Guided Meditation: (2 of 5) Meditation Essentials: The Five Hindrances - Ill Will; Dharmette: (2 of 5) Meditation Essentials: The Five Hinderances - Ill Will

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video (2 of 5) Meditation Essentials: The Five Hindrances - Ill Will. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Mei Elliott at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on June 27, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: (2 of 5) Meditation Essentials: The Five Hindrances - Ill Will

Well, hello everyone. Welcome back. My name is Mei Elliott, and this is day two of our five-day series on the hindrances. Getting to know the five hindrances in our meditation practice is really essential for learning how to settle the mind. As a reminder, the five hindrances include sense desire, ill will (also known as aversion), restlessness, sloth and torpor, and doubt.

Today we'll be exploring the second hindrance: ill will. The traditional antidote to the hindrance of ill will is mettā^[1], or loving-kindness. So, I'll offer some instructions for mettā during the sitting today.

While ideally we might send mettā to the person we're angry at, if we're feeling ill will, this is a tall order for most of us. So instead, we'll start where it's easiest. We'll start by sending mettā to someone that's easy to love, and this helps grow the capacity for kindness in a way that's not quite as challenging. It's a little bit more like starting with the five-pound weights or the one-pound weights at the gym, rather than the fifty-pound weights.

During our meditation, we'll begin by landing in the body, and then we'll shift our focus to doing mettā for someone who is easy to love, and then for ourselves. We'll just sprinkle in the mettā a bit. You don't have to do it for the whole period if it doesn't resonate with you, but try it on if it feels like something that you're interested in. Know that there are many, many ways to do mettā, and this is one of many approaches.

Go ahead and take your meditation posture, whether that's sitting, standing, or lying down. The Buddha taught meditation in all postures, so whatever works for your body.

Connect with a landing point for your meditation—some aspect of your present moment experience that anchors you here. That might be the breath, it might be the soundscape, or it might be a global sense of the body sitting. Whatever works for you.

Connecting with your anchor. Setting the intention to land here together this morning, releasing thoughts of past and future. Inviting the mind and the body to relax. If it's helpful, maybe taking a few deep breaths. Resetting, reconnecting.

Taking some time now to be devoted to your primary anchor. Maybe the breath, the soundscape, or a global sense of the body. Landing here with a felt sense of the now.

All right, we'll start by bringing to mind someone that's easy to love. That might be a parent, a grandparent, maybe an aunt or an uncle, Guanyin^[2], the Dalai Lama, a cat, a dog, your favorite pet. Any of these beings are suitable for mettā practice.

What we'll do is take a moment to reflect on their goodness. This is an opportunity to consider the goodness of this being. You might bring to mind a memory or just a general sense of this being's goodness, maybe reflecting on a time they were particularly generous, compassionate, or patient. Something that you love about them. Reflecting on one's goodness is the proximate cause for mettā to arise. So we're warming up the heart.

You might picture them sitting in front of you. It doesn't have to be a photographic image. Connect with the heart that wishes them well.

Having touched in on the goodness of this being, we'll now offer the mettā phrases. I'll say a phrase, and you can repeat it back in your own mind. When we do this, it's almost like dropping a drip of water into a pond and just letting it ripple out. We're letting the phrase drop into our mind and body, and then just seeing what happens, letting it ripple through. We're not demanding that the heart respond in a certain way. We're just seeing what happens. So this is a mindfulness practice.

May you be joyful and happy. May you be strong and healthy. May you be safe and free from harm. And may you be peaceful and at ease.

If the phrases feel a little too cumbersome, you might try it like this: just saying a single word and directing it towards this person.

Happy. Healthy. Safe. Free.

May you be joyful and happy. May you be strong and healthy. May you be safe and free from harm. And may you be peaceful and at ease.

During this practice, it's okay if there's not a sense of love or kindness. It's enough just to have the wish to send loving-kindness. Love can be an action instead of a feeling. And in saying the phrases, we're just planting a seed. That seed will bloom on its own time; it'll sprout on its own time. So we don't demand that the heart feel warm, or light, or open. However it feels is how it feels.

We'll turn the tables now and reflect on our own goodness. Taking a few moments to reflect on ways that you've been generous, or kind, forgiving, patient. This reminds the heart that you too are worthy of love, even if it's just very small amounts of kindness.

So rather than sending the phrases to ourselves, we'll keep that person with us—the one that's easy to love. We keep that being with us. Then we'll imagine them sending us the phrases. Such that our grandmother, or the Dalai Lama, or our pet dog, whatever being it is, is actually directing the loving-kindness at us. We're leaning on their compassion, on their kindness.

You might imagine them looking at you with a sense of warmth or love, sending you these phrases:

May you be joyful and happy. May you be strong and healthy. May you be safe and free from harm. And may you be peaceful and at ease.

Allowing yourself to receive the mettā from this being.

May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be safe. May you be free.

We can take the next few minutes just to see how that feels in the body and in the mind, continuing with the phrases if you'd like, or resting back with your primary anchor. Doing whatever is most nourishing for you.

May all beings know happiness and the causes of happiness.

Dharmette: (2 of 5) Meditation Essentials: The Five Hinderances - Ill Will

All right, welcome back. Hello to those of you who are just arriving. My name is Mei Elliott, and today we'll be focusing on the second hindrance: ill will, sometimes referred to as aversion.

Ill will in Pali^[3] is vyāpāda^[4]. This hindrance of ill will can manifest as anger, not liking, judgment, resentment, discontent, denial, fear, boredom, etc. Yesterday I spoke about the first hindrance of sense desire. These first two hindrances come as a pair; they're two sides of the same coin. They're the forces of wanting and not wanting. With each, there's a wish to change our experience in some way to create a better moment. At the base of both of these mind states is this sentiment that the moment isn't sufficient as it is—I need more of something, or I need less of something to be okay. Something that both desire and aversion share is that they tend to be spellbinding. The narratives we tell ourselves about what we want and what we don't want really transfix us. But at the heart, beneath the narrative, there's simply dissatisfaction.

So where does it come from? Where does ill will come from? Aversion or ill will are born from unwise attention to an unpleasant experience. Aversion is born from fixating on that which is unpleasant, and when we meet something that's unpleasant, that's exactly what the mind does. It tends to fixate.

Thich Nhat Hanh^[5] used to talk about the phenomenon of the one chipped tooth. If you've ever chipped a tooth, you may notice the way that the tongue goes to that chipped spot over and over and over again. There's almost an obsessive quality to it. In the same way, the mind fixates on what's unpleasant, and from that fixation, aversion is often born.

So then, how do we meet it? Yesterday I introduced a very simple two-step practice that you can use for all of the hindrances, so we'll play with that with aversion right now. We start by doing step one, which is recognizing the aversion. Rather than just being fixated on the noisy neighbor or on the bad traffic, we recognize, "Well, this is aversion."

Then we drop the fixation on the object. We let go of thinking about the noisy neighbor or the bad traffic, and instead, we turn 180 degrees to feel the inner experience. Step two is feeling the inner experience.

There's a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson that goes like this: "If a dog is chasing you, turn and whistle for it." When there's something unpleasant we're in contact with that's causing aversion, all we typically want to do is get rid of it or make it stop. But more often than not, we really can't change it. The aversion is already there. So when a dog is chasing you, rather than running from it, can you turn 180 degrees and whistle for it? Can you choose the experience rather than fighting it? It's like, "Great, I successfully recognized aversion, what a victory!" This is a great thing. Can we meet the moment in that way? Can we meet our aversion with that mind?

I do want to acknowledge it can be hard to do the first step of recognizing aversion because it's so easily hidden by our narrative of judgment, rejection, or disliking. So in your meditation practice, if you notice yourself lost in thought, or maybe having repeated thought patterns occurring, you might just ask the question, "What's underneath this?" That might illuminate if aversion, or maybe one of the other hindrances, is present and actually fueling that thought pattern. It's not uncommon that we'll find ourselves ruminating about something if we're feeling aversion towards it.

The Zen teacher [unintelligible]^[6] talks about this hindrance as the "parable of the too's"—as in T-O-O-S. If you're thinking a lot and you notice yourself wanting to change or fix experience, you might notice that the mind is saying something like, "Too messy," or "Too cold," or "Too many bugs," "Too itchy," "Too loud." When we're at this first step of recognizing the hindrance, if you notice that sort of story playing in the mind—"too this," "too that"—it's a likely sign that aversion is at work.

Once we recognize it, we do that 180-degree turn and we feel the aversion in the body. We bring some curiosity to it. As we discussed yesterday, we might be noticing if there's a temperature, or pressure, or contraction, or tightness. Often aversion has an intense tightening in the body, sometimes heat, but see how it is for you. You might notice the energy in the body. Sometimes aversion has a lot of energy to it; anger is very activating energetically because there's often great motivation to fight, or attack, or to push away or expel something. We can notice this energy in the body. Sometimes noticing what's happening in the body with a wide-angle lens—some sense of spaciousness, noticing what's happening in an expansive, relaxed way—can just create a little bit more space around the aversion.

As we do this step of feeling, we can also feel the hindrance in the mind. What's the emotional tone in the mind and the heart, the citta^[7]? What does it make you want to do? Are there repeating thought patterns? So that's our practice of recognizing and feeling.

There's a story about Ajahn Chah^[8], the great Thai Forest master, who is one of the lineage holders in our Western Insight tradition. Ajahn Chah was known for his tremendous strength of practice, his peacefulness, and good-heartedness. He was sitting and teaching, as often happened, under his little kuti^[9], and during one of these times a palm reader, an astrologer, came to visit him. Many people came to visit Ajahn Chah, so he was one of many sitting around listening to him tell stories and teach the Dharma.

This palm reader was just activated by Ajahn Chah's humor and his warmth, and he knew that Ajahn Chah might look down on him if he asked to read his palm, but he couldn't resist. He finally summoned the courage to ask Ajahn Chah if he could look at the lines on his hand. Of course, Ajahn Chah teased him and said, "Oh, am I going to win the lottery?" But Ajahn Chah was willing and he offered his hand to the reader.

After a little while, with a good bit of confusion and some surprise, he said, "Um, excuse me... the lines on your hands... you've got a lot of anger."

And Ajahn Chah smiled and said, "Yes, but I don't use it."

When we've learned to meet a hindrance over and over again, and we can do so with clear recognition and a willingness to feel the hindrance in the body without resistance, we actually learn to divest from that hindrance, and we no longer need to be hijacked by it. As Ajahn Chah said, we don't need to use it. As we do this practice of recognizing and feeling the hindrance of ill will, we end up undercutting the compulsion to use our anger in unskillful ways. The more we're able to train in meeting this hindrance with mindfulness, with patience, with non-judgment, the less power it has over us. We don't need to use it in unskillful ways.

Everything I've shared so far—recognize and feel—should be the typical approach to working with this hindrance. However, if the mind is overwhelmed, if you really just can't practice mindfulness with it, that's when you might shift gears and apply the antidote. As mentioned earlier during our meditation, the traditional antidote to anger and ill will is loving-kindness, the mettā practice. The friendly mind of kindness can actually obstruct aversion. The sense of anger or disliking actually can't arise when that's present. This is something that we can engage if it's supportive to us, and we can lean on the well-wishing of others. We can bring to mind somebody that's been loving to us and have them send us the loving-kindness. That actually still grows the heart muscle; that grows the strength of our capacity for kindness.

I also want to mention another antidote for aversion in daily life, and that's the practice of restraint. We often really want to do what the ill will tells us to do, but to practice restraint is to not do that thing. Don't say the snarky thing to your partner, or drive aggressively, or hurt someone. This allows us to keep our ill will from causing harm.

Lastly, as with all hindrances, notice moments when the mind is free of aversion. Notice when it passes away. You might be totally consumed by anger, and then at some point that anger fades away and the mind and heart are free. Really let that absence register; enjoy it. When the mind is kind and at ease, really take that in.

Today, if you'd like to pick this up as a practice, you might just notice any moment, small or large, where you experience ill will or aversion. You might notice any moments where you feel frustrated—maybe it's while watching the news, or maybe you don't get something that you had hoped for. You might notice if you're internally judging yourself or another person. Just take a moment to see if aversion is present throughout the day.

If you do recognize it, recognize it as aversion, rather than just being fixated on the storyline of what's happening. That's a great victory! This moment of recognition can actually be a catalyst for gladness. In the midst of aversion, you can actually have a feeling of gladness, like, "Wow, look at this. I'm clearly seeing a hindrance, that's a great thing."

So today, if the dog is chasing you, I hope that you are able to turn and whistle for it. I hope you have a wonderful day. Thanks so much, everyone. Take care.