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The Five Hindrances - Class 3 (Restlessness and Worry)

Introduction

Welcome. This is week three in a five-week series on the hindrances. The twist of this class is that I am talking about them partly through the lens of The Wizard of Oz. In the first week, we talked about what the five hindrances are and laid the groundwork for how the characters and the story fit into a Dharma context. Last week, we talked about sensual desire (or greed) and aversion (or ill will). Tonight, we will talk about restlessness and worry. Next week will be sloth and torpor, and the final week will be doubt.

We really want to invite some lightness, joy, and humor to a topic that can be a little heavy. We can easily have an "oh no, I'm having a hindrance" response, but these are simply part of the human condition. They were named by the Buddha over 2,500 years ago, and we see pretty much the same issues interfering with meditation today. Nobody has come up with a new list of hindrances; these still work well enough, which is pretty remarkable.

We are also inviting you to think of the hindrances as energies that impact the physical body. You can start to tune into your body to recognize them. Sensual desire often involves a physical leaning in—it doesn't have to be greed, but if you want something or like what someone is saying, there is a natural movement toward it. In contrast, ill will or aversion is an energy that pushes away or pulls back.

Restlessness and worry are essentially the presence of too much energy. Restlessness manifests in the body as an inability to be still. When you sit down to meditate, sometimes you just can't find a still point, and the body feels agitated and uncomfortable. Worry is the energy in the mind. It is that spinning energy going round and round.

There are similes from the suttas^[1] that compare the hindrances to a pond of water. For restlessness and worry, it is said to be like an intense wind whipping across the surface of the water, making it impossible to see into the pond because there is no stillness. The absence of hindrances would be a clear pond, where the water is completely transparent. Greed is compared to adding dye to the water, like rose-colored glasses that make everything look different. Aversion or ill will is like boiling water, bubbling and broiling with steam—it's hot, dangerous, and you can't look into it.

We can also view a hindrance as a veil. If you pull the veil across, you can't quite see through it. It covers or hinders our clarity. In some ways, simply recognizing that the hindrance is there is like pulling the veil back. In a moment of unhindering, it can be a direct path to clear seeing.

Before meditating, it can be helpful to reflect on things like gratitude, generosity, joy, or loving-kindness. This is a way to orient and incline the mind in a supportive direction. When you sit down to meditate, you can drop in reflections related to the brahma-vihāras^[2] or the ten pāramīs^[3] (perfections), such as patience, gratitude, and joy. Another option is to reflect on the Buddha before you meditate, which can be profoundly uplifting for the heart.

The Wizard of Oz and Restlessness

I want to talk a little bit about The Wizard of Oz and how we might recognize the presence of restlessness and worry in that context.

The movie starts around Dorothy and her dog, Toto, in Kansas. A neighbor is angry because Toto chases her cat in the garden, and she threatens to take Toto away. Dorothy is extremely preoccupied and afraid. She goes back to the farm and tries to get her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry to listen to her concerns. However, they are tending to a broken warmer for their baby chicks, so they are preoccupied with their own worries. They dismiss her, leaving Dorothy feeling like nobody is listening and that she doesn't belong. When the neighbor finally takes Toto away, Dorothy is distraught. Toto escapes from the neighbor's bicycle basket, and when he returns, Dorothy runs away with him. There is an immense amount of worry and restlessness in all of this.

When Dorothy gets to the Land of Oz, her first companion is the Scarecrow (the straw man). When he is first un-tied from his pole, he is dancing and falling all over the place. He can't find a sense of stability in his body, demonstrating a lot of physical restlessness. His emotional affect also swings wildly with too much energy.

Next, they meet the Tin Man, and after that, the Lion. The Lion hides and jumps out from the forest, pretending to be a bully. He tries to start a fight with the Scarecrow and the Tin Man. But when Toto jumps out and barks, the Lion goes after the dog. Dorothy fiercely confronts the Lion to protect her puppy, hitting him on the nose. The Lion absolutely crumbles, starts to cry, grabs his tail, and becomes a melty, sad mush, admitting he has no courage. He had hidden his worry and fear behind bravado. This overcompensation is a common manifestation of restlessness and worry; people who are uncomfortable often project something else because their internal state is so unstable.

Dorothy is going to Oz to get home. The Scarecrow is going because he doesn't think he has a brain, the Tin Man because he doesn't think he has a heart, and the Lion because he doesn't have courage. Everyone is off to see the Wizard to fix something because they feel they are not whole.

The Grand Predicament

Thinking about these characters, I want to read a poem called "The Grand Predicament" by Nick Askew. It speaks to this sense of lacking that drives so much restlessness and worry:

A fear of not belonging drives much of what we do and how we are.
Unknowingly, it can define the experience of a life.
Most of us live with an underlying sense that we are not yet enough
And assume that until we are, we cannot truly belong.
We assume that we must become a better version of ourselves,
But we're never quite enough.
In this relentless pursuit of belonging,
We are lost to a never-ending self-improvement.
Might we have been looking out there
When all along it had been within?
Might we already be the version we'd been seeking?
Beyond the endless game of fixing what is seemingly broken,
There exists a profound experience of knowing that there is no one to fix.
That we are enough as we are, and that we belong without condition.
Yet we cannot seek and hope to find this.
Its nature is to find us and to consume us,
Leaving us with no doubt.
No one can teach us this; we cannot learn this.
In a moment of surrender, in a moment of not seeking,
The experience can be known.
Nothing changes, but everything is somehow different.
And then everything begins its transformation.
Liberation, peace, and all that follows is the work of inner view.

Conditions for Restlessness and Worry

From a dharmic perspective, it is helpful to explore the conditions that contribute to restlessness and worry, and the things that lead to stilling them.

The obvious manifestations are agitation, scatteredness, losing focus, and getting easily distracted. A more subtle manifestation is the mind slipping into thought and drifting off. A primary condition for this is unwise attention—not recognizing when we are drifting off and letting the thoughts lead us instead of remaining mindful.

Often, there is a belief that thinking itself will lead to wisdom; that if we just figure it out, we will be fine. But conceptual, philosophical analysis is not the wisdom the Buddha was pointing us toward. His wisdom was about seeing causes and conditions: understanding how ill will causes harm, and how our relationship to our experience conditions future experiences.

Other triggers for restlessness include provocative talk, excessive discussion, rumination, and dwelling on past unskillful actions. Thinking over and over about what we did and how embarrassing it was will only stir up the waters of the mind.

Working with Restlessness

When working with restlessness, it is wise to give it a wide berth. If you feel restless and try to tighten up and force yourself to sit still, the energy often gets more pronounced, like a pressure cooker. Instead, try broadening and opening up around it. Give the bouncing ball a huge room to bounce in, and it will naturally slow down.

Practice non-identification. Restlessness is an energy and an experience; it is not who you are, and it does not define you.

Striving is another major condition for restlessness. When we try too hard to have a specific experience, or put too much forceful energy into our meditation, it builds up. This can also happen if we are not balancing our practice with enough walking meditation, or if we have pent-up feelings of desire and aversion.

So much of our practice is about staying in balance. The teacher Ajahn Chah^[4] used to tell a story about guiding students down a road. He would tell the person on the left, "Go left, go left." The person on the right would hear that and think they should go left too. But he would say, "No, no, you go right." What someone else needs in a given moment is not necessarily what you need. You have to attend to your own practice and the energies in your own body, mind, and heart. Check in with yourself: Are you getting enough exercise? Have you had too much caffeine?

Physical pain can also trigger restlessness. It is important to know how to work wisely with physical discomfort. If you are in pain and becoming highly agitated, you might need to reset your posture, get an extra pillow, or even stand up to meditate.

Group Reflections on Worry

During our small group discussions, we reflected on the role restlessness and worry play in our lives, and the beliefs that support them. Some wonderful insights and antidotes emerged:

• Practical Antidotes: For middle-of-the-night worry, keeping a pencil and paper next to the bed can be very helpful. If you wake up worrying, you can decide: if you can do something about it, get up and do it. If not, write it down and go back to sleep.
• Finding Refuge: We noted that a pervasive sense of worry can run throughout life. However, external conditions don't matter as much as our ability to draw on equanimity or "Buddha-nature." Pausing to find the eye of the storm can offer profound moments of refuge.
• Unhooking from the Story: Even when we have genuine, difficult situations where worry feels entirely justified, it is possible to catch glimpses of peace. We can unhook the condition from our state of mind and experience equanimity right in the middle of raging problems.
• Listening to the Body: Worrying is often viewed as a "head thing," but it frequently starts in the body as tension. These physical sensations act as indicators, inviting us to place our attention on the parts of the body that are trying to tell us something, gently calming them down.
• Work and Perfectionism: A common theme was the restlessness and worry associated with a typical workday. We worry about whether we are contributing enough and fear making mistakes. Beliefs about perfectionism and productivity strongly support our worried energy. Recognizing that this is simply human nature can bring a great sense of harmony and ease.

The RAFT Guided Meditation

Let's do a guided meditation using the RAFT process. RAFT stands for Recognize, Allow, Feel it, Tease it apart, and Trust. This practice is a way to be with restlessness and worry without trying to fix it.

Drop a question into your being: What should I be worried about right now? Let things bubble up, and pick something that feels "right-sized"—something you can safely work with.

Recognize: The first step is recognition. This is like stopping to acknowledge a person or a situation. Turn toward the feeling and name it so that it feels seen. So much of the time, we shove our difficulties off to the side. What is it like to simply turn toward it?

Allow: See if you can allow it to be in your presence. Just notice if there is permission for it to exist. It is already here; can we give it some space? If there is a lot of resistance, recognize and name the resistance. Shift your focus to the resistance and allow it to be there.

Feel it: Follow whatever this is into the body. Feel where this situation lives and how it affects you. You might sense it as pressure, spaciousness, or vibration. Or perhaps it presents visually, as a color or a shape. Find and feel it in whatever way connects to your direct somatic experience. Notice how it responds to being felt. Find the right balance of tuning in—neither too forceful nor too slack.

Tease it apart: Imagine a very large round table with as many chairs as needed. Invite each component connected to this experience to have a seat. The situation itself gets a seat. Resistance gets a seat. Sadness or other emotions get their own seats. The chairs can be sized relative to the weight or need of each piece. Our experience is a composite of memories, expectations, fears, hopes, and beliefs. Soften and allow whatever pieces are clear to have a seat. You may notice that the elements with the biggest seats actually belong to your past, transferring historical karma onto the present moment.

Trust: Connect with a feeling of trust. What does trust feel like? For me, there is a sense of letting go, realizing there is nothing to protect. I can trust mindfulness, wisdom, or simply the truth that things will change. Like laying back on a cozy raft in a warm, calm body of water, see if you can allow yourself to be nourished by ease. Understand that this experience does not define you; it is a composite of history, story, and imagination.

Closing and Homework

The RAFT practice helps us sustain our attention long enough for an experience to unfold on its own, without us getting enmeshed in it. It is like watching a tea flower blossom in water; you don't pull the petals apart yourself, you just give it the right environment to open.

Reflect on your purpose for practice. We are not just trying to get rid of the hindrances; we are learning to see them clearly. Notice when restlessness and worry are not present. Be curious about the conditions that support your ease. Calm and tranquility can be deeply nourishing, but it is easy to dismiss them because we feel we have something "more important" to worry about.

For your homework this week, experiment with the ways you live your life to see what lessens restlessness and worry. Pay attention to how you talk to yourself, how much doom-scrolling you do, your exercise, sleep, caffeine, nutrition, and your commitment to an ethical life. Discover what leads to more ease for you.

Thank you for your practice.