it's exciting, there's an excitement to it, it's unsettled. It's based in this feeling of lack or insufficiency, and that there's actually something much more peaceful. The mind that is content is much more peaceful and satisfying than the mind that is excited by sense desire.

So if you're having a hard time staying mindful of sense desire, this is when you might consider an antidote. One of the antidotes for sense desire is impermanence or inconstancy, so remembering that whatever it is that we're reaching after will fade away in time. And for me, it can be helpful to remember that even if I get that object and I can keep it for a long time, my enchantment with it will probably fade away pretty quickly. You may have had the experience of having something that you really want, and you finally get the new purchase, and you're so excited and you have to have it, and it's finally here, and then a month later you hardly remember that you own it anymore. The enchantment has disappeared.

So remembering impermanence can be useful. And in states of meditation, actually observing inconstancy, observing impermanence, the arising and passing of things in the present moment, helps train the mind in the truth of inconstancy. And when we understand at a deeper level how everything is falling away and changing, it's hard to be fooled by sense desire. So both reflecting on and observing impermanence in real time is an excellent antidote for sense desire.

And lastly, this applies with all the hindrances: don't miss recognizing when they're absent. So really let the mind register when sense desire isn't present, really enjoy the satisfaction there, the lack of seeking. So out on the backpacking trips, we didn't just fixate on the pools of water that were cloudy and covered over, but we really enjoyed the pools that were clear. So let yourself be nourished by those.

The second of our hindrances is ill will or aversion. This can manifest as anger, disliking, grief, fear, resentment, boredom, etc. The Zen teacher Lian Shutt^[2] talks about this hindrance as the "terrible toos", spelled t-o-o-s. So we can know aversion is happening when the mind is saying, "Too messy, too cold, too many bugs, too itchy, too ugly." So if you notice that's happening, aversion might be happening inside. And then when we have the terrible toos, that can turn into the "terrible yous." So, "You're too loud, you're too distant, you're too unprofessional." So it can shift to judging others, right? So these are all common ways that aversion can manifest.

And just as with desire, we can recognize, "Oh, this is aversion," dropping the fixation, turning and looking inside, and feeling it. And I think that aversion holds a special place amongst the hindrances, so much so that I have a specific nickname for it: I call it the "tagalong hindrance." And that's because typically if any of the other hindrances are present, chances are aversion may be tagging along too. And that's because the other hindrances often, not always, but often manifest as unpleasant in our system. And so naturally, something unpleasant is there, we want to get rid of it. So there's the primary hindrance of, say, restlessness, and then an add-on, a tagalong of aversion with it. So just watch for this in your hindrance practice. Often when we can see the aversion, we can begin to reorient and learn to relate to the initial hindrance with more patience and kindness.

So if the mind can't be mindful with aversion, then we go to our antidote. The classic antidote for aversion is mettā^[3] or loving-kindness. And for me, if I'm feeling angry, if I'm feeling aversion towards someone, it's often not so accessible to send them loving-kindness. So what I do is I send it to myself, because if I'm angry, chances are I'm suffering. I'm the one that needs that loving-kindness in that moment. So that's one way you can replace the mind of anger with well-wishing.

So the third hindrance is sloth and torpor. And before going into this, I want to remind you that these next two are energetic states: sloth and torpor, and restlessness. One low energy, one high energy. So sloth and torpor can manifest as fatigue, drowsiness, sleepiness, dullness. And sloth typically refers to a mental sleepiness, and torpor to a physical tiredness. I usually just think of them under the category of sleepiness, and that usually does the trick to be able to note sleepiness in one's practice.

And this can come about for a variety of reasons. Sloth and torpor can come forth because we're genuinely tired, we're genuinely under stress or underslept, stressed, overworked, and our body really actually just needs to rest. And there are other forms of sloth and torpor that can arise in meditation, such as, as the mind tries to focus on something simple like the breath, we're not used to having an experience where we're not entertained by our inner fantasies and aversions, by our exciting romance films or horror films that play in the mind. So as those start to dissipate, sometimes the mind gets a little bored and falls asleep.

There's yet a third type of sloth and torpor, and it's defensive sleepiness. So this is when there's something difficult that's being experienced and the mind does not want to feel it. And so sometimes when that's in the system, the mind puts up this shroud so that we can dip out and not have to feel that difficult feeling. In my early retreats, I had a lot of sleepiness. I had a lot of the head jerking, bucking bronco experience. And this was really unpleasant for me. There was a lot of fighting, and I remember this sort of clench-the-teeth sort of energy trying to fight against my sleepiness. And what I learned after suffering significantly over my sleepiness was that the difficulty of it was my resistance to it. It was the tagalong hindrance of aversion that was making sleepiness difficult, and that sleepiness itself is actually karmically neutral. There's nothing bad about sleepiness.

So the key with sleepiness is befriending it. And particularly if we can continue to just be with the breath from a tired place, there's no problem. It might not be the sharpest mindfulness you've ever had, but that's okay. If it's a sleepy period of meditation, we can just be sleepy Buddha, no problem there. And when we look at this basic instruction of recognizing and feeling something, I want to emphasize with the feeling part is that that aspect can have a little curiosity or investigation in it. And for sleepiness, it can be really helpful just to turn up the volume a bit on the investigation, turn up the volume a bit on the curiosity, because those factors of mind are energizing. And that's actually the antidote to sleepiness is energy. So in this case, when we're just feeling and kind of checking it out, bringing this curiosity can be just enough energy to see what's happening. And of course, if the mind is really, really tired, it's hard to investigate anything. But if there can be just a bit of energy, it can be really interesting, and this totally revolutionized my sleepiness practice.

So some of the things that I got curious about, which you might explore in your own sleepiness practice, is: where is the epicenter of sleepiness in the body? And what I mean by that is, where in the body is the most sleepy? So what I would do is I'd go looking to find the sleepiest spot, and for me it was often behind one of my eyes. Typically not both, but behind one of my eyes would be the sleepiest spot. And if I brought the attention there, I'd fall asleep, but if I kind of hung out around it, I could stay awake.

Or we might explore, if we're falling asleep in meditation, can we catch if we fall asleep on an in-breath or an out-breath? Or if we are somebody who's counting breaths in our meditation, one to ten, what number are you falling asleep on? For me, it was often like around somewhere in the six to eight range, I'd go down pretty repeatedly each time through. So you can check these out in your own practice. And if there's enough brightness in the mind, you might be able to see some interesting things or see if you can notice the moment the mind falls asleep. This can all be really fun to explore.

So as I mentioned, the antidote is energy. So perhaps a more direct intervention or a little more extreme intervention, if the mind's too sleepy for all that, is: open the eyes, stand up, go for a brisk walk, splash water on the face. The Buddha recommended all of these for people working with sloth and torpor. For me, cooling down my body temperature... If I'm warm and cozy in the meditation hall, I'll probably fall asleep. So even if I'm a little on the uncomfortable cool side—if I'm wearing short sleeves in a cool hall—I usually don't have sloth and torpor. So these are things you can play with. Oh, and lastly, I had mentioned that defensive sleep. If you're sitting a lot and you're falling asleep a lot, and particularly on retreat if you're past the first several days of retreat and you're still getting sleepy a lot and you're getting enough sleep, you might just drop in the question: "Is there something underneath this? Is there something underneath this?" And that has the potential to expose if there's something else going on that sleepiness is shrouding, trying to protect you from.

Okay, the next is restlessness, the fourth hindrance. So with restlessness, there can be an overabundance of energy. It's sometimes referred to as worry and flurry, and can come forth in a mental or physical manifestation. So mental restlessness can manifest in an agitated mind, racing thoughts, anxious thoughts, worrying. And in the body, it can be that sort of "can't sit still," fidgety, itching, moving, adjusting. That can be physical restlessness. Where I've experienced it is getting home from a really busy day of work, and the momentum of the day makes it so I can't stop. Almost like it's hard to slow down because there's so much movement in the body.

With restlessness, it can be helpful to remember that this is a natural part of being human. The Zen teacher and author Mark Lesser likes to remind us that we are the descendants of the nervous apes. So all of the chilled out apes got eaten, and it was the nervous apes that made baby nervous apes, etc., and here we are. So don't be too hard on yourself if you have restlessness, if you have anxiety in your life and practice, this is so normal.

So the antidote for restlessness is calm or tranquility. So if you feel restless, you can return to your meditation anchor. If you're meditating, you can return to your anchor, say the breath or the soundscape, but do so in a gentle way, in a way that invites the mind to rest. What we're doing here is allowing the mind to gravitate around a simple object, and this can be a refuge for the mind that's tangled up in what can be a high-energy, agitated storyline. So we're moving from a complex object to a simple object, and sometimes that can be very relieving. For some people, bringing the attention to an anchor can increase the energy though, and if that happens, you can try giving the mind a really wide pasture. So that might be, rather than focusing on a small point in the body, opening up to the soundscape so that there's a lot of room for the energy in the body.

And then another way is, if there's restlessness, to connect with any calm that may already be present. So sometimes if I'm restless, if the energy is really wrapped up in the mind in a storyline or maybe there's tightness in the chest, I might notice if there's calmness anywhere else in the body, like maybe the feet feel pretty relaxed. Or I might tune into any tranquility that's in the space around me. If I'm in a natural setting, or a quiet room, or a peaceful meditation hall, I might allow the mind to be soothed by the tranquility that's already here.

And then, as with all the hindrances, when the mind is free of restlessness, when calm is present, let yourself be nourished by that. Don't miss that.

Okay, our last hindrance, the fifth hindrance, is doubt. This can manifest as doubt in the Buddhist teachings: "Does this really work? Maybe I should have tried Hinduism." Doubt in your teachers, doubt in the teachings, doubt in yourself: "Can I really do this practice? I'm not really any good at this." When doubt arises, for the insight teacher Greg Scharf, he says he feels like he's in the "I'm not very good at this" club. You may relate. And as I shared in my story earlier of self-doubt, it can be a powerful visitor. Self-doubt can be a powerful visitor.

Something that can help with this is remembering that you don't need to judge or assess your progress on the path. That's actually extra and not necessary. If we go to a guitar lesson for the first time, we don't expect to be a Grammy-winning musician the next day, and yet somehow when we sit down in meditation, we can have the feeling like, "Oh, I'm supposed to be peaceful and calm and tranquil all the time." So readjusting our expectations can be quite helpful.

The antidote to doubt is faith. Other words for faith are trust or confidence. So if faith doesn't resonate for you, these other words also work. So can we trust that whatever is arising is arising right on time? We are right on track. Can we trust the dharma? Can we trust the practice? Can we have confidence in it? If you struggle with doubt, build a daily faith practice. This might involve reflecting on times that the dharma has supported you, remembering times that you've felt that the dharma has benefited you in some way. Reflect on times that you've had confidence in yourself. And in these ways, it can bolster the mind.

For some, it's taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and connecting with faith in the Triple Gem^[4] that can bring faith. So there's a lot of ways to do this. You can borrow the faith of your teachers. If there's a teacher that you particularly admire and trust, and maybe you don't have a lot of faith but you can see that the practice is working in them, you can borrow their faith. So have confidence in the practice by seeing how it's working in others.

I saw a sign a while ago that said, "Proceed as though success were inevitable." And I don't think people proceed in that way very often. So what would it be like in our practice to proceed as though success were inevitable?

So those are the Five Hindrances. And I'll review the antidotes for you. So of course, we start with recognizing what's happening and feeling it, exploring it in the body. And then if that isn't accessible, then we turn to these antidotes. So for sense desire, it's reflecting on and observing impermanence. Aversion or ill will, it's mettā loving-kindness practice. For sloth and torpor, it's energy. For restlessness, it's calm or tranquility. And for doubt, it's faith. So those are our antidotes.

And as I come to a close here, I want to say how important it is that we have a friendly attitude to the hindrances as we do this practice. It's so easy to judge ourselves when hindrances are present, so remember that it doesn't say anything about you as a person or as a meditator if the hindrances come for a visit. It can help to remember that the Buddha was visited with the hindrances up through his night of awakening. So these are going to be around for a while. So if they're going to be around for a while, you know, if we can think of these as roommates that we may be living with forever that come and go from our house, it could help to make friends with them, to learn how to be with them in a skillful way.

I like to think of the hindrances as a valuable messenger that's come to teach us. Can we respect our hindrances as teachers teaching us how to love our life? Our role is just to meet them, not as a diversion from our path, but as the next stepping stone on the path itself. And when we meet a hindrance with recognition, curiosity, patience, kindness, we're simultaneously growing a wholesome state. So it doesn't matter that a hindrance is present, if we're bringing wholesome states to it, that's what we're cultivating. If we're bringing mindfulness to it, then we're cultivating mindfulness. So we can simultaneously work with the hindrance and cultivate these really beautiful qualities. So they're really an opportunity to grow the heart.

The hindrances are ultimately the medium by which we wake up. So in a way, learning to be with the hindrances without rejection is a radical act of inclusion. It's a way we can make ourselves whole, so there's no part excluded. Everything here is allowed and welcome.

So I'd like to close with a poem by Izumi Shikibu^[5], a female Japanese poet from the 10th century. It's a short poem, it goes like this:

Watching the moon at dawn,
solitary, mid-sky,
I knew myself completely,
no part left out.

So let's sit together for a moment.

Watching the moon at dawn,
solitary, mid-sky,
I knew myself completely,
no part left out.

Thank you for your kind attention.

As it's a little after 10:45, we won't have time for questions this morning. But if you have any questions for me after the program ends, I'll be outside and I'm happy to chat with you for a few moments. So thank you so much for your practice this morning. I appreciate you being here. Thanks so much.