Praxis
The podcast where practice makes purpose…
Praxis
The Five Hindrances (Bonus episode)
Discover the Five Hindrances that hold us back in our pursuit of meaningful practice and purpose. We discuss their origins in Buddhism and how they relate to everyday challenges.
• Exploring sense desire as a major distraction
• Understanding aversion and self-compassion in practice
• Tackling sloth, torpor, and rekindling motivation
• Grounding ourselves amidst restlessness and worry
• Combatting self-doubt and fostering trust in self
If you’d like to share your own experiences with these hindrances, connect with us on Instagram @praxis_podcast!
Welcome to Praxis, the podcast where practice makes purpose. I'm Mikey and I'll be interviewing people about the practices that reveal and create purpose in their lives. Welcome to a mini episode of Praxis. While my main focus will be interviewing people, interviewing experts and people who have dedicated themselves to a particular practice, I'm going to jump on here every now and then to do mini episodes to discuss an idea, something that I've read about, something that I think is relevant to practice, just to kind of keep things ticking over and things that might not necessarily be talked about in the main episodes. In this episode, I would like to talk about the five hindrances, which are five kind of attitudes or phenomena at play that can stop you from achieving your goals or stop you from practicing in the first place. Now, these five hindrances come from Buddhism originally, and in the original context and in the original context, we're taught by the Buddha in order to ensure that the monks or the meditators or his followers could meditate to the best of their abilities. Now I think that these hindrances are actually at play in a broader context and are applicable to practices outside of spirituality, outside of meditation. So if you've ever struggled with distraction, self-doubt, lack of motivation, then these hindrances are likely at play. I put up a poll on my Instagram yesterday about what barriers people felt that they experienced the most in terms of their practice, and distraction was the biggest one, and that is one of the five hindrances. The good news is that there are antidotes or so-called cures for these hindrances that help us break through these barriers to practice what we wish to practice.
Speaker 1:So what is the first of the five hindrances? The first hindrance is sense desire, and this is when we crave pleasurable distractions. Now this could be food TV. Now this could be food TV. Checking social media on your phone anything that gives you sensual pleasure. Now, obviously, part of being human is that bring us joy, actually make life worth living. In my own running practice, for example, I'm currently training for a marathon and I often find this hindrance at play on a Sunday morning, when I know I've got to do a long run. Find this hindrance at play on a Sunday morning when I know I've got to do a long run and I'll have to stay in bed for like an extra half an hour scrolling through social media. Now that is the sense desire hindrance. The cure for this, or the antidote for this, is recognizing that cravings are temporary and that if you lean into them, eventually they do disappear. So by lean into, I don't mean satisfy or give into, but I mean really feeling where the craving is in your body. Is it a tightness, is it a hunger? What is it you're craving and how does that manifest in your body? I've got a bit of a sweet tooth and I often find myself craving sweet things after meals. Now, one thing I've tried to teach myself to do is just be aware of that and not give in to it straight away. You know, maybe say to myself okay, if I'm still craving some chocolate in, say, half an hour, then I'll have some, or I'll have a glass of water or something to kind of distract myself from it, and usually it goes away.
Speaker 1:The second hindrance is aversion or ill will, and basically what this means is any negative thoughts that you have towards your practice. So it could be anger, frustration, even resistance to the practice itself, especially when you feel like you're not making progress or there's discomfort around your practice. I'll stick with my example of running. So this morning I went for a run and in my marathon schedule I should have done 24-25k this morning. By about 16k I could feel my hamstrings getting really twingy, a bit sore, and I was like, oh, I don't think I'm going to make this, but I'll keep pushing through and just see how I go by. About 19K I had to stop because I was in quite a bit of pain. My hamstrings were really, really tight and I knew that if I carried on I could injure myself. Now I did have moments of beating myself up about this. You know I'm now behind schedule in terms of my training, but I've developed the awareness of this happening and so I practice the antidote, which is metta, which is a word meaning loving, kindness. So, rather than beating myself up, I kind of soften into this comfort with self-compassion, with gentleness, with friendliness towards myself. You know, I did a 19K run, which is a really, you know, big feat in and of itself, and me two, three years ago would never have dreamed of being able to run 19K. So when you feel frustration or anger or ill will arise, maybe shift your focus to one of patience, one of gentleness, one of compassion, one of gentleness, one of compassion.
Speaker 1:The third of the hindrances they are very old-fashioned words, shall we say sloth and torpor, which basically means a lack of physical and mental energy. This is when you feel sluggish, you're unmotivated, you feel quite dull mentally and this can manifest itself in a sense of I'm too tired to do that or do you know what? I'm just going to rest tonight when actually you probably could have gone for a run, you probably could have gone to the gym, you could have meditated. This sometimes manifests for me when I'm doing a meditation practice in the morning. So I get up first thing, I'll feed my cat and then I will sit down on the meditation bench or cushion Because it's still pretty early and I've only just woken up. Sometimes I do find myself zoning out and sometimes I might fall asleep ever so slightly, and it seems a bit counterintuitive. But the cure for this lack of energy or motivation is to move around. So getting up, going for a walk, going for a quick jog If I'm sitting, then I might stand up and stretch In running. There's sometimes when I've had to go for a run and I don't feel like I can do the full distance. But I'll trick myself into saying, okay, I'll just get in my running gear and I'll run for 3 to 5K, which is doable in a shorter amount of time, and I'll see at the end how I feel, nine times out of 10, that 3 to five k has generated more energy that I can then actually run a little bit longer.
Speaker 1:The fourth hindrance this is restlessness and worry, what the Buddhists call the monkey mind, where your mind is fixated on things that have happened in the past that you're worried about, um, or things in the future that have not happened yet. It's overthinking, it's anxiety, it's a lack of being present. Um, in running, for example, this could be when I am thinking about the race coming up as opposed to the one that I'm doing right now. Um, I've got a marathon coming up in about six weeks, so you know, as I'm going for a run as part of my training program, it might be worrying about that date in April, as opposed to being fully present on the run right now. The cure for this restlessness and worry is being present and grounding yourself with some sort of anchor whether that's the breath connecting with your body, somehow just trying to be present and actually understanding that the past can't be changed and the future hasn't happened yet, so worrying about it is not going to happen.
Speaker 1:The fifth and final hindrance is doubt. Now, this can manifest itself as self-doubt or doubt about the practice itself. So this often manifests as am I even doing this right? What's the point in this? I'm never going to be as good as XYZ person. It could be going to the gym and thinking I don't really know what I'm doing, so I'm just going to go home, or it could be. You know my running practice. I have to compare myself to other people. What's that expression? Comparing despair? Well, I am guilty of that all the time. Well, I am guilty of that all the time. I run around Battersea Park quite a lot and that is full of runners who are taller than me, more athletic than me, who've probably been running for years more than I've been running. And sometimes it can be disheartening for me to be on my run and see these people zoom past me and I think you know what. I'm never going to be as good as them, but that's actually fine.
Speaker 1:The cure for their syndromes is kind of trust through experience, and by that I mean looking back at how far you've come and seeing. Actually there is progress there, there is a process. You know, if I look at when I first started running, I was a lot slower and I couldn't run as far Now, I'm never going to win world records in running, but in the past two, three years I've seen a huge amount of progress that I'm really proud of. So whenever I see myself comparing myself or doubting my progress you know, like this morning when I felt really sore so I had to stop a little bit early I have to look back and think actually me two years ago would never have been able to run this distance, never mind even further. So just trusting in that process.
Speaker 1:So as my final kind of takeaway, the five hindrances distraction, frustration, fatigue, overthinking, anxiety, doubt these affect every practice, but they're not obstacles to avoid necessarily. They are part of the path. And there's a Buddhist saying no mud, no lotus, which means that you need the messy work of everyday life, you need the negative emotions, you need to work through all that in order to achieve the positive results. Now, in buddhist practice. Obviously they're talking about enlightenment after meditation practice, but I think these are actually applicable to all practices.
Speaker 1:You know, whether that's yoga, writing, parenting, sport, art, we all go through these periods of distraction or overthinking or doubt. You know how many of us have planned to do something on a Sunday afternoon, for example, end up having a nap, waking up, checking Instagram for half an hour plus, and then you realize, oh, actually I can't be bothered doing anything now. Well, that's one of the hindrances at play. So there you have the five hindrances from Buddhist philosophy, and I would like to invite you to think about how they potentially manifest in your life, in your praxis, whatever that might be, and I would love to hear from you. So feel free to DM me. You can find me at praxis underscore podcast on Instagram, and thank you for listening and I will see you next time.