Guided Meditation: (3 of 5) Meditation Essentials: The Five Hindrances - Sloth and Torpor; Dharmette: (3 of 5) Meditation Essentials: The Five Hindrances - Sloth and Torpor

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video (3 of 5) Meditation Essentials: The Five Hindrances - Sloth and Torpor - Mei Elliott. 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 28, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: (3 of 5) Meditation Essentials: The Five Hindrances - Sloth and Torpor

Welcome back. My name is Mei Elliott, and this is day three of our five-day series on the Five Hindrances^[1]. For those who struggle with being present during meditation, I have found that studying the Five Hindrances is really an essential practice for understanding why it is that we're losing presence. What is it exactly that's clouding the mind and inhibiting our ability to show up?

Often, the case is that one of the Five Hindrances is present. The mind gets stirred up in thought, fueled by desire, ill will, restlessness, or doubt. Or maybe you are just so sleepy and foggy that you can't be present, and sloth and torpor^[2] are clouding the mind. Today we'll be focusing on sloth and torpor, also known as sleepiness. In the meditation, we'll play around with the classic antidote to sleepiness, which is cultivating energy.

To begin, please find your meditation posture. To bring forth energy in the practice, it can be really helpful to have an upright posture. Sometimes, if we're really cozy and comfortable, leaning back on a chair or a couch, it's really easy to get sleepier. That's a prime recipe for falling asleep. See if you can find an upright posture that's both alert and relaxed.

Start with a few deep breaths. Let this be a signal for the body to land and show up. We'll take a little time to connect with the present moment by making contact with our primary anchor. Maybe that's the breath, maybe it's a global sense of the body posture sitting, or maybe it's the soundscape. Take some time to land in your body with your sense gates^[3], seeing what it's like to be here.

Having connected to a felt sense of the present moment, let's take stock of the energy in the body. Kind of do an energy inventory. Check to see whether the energy is high, low, or somewhere in between. On one end of the spectrum, we have a very energetic, maybe excited, high energy. On the other end, low, heavy, tired, falling-asleep energy. What is the energy like in your body and mind right now?

We might find that the body is alert but the mind is sluggish. Or sometimes the other way around, where the mind is sluggish or dull but the body is somewhat awake and there's energy in the body. We're just exploring to see what we find.

During the meditation, I'll offer some antidotes to sleepiness, sloth, and torpor. Even if your energy is high or well-regulated, and even if you're not tired during this meditation, you might still play around with some of the energy practices that I'm offering, just so that you get a body memory of how to do this.

To begin, one of our classic antidotes to sleepiness is just to sit up straighter. Like I mentioned at the beginning of the meditation, if you find the mind getting too sluggish, just bring a little bit more energy into the posture. Invite a little bit more space between the bones of the spine, and a little more lift in the back of the neck. That can bring in a little more energy.

Another way to do this is by opening the eyes. Rather than meditating with the eyes closed, let some light in. It's fine if you want to change your posture or close your eyes again. We're just trying these on a little bit here. You don't need to do each thing for the entire meditation.

We won't do these next ones now, but it can also be helpful to stand up. If you're really falling asleep, you can stand up, and that's actually fine to do during the meditation. Others that we won't do include splashing cold water on the face or going for a brisk walk. These are energizers for our alertness^[4]. You might also try cooling down^[5] the body if you're feeling sleepy: taking off a sweatshirt or opening a window. If you'd like to try that, you can see how it impacts energy in the body. You don't want to create too much movement, but these are all physical ways that we can change the energy in our practice.

Going forward, I'll offer some options to keep you still and seated in your meditation—things you can do with your eyes closed and in your typical meditation posture. For this, you might bring to mind something that inspires you about practice. This is a reflection. Often, that which inspires us brings forth energy. What brings forth energy for you? Maybe it's the final goal of liberation: freedom from suffering and the deep wish to be free. Or maybe there's a wish to be in service in the world, living by the Bodhisattva Vow^[6] to save all beings from suffering. Or maybe to be kinder to your family, or to be less anxious at work. All of these are valid reasons for practice. Take a moment to connect with what inspires you to practice. What is your motivation?

Can you feel the way that this reflection brings a little bit more oomph to the breath? A little more effort? Oh yeah, there's a reason that I'm sitting here doing this now. A reason to bring the effort in.

Another way to bring forth energy in our practice is to increase curiosity and bring forth this factor of investigation^[7]. If we can become curious, that can really increase the energy and effort here. You might get curious about noticing the exact moment the breath turns from an inhale to an exhale, and from an exhale to an inhale. You could be curious about the shape the breath takes. Maybe it billows at the beginning and then gets small at the end. Maybe it's a thin, narrow, short breath. Maybe it's smooth and even for the entire inhale, or choppy and staccato. What's the shape and texture of the breath? Is the inhale longer than the exhale, or the other way around?

This practice of cultivating curiosity, which brings forth energy, can be done at any of the sense doors^[8]. You can do it with a felt sense of the breath, how we just did, or we can feel any other part of the body that brings forth interest for us. We can do it with the soundscape. Maybe sensing into the nearest sounds. Maybe sounds from one's own body: the sound of the breath, sounds of digestion in the belly, or sounds in the room. What are the far-away sounds? Bird calls, water, city sounds. Can you catch each one?

Now for a little creativity and playfulness: we can use the imagination to increase curiosity. You might imagine for a moment that you are inhabiting a body that's not your own. Maybe you're an alien that was sent from space, and you are inhabiting a human suit to wear for the day. This is not something you'll find in the suttas^[9], but we can employ our imagination to bring forth curiosity in our practice. Maybe this is your first time on Earth, and you're responsible for really getting to know what it's like to be in a human body. Can you explore the present moment from that place? Your first time being human: what's it like to have senses? What's it like to feel? You can take the last few minutes of the meditation exploring in this way, or doing whatever other practice is supportive for you for cultivating curiosity.

May the beneficial energy of our time together benefit all beings, so they may be happy, healthy, safe, and free from suffering.

Dharmette: (3 of 5) Meditation Essentials: The Five Hindrances - Sloth and Torpor

Alright, welcome back, folks. For those just arriving, I'm Mei Elliott, and we're continuing our series on the Five Hindrances.

When I was a teenager, one of my favorite things to do was to go backpacking. We would go deep into the backcountry, carrying everything we needed on our backs, and we'd hike out to remote lakes and mountains. As part of this experience, we needed to hike from water source to water source to refill our water bottles. Sometimes this would be from a tiny spring, a creek, or a large lake. We carried these little hand pumps that filtered out bacteria. I remember many peaceful afternoons sitting by a creek deep in the forest, pumping water into my bottle. The filters were pretty good, but if the water we found was too murky, filled with silt, or too overgrown with moss, then the filters wouldn't be able to do their job, and we couldn't drink the water. We really needed our water to be somewhat clear in order to sustain us and to continue on our journey.

Similarly, the Buddha compared the Five Hindrances to a pond with unclear water^[10]. In an unafflicted mind, the water is clear, but in a mind that's afflicted by the hindrances, the water is unclear. The doubtful mind was compared to murky water—you can't see through it. The sleepy mind is like water overgrown with moss. The restless mind is like stirred-up water. The mind with ill will is boiling water, as though aflame with anger. And the desirous mind is compared to water filled with colorful dye, or a shade that's so enchanting it can entrance us, drawing us to it.

Our mind is a little like the water we'd find on these backpacking trips. When the mind is clear, it can be life-giving, more like fresh spring water. If the mind is too agitated, too murky, or too overgrown, then it's not clear, and we can't be nourished by it.

Today we'll focus on the third hindrance: sloth and torpor^[11]. Now, lots of these terms were translated when Victoria was Queen of England, so the term sounds a little archaic. But all "sloth and torpor" really refers to is sleepiness. Other ways it might appear in our practice—and these words might be more resonant for you—are drowsiness, fatigue, lethargy, dullness^[12], etc.

In our practice, we might come across just a run-of-the-mill sleepiness where the body physiologically needs more sleep. Technically, this isn't sloth and torpor; it's not necessarily a hindrance if we're just physically needing more sleep or under-slept. Torpor as a hindrance occurs when there's a psychological cause to it. For example: boredom, indifference, disinterest, complacency, or hopelessness. These are all things that can lead to a dull mind that wants to go to sleep. I should also note that sloth typically refers to a mental sleepiness, and torpor to a physical tiredness.

Sloth and torpor as a hindrance are products of an attitude we have. For example, during daily life, we accrue stories about ourselves, and we often replay them like blockbuster hits in our meditation. During meditation, as the mind learns to let go of these movie reruns, sometimes the lack of entertainment makes the mind get sleepy. As we develop a taste for peace and stillness, at first it can register as boring, and sleepiness can arise. We're not used to a screen without a movie projected on it. This would be an example of sloth and torpor resulting from a psychological source rather than a lack of sleep.

Sometimes, the energy expended from replaying the blockbuster hits has exhausted us physically and mentally, so we experience sloth and torpor as a result of riding the intensity of the highs and lows. Often there's a commotion^[13] in the body when we're riding the highs and lows, and that can actually make us tired. Alternatively, we experience sloth and torpor because the mind doesn't want to experience a certain state, such as grief, disappointment, or self-judgment. In the same way that the Buddha compared sloth and torpor to a pond overgrown with moss, sometimes we want to pull the metaphorical covers over our heads and go to sleep rather than feel a certain difficult emotion. The sleepiness actually functions as a strategy of avoidance.

As we move into this third hindrance of sloth and torpor, we can see that it's really an energetic state. That's what we explored in our meditation. The fourth hindrance of restlessness is also energetic, so we could say these two are kind of two sides of the spectrum: sloth and torpor presenting as low energy, and restlessness often presenting as high energy.

When I was sitting my early meditation retreats, I had a lot of sleepiness. This was really unpleasant for me, and I spent a lot of time fighting it. What I learned through that was that much of the suffering with sleepiness was actually my resistance to it—my sense that the sleepiness shouldn't be there. For me, it was actually aversion that was making the experience a suffering state. Sleepiness itself is karmically neutral; it's not bad. What was happening for me is I was having a multiple-hindrance attack: the combination of sleepiness followed by aversion.

Let's take a little detour to mention how aversion crops up in relationship to the other hindrances. Because the hindrances themselves are often unpleasant, in addition to the primary hindrance like sleepiness, it's not uncommon to have aversion arise. You can have aversion arise with any of the hindrances. It can arise even in relationship to aversion! Aversion to aversion, like when we're trying to get rid of our anger. This is one of the reasons I call aversion the "tag-along hindrance," because it often tags along with the others.

As you practice with all of the hindrances, notice if there's an attitude like, Oh no, this shouldn't be happening, or This sleepiness is ruining my meditation, or My mind is so restless, there's too much thinking, I should know better. When we see the aversion clearly, we can begin to reorient and learn to relate to the initial hindrance with more patience and kindness.

All to say: you don't need to resist sleepiness or get aversive to it. Instead, can you befriend your sleepiness? You can make friends with the peaceful state. It's a tranquil state, that's not a bad thing, and you can just bring mindfulness to that tranquil state. We can continue to be with the breath from a tired place. It's fine if there are times when the mind isn't crystal clear. If a period of meditation is sleepy, then just be sleepy. We shouldn't abandon a meditation session because of sleepiness. It's a great training to be sleepy, because we will always have sleepy moments in our life. How can we learn how to be with them in a skillful way?

Again, the basic instruction for sleepiness is to recognize it. We've talked about this practice each day so far, and we'll continue to. First, we recognize the sleepiness, and then we practice feeling it. Recognize and feel: that's our primary practice for all the hindrances.

With sleepiness, I find it's actually easier to recognize than the other hindrances. When we feel sleepiness and we actually sense it in the present moment, I really want to emphasize something that I pointed to a lot in the meditation, which is curiosity. If we can sense our experience with curiosity, that really turns up the dial on energy. Curiosity raises energy. That is what I really suggest when you recognize and feel.

Getting to know the sleepiness with curiosity—feeling it with curiosity—has actually been revolutionary in my practice with this hindrance. Sleepiness has actually become very interesting to me. As an example of some of the things that I would get curious about in my sloth and torpor practice, sometimes I explore: Where is the sleepiest spot in my entire body? I'd find the epicenter of the sleepiness. Sometimes the epicenter might be right behind my left thigh. If I go to that spot, I nod off, and if I kind of move away from that spot in the body, sometimes I'd be able to maintain the energy a little longer.

I might see if I could find the exact moment the mind slips into a sleep state—that crossover from awake to asleep, in that first moment of a shift in state. Or I might notice if I fall asleep on an in-breath or an out-breath. If I'm counting my breath from one to ten, where do I lose track? Am I falling asleep on breath two? Or maybe I'm there for breaths one through five, and then I lose track around six and seven.

These are just all different ways that I found to explore the experience. What I found is that sometimes the mind is just way too heavy, too dull to notice any of that. But then sometimes there are other flavors of sleepiness where there's a tiredness in the mind, and there is that falling asleep, but it's a lighter feeling and I'm more able to explore what's happening there. You can just play around with these and see what you discover. These are always just to bring some curiosity towards what it is that you're feeling and what you're noticing.

As mentioned many times today, the antidote for sloth and torpor is energy. During the meditation, I mentioned a few, but just so you can hear them again: if you're sleepy, try opening your eyes, sitting up straighter, and taking a few deep breaths. If you were on retreat and intending to be sitting for a long time, you might get up and go for a brisk walk or splash cold water on the face. And if you need to go take a nap, there's no crime in napping.

One thing that was really helpful for me was making the body colder. Rather than bundling up in a cozy way in the meditation hall or in my room, sitting in a T-shirt if the room is cool or opening the window brings my energy right back up.

If you're someone who thinks it might be defensive sleep, or you're becoming sleepy so you don't have to feel something—or if you just notice the pattern of sleepiness is happening a lot—you might ask yourself, Is there something underneath this? Just drop in that question: Is there something underneath this? That can at times reveal if there is something else that you're feeling here. It can unveil any underlying emotion or feeling that the sleepiness is masking.

Lastly, as with all the hindrances, notice when the sleepiness passes. Notice when those clouds clear and the sun shines again, when the mind perks up from the sleepiness and energy returns. Notice when the mind is bright.

Just a few more notes on the attitude in meditation with the hindrances. The Buddha was visited by hindrances up through the night that led to his awakening. It's not something to be so hard on ourselves about; there is no need to judge yourself for having hindrances. Instead, we can relate to them as valuable messengers that have come to teach us. Can we respect our hindrances as teachers? Our role is to meet them not as a diversion from the path, but as the path itself. We can think of the hindrances, or whatever it is that we're dealing with, as the next stepping stone on the path.

When we meet a hindrance with recognition, curiosity, and patience, we're simultaneously cultivating a wholesome state. This isn't something going wrong! When you can be present with a hindrance, so many wholesome qualities are being cultivated. Seeing a hindrance can actually bring joy and delight. Working with the hindrances is cultivating these beautiful qualities.

Today, if you find yourself getting sleepy, rather than immediately reaching for the cup of coffee, maybe just postpone the coffee for a few minutes to explore what sleepiness is like. Can you recognize and feel it? Can you get curious about it? How do you cultivate energy? Is there a mental state causing the sleepiness, such as boredom?

When I was in high school doing my math homework, I would sit in my desk chair, and often, before I knew it, I'd find myself waking up with my head on the desk. You can guess how I felt about math in high school. Clearly, my attitude during that activity put me right to sleep! How does sleepiness show up for you? Is the sleepiness serving as a mask to block an emotion?

There are plenty of ways to explore this, and I hope that you enjoy it. Now you've had just enough sloth and torpor today that you have the opportunity to cultivate all sorts of wholesome states of mind in response. Thank you so much, everyone. Have a lovely day.