This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Here with What is Skillful; Intro to Mindfulness Pt 2 (5) Hindrance of Doubt. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Here with What is Skillful; Dharmette: Intro to Mindfulness Pt 2 (5) Hindrance of Doubt - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on March 01, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Here with What is Skillful

Hello, and welcome to this fifth guided meditation related to the hindrances—the five obstacles to staying awake and aware in the present moment. The five are: desire (sensual desire and greed), ill will (aversion), sloth and torpor (which I call rigidity and torpor), restlessness and remorse, and the last one we are discussing today. It's usually translated as doubt, but its ancient meaning is closer to not seeing, not understanding what needs to be done. And so, our choice of where to put our life energy goes to something which does not serve us.

The ancient texts say that one knows what serves and what doesn't serve. What serves us the most? To answer that question, the texts talk about someone who has this so-called doubt: they don't understand, they don't reflect, and their way of understanding does not come from a profound source within them. It's more surface thinking where the mind jumps around and is distracted.

If someone spends a lot of time fantasizing about pleasures, something in their mind thinks that's important—that the pursuit of pleasures is something we should serve. We don't think that way consciously, but apparently, something within us thinks that, otherwise, why would we do it? Someone who is profoundly connected to themselves will understand that the way to serve ourselves is to wake up, to be really present and clear. "Really, this is what's happening." There is a definitiveness, a clarity of, "Here I am, and here this is what's happening."

So it's not choosing to do anything more than being clear about, "Here, this is a person, this is a mind that's involved in fantasy." Just to check that off, to simply know it, doesn't count for much. But to know it from some kind of place where we know this waking up is important, from a deeper place of knowing what to serve and what not to serve. We also know, "Yes, it's valuable to develop steadiness and stability. It's valuable to be grounded here so I can see clearly. So I will give myself to breathing or some other object of present moment attention that is our home base, our anchor. Yes, yes, here."

Knowing what to serve and what not to serve. Sometimes we certainly can have doubt about what that is, but sometimes we're just off. We're serving things that don't serve us. We're giving our life energy to what doesn't serve us well.

So to begin our meditation, maybe close your eyes and feel your body here. The weight of your body, the substance of your body, the three-dimensionality of your body. And then, in a moment, taking a deep breath, and as you exhale, say to yourself in your mind: "Here. Here I am." Have a definitive recognition of the simple fact that here is where you sit. Here is where you are. With a deep breath, on the exhale, "Here."

Taking a deep breath, and as you exhale, relaxing into "here." Softening the shoulders, the belly, relaxing the muscles of your face "here." And then letting your breathing return to normal. Continue relaxing a bit, softening. But as you relax, relax into the depth within you. Softening into some place of deep stability, deep steadiness, deep at-homeness here.

As you exhale, relaxing the thinking mind. Softening, quieting the thinking mind here. And you might, during this meditation, gently say this word: "Here." Maybe added to by, "Here, this is what it's like now. Here, this is what it's like now." Use this as a clear alternative to wandering off in thought, being distracted, or being involved with your experience in ways which don't serve you—ways which involve greed, craving, or wanting; which involve aversion or ill will; which involve shutting down or allowing something to run off with your worries and regrets.

Keep it really simple: the way you serve yourself is to just be here. This is how it is now. And then giving yourself over to the breathing. You serve yourself well by centering yourself on breathing in and breathing out. You serve yourself well by staying mindful. Have no doubt about that. Know that this serves you, so that you can give yourself over to being mindful. Here with whatever is happening, here with the ongoing flow of breathing.

(Silent Meditation)

And as we come to the end of this sitting, again gently—just the right amount for you and how you are now—take a deeper breath. On the exhale, relax and let go into "here." Into the "here" which is found in and through your body. If there are any ways that you are bracing yourself against life, on the exhale, soften that tension.

Where in the realm of your personal subjective experience of body and mind do you find a place of calm? A sense of depth or intimacy? Where inside of you, in your subjective experience, is the source for living a life of integrity? On the exhale, let go into that source. Let go into where it feels intimate and at home within you.

Then, with your eyes closed, let your eyes rest in their sockets. Almost as if the eyes can settle back into a deeper place inside of calm, peace, or even integrity—the source of stability. And from there, imagine the eyes are now gazing upon the suffering world that we live in, without losing their ease, their depth, the integrity. Just gazing upon the world with care, compassion, and kindness, wishing well for everyone.

May all beings be free of suffering. May all beings be free of poverty and oppression. May all beings be free of war and violence. May all beings know that there are people who care. Let all beings know there is kindness in this world. And as we go through this world, may we be calm and peaceful, gazing upon the suffering world with kindness, bringing kindness as medicine in our actions, our speech, and our thoughts. May all beings be happy. Thank you.

Announcements

Well, sometimes I have to wait here a few moments for the recorder to somehow upload, process, or do something with the recording before I can start it again. While we're waiting, I just want to mention that tomorrow I'm teaching an online retreat. It's a day-long retreat on mindfulness of the body through the Insight Retreat Center. If you go to the Insight Retreat Center website, you'll find a listing under "Retreats" for day-long retreats, and you're welcome to join. You are welcome to join for any part of it; it will be on Zoom. Let's see what we have here.

Dharmette: Intro to Mindfulness Pt 2 (5) Hindrance of Doubt

Today the topic is the fifth hindrance, which is usually referred to as doubt. As far as I know, all English translators and teachers refer to this as doubt. The ancient meaning of the word is to think in faulty ways, to think in unskillful ways. That's how the ancient commentary understands it. It's a way of thinking, quoting them, that [does not know]¹ the distinction between what is skillful and not skillful, what serves us and what doesn't serve us, or what should be served and what should not be served with our life energy.

It's very useful to understand this fifth hindrance as doubt because it's an obstacle that many people struggle with. Especially, I think, for practitioners in the West who come to Buddhism to meditate because it's a little strange. We're doing something that is maybe different than what we grew up with—different from the values or the religion we grew up with. Maybe it's also very different from the values of our society, what we've been taught by society about what's important, and even what we're taught about who we are and what we should be doing with our desires, aversions, wishes, and the way we think about ourselves.

So when we start settling into practice, it's natural to have doubt, to have uncertainty, and not know how to go forward. We might not know where to commit ourselves or what activity to give ourselves to. We wonder, "Should I be doing this? Should I be doing that? I can't let go of the anger or resentment I've carried all my life, but here I am practicing and they're telling me to let go, or to be mindful of it, or settle more deeply, and I don't know who I am and what I should do."

There can be doubt about the practice, doubt about the teachings, and doubt about oneself and one's ability to practice. It is said that this kind of doubt can derail us from doing the practice. But the important thing I want to emphasize about doing the practice is that the way the ancient Buddhists understood this fifth hindrance was as a kind of faulty thinking that sets us off in the wrong direction. It's thinking which is not very profound, which doesn't arise out of our wisdom or out of yoniso manasikāra², that profound way of thinking from somehow in our depths.

When I began meditating on my own in college, I started doing it twice a day. I had good reasons to do it: I was suffering, and I wanted to somehow deal with my suffering. Then an unusual thing happened after practicing for many months. When I was meditating, the suffering that I was trying to contend with just wasn't there anymore. It wasn't that I had solved it or figured it out, and it didn't actually go away much in my daily life, but in meditation, it was no longer there.

Since I like to have reasons for things, I wondered, "Why am I still meditating?" I felt compelled to meditate, it just felt like the right thing to do, and I had no doubts that I should do it. But I didn't have reasons, and I thought that was really strange. I lived with this question for a while, and then one day I felt, "Oh, what is happening here is that when I sit down to meditate, this is the most profound expression of myself." Just that it's available to me. That's no different than the way an artist expresses herself with paints, or an artist expresses themselves with dancing, or someone plays a musical instrument. It's a kind of expression that is fulfilled in the moment. It isn't for a purpose beyond itself. It just felt like this beautiful expression of the depths, or of my wholeness. I used the word "integrity" at the time.

Then the task for me became: how do I bring that sense of wholeness, that integrity, that sense of what wanted to be expressed from my depths, into my whole life outside of meditation? The questions became: How do I speak? How do I present myself to other people? What are the things I do with my life? What are the actions I take?

The core question was: when I sit down to meditate, what is it that connects me to this? What comes out of this feeling of depth that feels wholesome, that feels healthy? It felt like a meaningful way to live a life—to come from this feeling of connectedness and presence. That came out of "here." It gave a direction to my life and a clarity about what I was doing in meditation. I realized, "I'm here to sit, wake up, and be present. To relax and open to this depth that's within, this place of freedom from contraction. I'm here to no longer live with tension, no longer live with craving and desire, no longer live with conceit." All these things felt like they were diminishing myself, making myself less than I actually am in some way.

It became very clear that when my mind started drifting off in thought, and those thoughts didn't serve me, I knew it. They were kind of an "ouch." They were a diminishment of the wholeness and fullness of who I am. So, of course, I wanted to return here, to this moment "here." I found it was so profound just to say the word "here." "Here I am. This is how it is now." We're sitting in the "hereness" of the moment. There was something very profound—even if the hereness of the moment was my suffering or my unskillful thoughts—in just saying "here" and being alive, being present, feeling the totality of it. Somehow I was no longer participating in it, but I was also not condemning it. I was not fighting it. I was just "here" with it, not giving into it. So I had clarity.

Part of this fifth hindrance—and as I'm talking about the hindrances overall for this week—has a lot to do with action. The Buddha was said to be a teacher of action: how do we act, how do we engage, what do we do with our life energy? Meditation can often be seen as passivity, like we're not supposed to do anything. That's not right. Buddhist meditation is an action; it's an activity that we engage in. It's when we engage in a peaceful way, in a calm way. It's when we engage in that which stills and quiets the overactive mind. The mind might become quiet and peaceful, and our action becomes peaceful, calm, settled, and soft, but it's still showing up as an activity. It's still being "here." At some point, this inner expression of life coming through us—to be alive, to be present—is not something we do self-consciously. It's just here, flowing through us, but it's still an activity of showing up and being here in this full way.

This last hindrance, often called doubt, is sometimes more interestingly considered to be indecisiveness—not knowing what to decide or what to do. But in the original texts and teachings, it was more than those. It was faulty thinking: the kind of thinking that doesn't understand what is best for us and what is best for the world. Not knowing how to show up for ourselves in any moment in a healthy and skillful way.

The ancient texts say that the way we know this is not from the surface mind. It's not from the mind that thinks in shallow ways, jumping around, or the mind that thinks from anxiety, worry, greed, or hatred. Rather, it comes from the mind that's deep, the mind that stems from a deep source within, that's settled and peaceful. That's not easy to have, but that's part of the function of meditation: to wake up, relax, and get settled. To create a sense of unity, harmony, or wholeness with being here, where we're not divided against ourselves. We don't fragment ourselves with our desires and aversions, our fears and our shutting downs, or our restlessness and regrets. We do the opposite: we show up for all of it, warts and all, but from a profound place of wholeness, integrity, and a willingness to open and feel.

To have vicikicchā³—I think it's pronounced in Pali—is to have this harmful, faulty way of thinking that gets in the way of doing the practice because it takes us in the wrong direction. We're called upon not just to read Buddhist texts so we have no doubt about the teachings; we're called upon to develop inner sensitivity so we can understand from our own experience: "This is healthy."

Not only is it healthy, but if we're going to serve something profound—serve this health, serve this wholesomeness—it's the exact same health and wholesomeness that will support you to care for the suffering of this world. The world needs us. It needs us to do this healthy work so that, in small ways and big ways, we can make a difference in this world, making it a better place for everyone.

Thank you for this week of exploring the hindrances. I hope this was useful for you. I'll be back here on Monday for continuing what I'm calling part two of the introduction to mindfulness meditation. Thank you.