Foundations of Meditation

The Hindrances

That we get distracted in meditation is nothing new. These distractions were present for the Buddha's followers at the time of the  Buddha as well. They will be there in subtle form all the way to Enlightenment. The Buddha grouped these distractions into five major hindrances (as in hindrances to full concentration). These five hindrances are: 

• Sense desire (craving): This includes fantasising about someone or something or thinking about something you're looking forward to.
• Ill will (anger, hatred, aversion, etc.): Any feelings of annoyance or anger towards someone. This often manifests as replaying a critical story about someone in your head or revisiting arguments you've had with them.
• Sloth and torpor: A feeling of heaviness or sleepiness that can arise during meditation. This differs from regular sleepiness, as it can occur even when we are fully rested.
• Restlessness and anxiety: The feeling of being unable to settle. We might fidget, move around, or feel the urge to scratch itches.
• Doubt and Indecision: Doubt becomes a hindrance when it turns into a habitual tendency to undermine the value of a particular course of action, rather than a genuine critical examination. It can cause us to second-guess ourselves and become stuck, making us wonder if this meditation is the right one or if we should be meditating at all.

These hindrances will appear from time to time. Most of us tend to struggle with one more than the others. Simply noticing this is a good first step. From there, we can observe how that particular hindrance feels, especially how it manifests in the body.

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The Antidotes to the Hindrances

When we meditate, we are not just trying to become aware of our mental states but also to transform them into increasingly positive ones. This week, we explored the traditional antidotes to these hindrances:

• Consider the consequences: Take a moment to think about the consequences of allowing the hindrance to have free rein.
• Cultivate the opposite quality: Develop the opposite quality to the hindrance you're facing. For example, cultivate love to counter anger, or faith to counter doubt.
• Adopt a sky-like attitude: Watch thoughts come and go as if they were clouds drifting across a clear blue sky.
• Practice suppression: Actively decide to drop a thought as it arises and avoid indulging in it. This works best with mild hindrances.
• Go for refuge: Use this as a last resort when the hindrance feels powerful. Acknowledge that it will pass, while staying connected with your aspiration to grow and your confidence in your own potential.

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Home Practice

1. Try practicing the mindfulness of breathing for 25-30 minutes each day. If you prefer, there is a 30-minute unguided meditation with bells on the Resource page. Alternatively, you could use the app Insight Timer which allows you to choose the length of your meditations.
2. Continue reducing input and try taking a mindful walk each day. Start with a 10-15 minutes walk with no phone, music or other distractions, and try to be as present to your experience as you can.

From Hatred to Love

The Buddha taught that all unenlightened beings are affected by anger or ill will in some way. Anger is a painful mental state that disconnects us from those around us. However, the Buddha also taught that it is possible to be free from ill will to a radical degree we might never have thought possible. While this may seem a long way off from our current experience, the important thing is that there are clear steps we can take to start transforming anger or ill will into feelings of love and friendliness. The meditation we use to do this is the Metta Bhavana, which we learned in this week's session.

‍Metta for Self and Others

This week, we explored how to cultivate feelings of goodwill for ourselves and others.

We began by reflecting on the universally held desire of all living beings to be happy, to grow, and to avoid suffering. We all cherish ourselves in this way. The first step is to connect with our own self-cherishing. Once we’ve done this, we can recognize that others also want to be happy and avoid suffering. As we connect with this shared desire, we will find it easier to wish others happiness.

Remember to stay connected to your experience, especially your physical sensations, throughout the practice. Keep your awareness centered around the heart-centre - the centre of your chest - in particular.

The Stages of Metta Bhavana

There are five stages in the Metta Bhavana practice, and it’s important to go through all of them to include all the different types of people we encounter in our day-to-day lives. Our goal is to cultivate unconditional well-wishing and friendliness, no matter who we meet or how we feel about them.

1. Self Metta: Connecting with our own desire to be happy and free from suffering

2. Metta for a good friend: Allowing our desire for a friend’s happiness to grow.

3. Metta for a neutral person: Using our imagination to connect with the humanity of a neutral person and wish for their happiness.

4. Metta for an enemy: Acknowledging that, regardless of how we feel about them and their actions, the person we find difficult is also trying to be happy and avoid suffering.

5. All living beings: Extending our goodwill to every sentient being and their wish for happiness and growth (including animals, and traditionally, even spirits!).

Home practice

• Practice the Metta Bhavana meditation for 30 minutes each day, if possible.
• Each day, make a list of five things you are grateful for. These don’t have to be big things—consider the basic aspects of life that would make a huge difference if we were without them, such as health, security, or friends.
• Continue to find creative ways to reduce input and screen time. If you enjoyed taking mindful walks last week, try to keep up the practice each day.

The Danger of a Negative Orientation 

When we learn how to meditate, we first learn how to deal with discomfort or pain in our experience. This is an important first step because negative mental states will naturally be part of our experience, so we need to learn how to work with them.

However, the danger is that we may become too problem-oriented in our meditation and in our life more broadly. We might start looking for difficulties, as if they were the "real" substance of life, while pleasure is just a momentary illusion. This is not a helpful approach to either meditation or life!

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The Importance of Pleasure 

If we are to live rich and meaningful lives and benefit others around us, we need to pay at least as much attention (if not more) to what is pleasurable and positive. In meditation, we can learn to notice and cultivate pleasure, which will spill over into the rest of our lives. If we can become more attuned to pleasure during meditation, it will help develop concentration, as the mind will naturally feel content and happy to rest on pleasurable sensations.

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Cultivating Pleasure

The key to cultivating pleasure in meditation is to start noticing and enjoying subtly pleasurable sensations. This goes against the grain of our usual habit of seeking non-subtle pleasures in alcohol, drugs, caffeine, sex, or food. There is nothing wrong with non-subtle pleasures as long as they don't harm anyone (including ourselves). However, if all we do is chase these big pleasures, we may find ourselves adrift when they aren't around, and we can miss the subtle and nuanced pleasures available to us all the time.

To cultivate subtle pleasure, we need to start looking for it in our experience. Remember, we are not looking for fireworks; we are looking for small, subtle pleasures that often go unnoticed. These might include the touch of our hands together, the feeling of warmth, or the sensation of clothes on our skin. In the Metta Bhavana, it might even be the pleasure of Metta itself, which we might feel around the heart area.

As we notice these subtle pleasures and rest our awareness on them, we might find they start to expand and grow. The key here is not to grasp; just let your awareness rest on whatever small pleasure is present and enjoy it more and more.

Home practice

• Take your practice to 40 minutes this week. Doing 40 minutes every day will make a significant difference over the long run. If you can’t do 40 minutes, do as much as you can. Alternate each day between the Mindfulness of Breathing and Metta Bhavana
• See if you can notice the pleasure in your life. You can do that by:
  • Actively looking for subtle pleasures in the things you already do.
  • Doing more of the things that you find pleasurable.
• Try doing one generous act for someone else each day. This doesn’t have to be something big; it could be as simple as making someone a cup of tea.

Effort in Meditation
Making the appropriate amount of effort is essential to a satisfying and deepening meditation practice. Too much effort and our meditation becomes strained and tight, and we don’t get very concentrated. Too little effort and our meditation is limp and zoned out, we lack any potency and we end up falling asleep. The key is a balance between too much and too little effort.  

‍Too Much Effort 
We often come to meditation with acquired habits of making a lot of effort to learn new skills (a language for instance). And this can indeed be a valuable part of developing a meditation practice, we do need discipline and the ability to commit to a task. But if we take this attitude onto the cushion in a one sided way, we won’t be able to relax and allow the mind to unfold and expand. We will berate ourselves when we become distracted and force our mind back to the meditation, which in turn creates more tension and makes us more likely to become distracted again.  

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Too Little Effort 
Once we have done this for a while we can start making the opposite mistake, thinking it's all about relaxation, about “just being”, about passively accepting whatever is going on. We will start to notice this also doesn’t get us very far. Given free range, negative mental states can run wild and our meditation lacks any energy or vibrancy. 

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Balanced Effort 
The metaphor the Buddha gave is like a perfectly tuned harp whose strings are neither too tight or too loose. The only way to get this is by practising. You could check your level of effort at several points in the meditation, asking yourself what the appropriate level of effort is at that moment. And you can also experiment in meditation, modulating your level of effort and seeing what happens, to become more familiar with what different levels of effort feel like.

Balancing the effort is a skill which is developed over time and with practice, but it is well worth developing it as a balanced effort is one of the key factors to concentration.

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The Threefold Path
The threefold path is a cornerstone of the Buddhist tradition, providing a comprehensive framework for personal growth and development. This path is divided into three interconnected areas: ethics, meditation, and wisdom. Each aspect supports and enhances the others, creating a balanced and holistic approach to spiritual practice.

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Ethics
Ethical conduct, or morality, forms the foundation of the threefold path. It involves living in a way that is respectful and considerate of others, fostering harmony and reducing harm. This means practicing virtues such as honesty, kindness, and integrity. By adhering to ethical principles, we create a stable and supportive environment for our spiritual practice. Our minds become clearer and more peaceful, which in turn aids in our meditation and understanding.

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Meditation
Meditation is the second aspect of the threefold path. This involves training the mind to develop focus, concentration, and mindfulness. Through regular meditation practice, we learn to observe our thoughts and emotions without getting caught up in them. This helps us to remain calm and centered, even in challenging situations. Mental discipline allows us to see things as they truly are, free from the distortions of our habitual patterns and reactions.

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Wisdom
The third aspect of the threefold path is wisdom. Wisdom arises naturally from ethical conduct and mental discipline. It is the deep understanding of the true nature of reality, seeing things as they really are rather than through the lens of our desires and aversions. Wisdom involves recognizing the impermanent and interconnected nature of all things. This insight leads to greater compassion and a sense of connection with others, reducing our suffering and the suffering of those around us.

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Integrating the Threefold Path
The threefold path is not a linear process but an integrated approach where each aspect reinforces the others. By practicing ethical conduct, we create the conditions for effective meditation. Through meditation, we cultivate the mental clarity necessary for wisdom to arise. And as our wisdom deepens, it naturally guides us to live more ethically and mindfully.

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Next steps and further reading

• Keep coming to the LBC! Coming regularly will be a real support to keeping a daily meditation practice. If you wanted to book another course, Gateways to Liberation, or an Introduction to Buddhism and meditation course would be very appropriate next steps. See all that's on >>
• Go on retreat. There is a lot we can do to change our minds in the midst of our daily lives, but ultimately there is nothing as effective and transformative than putting ourselves in radically more conducive conditions for practice. We have a range of retreats available, but a Buddhism and Meditation Weekend or the Winter Retreat would be ideal retreats to book on for you. See all upcoming retreats >> 
• The two books mentioned as suggested reading were: Living with Kindness and What is the Dharma? which are both available in the LBC bookshop or online.

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