--- ai_generation_date: '2026-10-07' ai_model: gemini-3-pro-preview audiodharma: talks: - date: '2020-08-03' is_meditation: false mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/11823/20200803-Diana_Clark-IMC-resisting.mp3 section_slug: resisting speakers: - speaker_name: Diana Clark speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/240 talk_start_time_seconds: 0 title: Resisting url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/11823 video_unavailable: false collapsed_sections: [] location_city: Redwood City, CA video_unavailable: false youtube: id: MeIKfOC2jh4 imprecise_upload_date: '2021-05-04' title: 'Dharma Talk: Resisting with Diana Clark' upload_date: null uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeIKfOC2jh4 --- # Resisting - [Diana Clark](https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/240) _This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers._ ## [Resisting](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/11823) Good evening. It's nice to be here with you all. Tonight I wanted to talk a little bit about this idea of resistance, struggling, or—somehow for me I like this word—_tussle_, like getting into a tussle with our experience. Many of us begin a meditation practice with enthusiasm and resolve. We have this idea we're going to meditate every day, or we're going to have compassion for all beings, or maybe we'll never tell an untruth again, or something like this. And then something happens, and we lose steam for our practice. What we were once committed to and very enthusiastic about can become a chore, or feels like a chore, or doesn't have the same juice to it. Then either we beat ourselves up thinking, "Oh, I should do this more," and don't, or maybe we just abandon the whole project of establishing a meditation practice. This whole feeling or experience of "I don't really want to meditate" is a natural part of practice. This is what I want to unpack and explore a little bit today. For me, this shows up as the ten-year-old version of myself going, "I don't want to." Sometimes I have that inner rebellion, a feeling of "Yeah, I don't want to" in some kind of way. It can be about meditation practice or about other things that I know would benefit me. Maybe you have this as well, whether it's meditation practice or something else. There could be resistance to just getting to the cushion, just getting to actually meditating. Or, once you are meditating, there could be some resistance to your experience. It's natural that when we give instructions or some guidance to the mind, there's a little bit of rebellion in the beginning—and sometimes later on in practice, too. That shows up in different ways. For example, when we're doing loving-kindness practice and you sincerely wish to be cultivating goodwill, loving-kindness, and care towards beings, there might be this small voice that comes up that says, "I don't actually really feel goodwill." There might be resistance to developing and cultivating this. Or maybe it's when you're doing mindfulness meditation and there could be this fleeting idea that, "I don't care what I'm supposed to be doing now, I really want to think these thoughts. These are really juicy." Somehow we think that at that moment they're really important. Or, in some forms of Buddhism that emphasize what we call forms—the way that you walk, the way that you eat, the way that you sit, like a strict choreography—there might be some resistance to behaving in particular ways. ## The Function of Resistance I'd like to suggest that part of the function of why we do these practices is to elicit some of this resistance. It is to help bring it to our awareness. Otherwise, how would we know that there are these parts of ourselves that maybe don't have goodwill in the way that we thought we did, until we really start to cultivate it? We see that there's something other than what we were imagining was there. Or we might not notice that when we are given instructions on something to do, our first impulse is "no." We would never notice that unless we were given these instructions or were trying to cultivate these practices. Sometimes meditation practice is called a purification practice, or a cleansing practice. That language can be a little bit uncomfortable—_purification_—but the whole idea is that it helps bring into our awareness things that maybe we didn't know, and then we can work with them. Once we recognize that they are there, then we can shift our relationship to them and maybe not be pushed around. Most likely they were leaking out of us anyway, but once we become aware, then we can work with them. Working with them is something that we do in meditation practice. Or maybe working with them requires talking with a good friend or talking with a psychotherapist in other settings as well. ## Four Ways of Practice This idea that there might be some resistance or a little bit of a struggle is a natural part of practice. It's to be expected. It happens to everybody. It's not a character flaw, or a mistake, or an indicator that everything is going poorly. Instead, the Buddha said that there are four ways of practice. There is painful practice with slow insight. There is painful practice with swift insight. There is pleasant practice with slow insight, and pleasant practice with swift insight. Of course, all of us wish that we had pleasant practice with swift insight, but I don't know anybody who would characterize their practice that way. Instead, I think many of us would recognize that yes, there are some difficulties. Whenever we want to learn something new, whatever skill or behavior it might be, there's always an initial period as we learn, make a lot of mistakes, and find our way with it. ## Working with Resistance One way that we can work with resistance—even resistance to getting to the cushion in the first place—is to recognize that of course this happens. This happens to everybody. And so we can have a little bit of compassion for ourselves. We can recognize the humanity of this experience. Especially in the beginning of our practice, it takes some effort to really support the development of this regular practice. Once we recognize the common humanity of it, then it might be worthwhile to reflect on what is important in your life. What is a worthwhile endeavor for your time and your energy? Staying connected to our motivation and aspiration can bring a certain amount of energy. If the aspiration, intention, or motivation to develop a meditation practice is something that's meaningful for you—something you want to do for your life—it's worthwhile working with your resistance and using it as an opportunity to learn. You can use it as an opportunity to gain a greater capacity to be with uncomfortableness or to be with things that are difficult. As the Buddha pointed out, a big part of training the mind—which is what meditation practice is—is learning to deal with skillful thoughts and unskillful thoughts. We can define _skillful_ as that which does not lead toward suffering, and _unskillful_ as those thoughts that lead toward suffering. Even if you haven't devoted yourself 100% to this aspiration of developing a meditation practice, it's valuable. It's important to reflect: What is important for my life? How do I want to spend my time and energy? It's easy to go through our lives aimlessly without some clear direction or sense of what we want to do. It's easy to let ourselves get sucked in by the media out there. They'd rather that you don't ask yourself what's important. They'd prefer that you have a short-sighted view and live your life just with the sense of what you want in the next moment, so that you buy more things or jump onto the bandwagon to dogmatically choose a particular side on any debate. ## Remembering the Benefits One thing to support us when we have some difficulty or resistance to getting to the cushion is to bring to mind what is important for us. Of course, we can remember any benefits, bringing to mind the positive experiences or capacities that have arisen since starting the practice. It might be that there's been more calmness, maybe a sense of well-being during meditation or afterwards. Maybe it's easier to see the bigger picture if you have a meditation practice; if you've seen how things change in your meditation, it's easier to keep that in view when you're not in meditation. Maybe this translates into having greater ease in your relationships—your relationship to yourself, and your relationship to others. Or maybe having a meditation practice supports you in your commitment to serve others, increasing your capacity to be with others' difficulties, to have those difficult conversations, to hear those difficult things. For me, perhaps like many people, when I go for a walk, hike, or run, I like to use an app that measures time and distance. At the end, this app always asks, "How was your hike, walk, or run?" I used to just type in a few words. After doing this for some time, I noticed I always had something pleasant to write, something really nice. Now, I bring that to mind when I think, "Oh, I should go out for a hike or a walk or a run." I remember how I'm always typing into this app afterwards how pleasant or nice it was. Is there a way that might support you to be in contact with the benefits of your practice, so that it can support you when you don't feel like getting to the cushion? When you feel like you're too busy, or there's a lot of resistance and struggle? What might support you to remember some of the benefits? ## Practice Beyond the Cushion I'm using this expression "get to the cushion," which means just to meditate. Of course, it might not always happen on the cushion. Training the mind, learning about ourselves, and increasing our capacity doesn't only happen while we are in formal meditation. Though it's true the purpose of meditation is to transform our minds, to allow the mind to see things that it can't see without a meditation practice, and to gain understanding. Seeing more clearly and the wisdom that brings creates the conditions for insights to arise, and these insights can be transformative. But transforming our minds doesn't happen only in formal meditation. For example, we can engage with loving-kindness while going for a walk, hike, or run. Or riding the bike, going to the grocery store, driving the car, whenever. We can just, in a warm-hearted way, be wishing people well, sending goodwill, and radiating warmth out to specific individuals that we're meeting or just in general. Wishing that people be safe, healthy, and happy helps create a groove in the mind, so to speak. It makes it easier to have access to that well-wishing and goodwill that can really serve us both in our daily life and in our meditation practice. We can then extend some of that goodwill to ourselves when we're having difficulties. And of course, we can practice mindfulness in daily life. It doesn't happen only when we're on the cushion. While we're cooking, cleaning, brushing our teeth, driving, or standing in line six feet away from other people, we can just bring our awareness to the sensations of what it feels like to be there. Remembering that meditation doesn't only happen on the meditation cushion can take some of the pressure off the idea that everything on the cushion is so important and has to be a special experience. Instead, it can just be a natural extension of what we had been doing intermittently throughout the day, or maybe we are mindful for most of the day. That can help support us through some of the resistance to getting to the cushion. ## Letting Go of Unrealistic Expectations What can really support us when we feel like we are struggling—whether we are in meditation or feeling hesitation about getting there—is to let go of any unrealistic expectations we might have. Often unrealistic expectations aren't obvious in the front of our minds. Instead, they are these whispers of thoughts that are in the back of our minds. We don't really notice them until these expectations don't get met and we feel the uncomfortableness of that. One expectation that we might have is the idea that there shouldn't be any thinking during meditation. We might have this idea that having no thoughts is what it means to meditate. But of course, that's not true. It can happen—it's more of an advanced practice that thinking drops away. Most often, what happens is instead of our thoughts being the equivalent of writing a novel, maybe it just gets down to where we're writing only a chapter. And then maybe only a paragraph, or a sentence, and then maybe a word, and then nothing. This is a big progress, and a long path. The point of mindfulness meditation is not to stop the thinking. The thinking will quiet down, and the trains of thought will get shorter and shorter, but the purpose is to train the mind to think in skillful ways, to incline the mind in skillful ways. The Buddhist approach to thoughts focuses less on tracing our thoughts back to their origins—like we might do in psychotherapy—and instead emphasizes noticing our relationship to our thoughts. We notice that certain types of thoughts lead to suffering, and certain types of thoughts don't lead to suffering. It's not that they have to go away. It's just that we can use them as an opportunity to learn, and we can shift our relationship to them. We can find our relationship in the present moment so that we're not just lost in thought, which might be leading to more suffering for ourselves or others. With practice, there's this increased capacity to be with everything that's happening in our experience: to be with our bodily sensations, the sensations of breathing, our emotional life, and this river of thoughts. Thinking can just be one more object of our meditation. We can be aware of it, rather than feeling we have to get rid of it. I should say that while having thoughts drop away is possible and does happen with concentration, it's not the primary goal of practice. While we're meditating, if there's a lot of thinking, we don't have to feel like we're not meditating. Instead, when we realize that there's been thought, we can simply, very gently come back to the sensations of breathing if that's your anchor. Recognize that this is what happens and that this is just part of training the mind. In this way, we can shift our identification from being completely lost in the thoughts, to a greater awareness that recognizes the process of thinking itself. Just like our thoughts are coming and going, all of our experiences are coming and going. Thoughts don't have to be any different than bodily sensations or emotions. It can be an important place to have some insight and learning about the changing nature of our experiences. ## Recognizing Practice Takes Time Another unrealistic expectation that we can let go of is the idea that results will come quickly. From the sutta[^1] passages I read earlier, we can recognize that even thousands of years ago—when they didn't have as many distractions as we do now, and certainly didn't have devices that are beeping and notifying us all the time—they recognized that practice takes time. Insights may happen quickly, but practice may be difficult. In fact, the Buddhist tradition holds the story that the Buddha had to live many lifetimes in order to cultivate and perfect the different qualities that allowed him to have the meditative experiences that he did. We might imagine that was introduced to emphasize that things take time. Not only that, but the sutta passages are not so much a diary of somebody's personal experience or a practice history of how it went for them. In fact, it's most often the opposite. It's an idealized version of somebody's practice. So of course we have this idea that it should be easy or fast, because that's the way it's portrayed. As I mentioned at the beginning of the guided meditation, I'm sitting in front of a statue of Patacara[^2], who was one of the foremost teachers at the time of the Buddha. She was recognized as being a very skilled teacher. I'd like to read just a few lines here from one of her students talking about Patacara. In these few lines, there can be this impression that things happened very quickly. It goes like this: > "With kindness for me, she, Patacara, ordained me. Then she advised me, urging me on to the ultimate goal. Hearing her words, I did what she advised. Her words were not in vain. I am now free." It makes it sound so easy and straightforward, right? But we can imagine it wasn't so easy and straightforward. In the same way that we don't learn to play the guitar or to knit immediately. Sometimes we forget that when we first learn to play tennis, there are so many balls that whiz right past us before we quite learn how to volley. With playing guitar, the piano, or knitting, in the beginning, it just takes time to develop skill. ## Returning to the Marketplace These kind-hearted adjustments involve recognizing that having resistance is a natural part of practice—some might even say a required part of practice, so that we can learn from these things. Having compassion for ourselves when we recognize that there is some resistance or struggle going on. Reflecting on what's important in our lives and feeling the support of that. Reflecting on what benefits we might have already received from our practice, maybe even when it has been difficult. Examining any unrealistic expectations we might have, like the idea that there should never be thoughts, that results should come quickly, or that there should be a certain amount of ease with this. And reminding ourselves that meditation doesn't only have to happen on the cushion; it can happen in our daily life practice. These kind-hearted adjustments can allow us to develop compassion for ourselves, as well as for others who are having the same experience. It allows us to recognize the humanity of others who are also struggling. Maybe it's not meditation practice exactly, but they're having difficulties with something that they want to develop and cultivate and haven't quite gotten there yet. Having these kind-hearted adjustments allows us to develop compassion for ourselves and perhaps even to pay it forward by helping others who are struggling, others who have resistance to doing what might be helpful. Paying it forward and helping others is, after all, what practice is about. In the Zen tradition, they have the saying of "returning to the marketplace with gift-bestowing hands." In this way, working with our difficulties, our struggles, and our resistance to even get to the cushion can be a tremendous benefit, not only for ourselves, but for others. So, may our practice together today, even if there has been some resistance or a little bit of struggle, be for the benefit of all beings, all beings everywhere, without exception. Thank you. --- [^1]: **Sutta:** (Pali; Sanskrit: _Sutra_) A discourse or teaching attributed to the Buddha or his close disciples. [^2]: **Patacara:** A prominent female disciple of the Buddha who overcame immense personal tragedy to become an arahant (enlightened being) and a leading teacher, particularly known for her mastery of the monastic discipline (Vinaya).