This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video 7:00 a.m. Guided Meditation; 7:30 a.m. Dharma Talk with Gil Fronsdal. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Unhindered for the Holidays - Kodo Conlin

The following talk was given by Kodo Conlin at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on December 20, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Unhindered for the Holidays

Welcome, everyone, including those joining us online. I spend a lot of my time with IMC and IRC attending things online, and I am grateful for that. How many people are here for the first time? Awesome. Welcome, glad you're here.

The other preliminary: happy solstice. I thought about writing a talk about the solstice, but I have something else I really want to talk to you about. It is late December. My email traffic is slowing down. I think that means people are about to go travel. I read a report somewhere that over 122 million people are about to travel for the holiday season. It's a lot, right? And some great number of them are going home to see their families.

That may be true for some of you too. For others, maybe not. When I imagine going home to see the family, the images are pretty pleasant. They're enticing. Whenever I imagine it, I always think of the food, the smiles, and the hugs. My mom loves to hug me. It must be uncommon. But there's a certain feeling of imagining going home; it brings all the pleasant feelings, but isn't it true that it also brings its challenges? It doesn't just bring one kind of feeling.

There's that popular quote by Ram Dass: "If you think you're enlightened, go spend a week with your family." So true. For a lot of people that I talk to, spending time with our loved ones brings its unique satisfactions for sure, and its unique challenges.

So for those of you going home for the holiday, this talk may be for you. And for those who are not going home for the holiday, this talk is also for you. I think everything we say applies to whenever we spend time with people we care about. I'm hoping to go home for the holidays and share my best me, so I wanted to call this talk "Unhindered for the Holidays."

Over the course of the talk, I'm going to ask you for some input. There will be these moments where I'll ask you for a single word or two words. No need to run the mic, which is our habit here; I'll just repeat it back to keep the pace going. But we can start now. When you imagine your mind in a state that's relatively free, what's a word that comes to mind? What's that like?

Audience: Happiness. Happy. Equilibrium. Peace. Unbothered. Spacious. Retreat. Light.

Great. That gives us a sense. We know what this is about. And there may be a related cluster of words that you would use to describe how you want to be when you're with your family or with your loved ones. Any words you want to throw out there?

Audience: Love. Peace. Accepting. Nurturing. Ease. Present.

Great, thank you. Is that relatable? Yeah. So, we know what it's like. We have a sense of what it's like when the mind is relatively free, and we know the kinds of qualities we tend to want to bring to being with people we care about.

The Five Hindrances

What I want to talk about are five coverings, obstacles, impediments—five qualities or forces of the mind that actually cover over these sorts of things that we try to bring. They are usually called the Five Hindrances. In the suttas¹, they are described as overgrowing the mind and weakening wisdom. So even when we know our wisest and our best intentions, the mind gets overgrown by these five qualities.

In our Insight tradition, we learn how to practice with and be free with things by being really attentive, by being closely attentive to them. So we'll talk a bit about these hindrances: how we can recognize them, how we understand them, and the ways that we practice.

One thing I want to say at the outset: if a hindrance arises—and I'll describe what they are shortly—we do well to not rush through them or try to get rid of them. I think we'll see why.

Here is the list of these qualities that can overgrow the mind. You can imagine as I list them how they might affect you if you're trying to be your best with someone.

1. Sense Desire (Kāmacchanda)
2. Ill Will (Vyāpāda) — hostility.
3. Sloth and Torpor (Thīna-middha) — dullness and drowsiness. That might be the holiday hindrance.
4. Restlessness and Worry (Uddhacca-kukkucca) — elevated energy.
5. Uncertainty or Doubt (Vicikicchā) — impediments of awareness that weaken wisdom.

Nyanaponika Thera², who was an important translator and mentor to Bhikkhu Bodhi³ (another important translator for us), named the effects of these five. He said any earnest attempt at clear thinking and what he called "pure living" will be seriously affected by the presence of these five. Bhante Gunaratana⁴, a teacher on the East Coast, had a vivid image for them; he likened the Five Hindrances to a tornado that wreaks havoc.

There is a great deal of material in the suttas on the hindrances, and I'm going to try to distill some of the most relevant parts for the weeks that are about to come. But for those who like further reading, you've got a lot of teachings in the Pali suttas (the original texts of our tradition), this other whole set of texts called the Abhidhamma⁵ where we really tease them apart, and a lot of modern study guides. Bhante Gunaratana, for example, has written on them. I found some really good retreat talks by Joseph Goldstein or Guy Armstrong that I would highly recommend. And Gil Fronsdal has a great workbook that I think is a practical way to work through the hindrances called Unhindered.

With respect to the hindrances, it's not uncommon for a variety of meditation instructions to be prescribed depending on what hindrance comes up. But I want to talk about all of them relative to mindfulness because that's the practice we all share and we've all developed.

A couple of general comments. One, you'll notice with the hindrances—let's take sense desire for example—it will always show up with some sort of signature in the body. Some set of sensations will arise. And the hindrances will all show up with some sort of story. They're persuading us, and they are very, very persuasive.

I'm going to move through them backwards from the usual sequence. The usual sequence is sense desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness, and doubt. I'm going to go the other way because if I start with desire, we'll never get to the fifth one. And there's a good chance actually we won't even get to the desire. But we'll see.

Uncertainty or Doubt (Vicikicchā)

I'd like to start with doubt. It's a really fun Pali word to say: Vicikicchā. The characteristic of doubt, the feeling of doubt, is like being at a fork in the road and not knowing which way to go. One of the images in the suttas is indecision. It's like the mind is saying, "What do I do? Where do I go?" So I really like the translation of this hindrance as "uncertainty." We're kind of paralyzed by a choice or we can't see which way to take.

I'm pretty sure this was my preferred hindrance for many, many years. I have memories of when I was in college; I changed my ideas about what I was going to study a handful of times and I got to this point where I was just like, "Ah, I have no idea what I want." So I didn't have a very good strategy. I decided I would just read and reread the course catalog over and over. I was just piled on with more and more choices and I could never decide. I knew that I wanted some sort of path that was, to me, ethically sound and inspiring, but I couldn't make up my mind. That was doubt. Does anyone have this experience?

[Laughter] Yes. When I was in the midst of this, one of my teachers at the time gave me this pithy advice: "Decide." [Laughter] That did not help.

There's a classic image from the texts I want to share with you. Suppose there's a bowl of water, and it's cloudy, murky, muddy, and in the darkness. Even a person with clear eyes checking their own reflection wouldn't truly know it or see it. In the same way, there's a time when your heart is overcome and mired in doubt, and you don't truly understand the escape from doubt that has arisen. At that time, you don't truly see or know what's good for yourself, good for another, or good for both.

So, I'm going to ask you again, when this state is in your mind, what's a word that describes what this feels like?

Audience: Goo. Stuck. Churning.

Great. Goo, stuck, churning. There can be cloudiness. I felt physically frozen. And then there can be this sort of non-specific dis-ease. It even affects the breathing; it can make the breath kind of shallow and a little bit faster. That's how it showed up for me.

And then how do we work with the sensations? This is exactly where our mindfulness practice can really shine because we train in being with anything. We practice with being with any sensation. So the task, of course, is to recognize the "goo." Oh, there's doubt in me. There's doubt here.

What's going on in the body? Check the breath. What's happening with the breathing? Check the sensations. Are there other compelling sensations there? Get the mind in contact with something that's happening right here, right now. Because there's no uncertainty in "I'm having a sensation." Yes, that's real. Okay. And your mind can start to make its way out of the mire.

And you may notice as you do this—I think we can relate to this as we develop a mindfulness practice—the way that just even a few moments of mindfulness can bring even a tiny bit of breathing room into the situation. There's a little more space to see, a little more space to move. Maybe in the case of doubt, it brings a little bit of light to shine on that dark, murky bowl.

I'm sure you can imagine or recognize some ways that doubt shows up for you. One that may help stir your imagination is the way that uncertainty or doubt can manifest in meditation practice. There can be this way that doubt descends on the mind. The darkness descends on the mind and all of a sudden, "I don't know what to do. Okay, I'll do a little bit of breathing. Oh no, it's time to do some metta⁶. No, I'll do mindfulness of the body. No, it's time to walk." And we never settle into an approach. Joseph Goldstein says that doubt is one of the most dangerous hindrances because it stops our practice in its tracks. I'm taking it here to mean because we can't settle into an approach, the mind just kind of stays on the surface of things.

Let's see one more story about working with doubt. This is more in the daily life arena. This can happen to me at the dining table in the morning when the task comes that some of us may face in the next couple of weeks with the family: "What are we going to do today?" It's troublesome. And it sounds like a great thing. The desire is there, the excitement starts to go. One option comes: "Oh, great. Sounds great. I love this plan." Second option comes. Third. Uh-oh. Fourth, fifth, sixth. And if I'm paying attention, I start to notice I'm starting to brace. Too many options. Eight, nine, ten. And all of a sudden, if I'm really watching, I can catch the moment where my mind says, "Oh, no. Too many options. You decide. I can't decide. I'm stuck. You go ahead."

Because I've seen this happen to myself again and again, now I know what to look for. See it coming. Oh, there's doubt in the mind. What's happening with the breathing? What's happening with the body? What's happening right here and now? And then comes that little bit of spaciousness.

I once had a therapist colleague say, "Never underestimate the power of a five-second vacation." And I think when I'm sitting there at the table, even if I take a five-minute mindfulness break to turn my attention to what's happening in the breathing and body, then I can re-engage and come back in.

Just some questions to reflect on that come out of Unhindered, this book of Gil's that can help us recognize doubt and help us work with doubt:

• For you, what are the situations, the conditions, and the beliefs that are most likely to trigger doubt?
• What are some of the conditions you might put in place to support confidence and resolve?

That may just be a question to take with you. So to sum up for uncertainty: when you come to a fork in the road, turn to mindfulness. Name doubt as doubt. And then breathe with the sensations of the body that's doubting. This is what it's like to have a body that's doubting.

Restlessness and Worry (Uddhacca-kukkucca)

Next hindrance. Traditionally number four. Also really fun to say in the original language: Uddhacca-kukkucca. Isn't that fun? This is translated variously as "restlessness and worry" or "restlessness and remorse." I think that's a pretty good translation. I'd like to introduce the meaning of it with a description from Gil's book:

"The fourth hindrance, restlessness and worry, makes it difficult to concentrate and see clearly. As is true with all the hindrances, the wisest way of overcoming restlessness and worry is to understand them well rather than getting rid of them quickly. Investigating them instead of quickly letting them go is a bit like learning to farm instead of accepting food. Investigation may take time, but what's learned will support us for a long time."

He goes on:

"The Buddhist word translated as restlessness is Uddhacca, meaning 'to shake.' It's a state of agitation and over-excitement. When physical, restlessness may appear as compulsive energy coursing uncomfortably through the body. There may be incessant impulses to fidget, move, or even to bolt. It can manifest as shakiness or agitated vulnerability, as if we've had too much caffeine."

I don't know if any of you have ever been on the cushion and felt like you needed to crawl out of your skin, or you were on a retreat and you were like, "I cannot possibly sit still for another moment." That's the manifestation of restlessness.

He says when it's mental, it can occur as scattered or persistent thinking. It's present whenever we're caught in a distraction. If you find sometimes that one thought will get sort of caught in the dryer and looped over and over, this can be a mental manifestation of restlessness.

The other half of the hindrance is Kukkucca, and in the text, it means regret about what one has done or hasn't done.

The simile again uses a water bowl in the suttas to describe restlessness and worry. This time the water bowl is stirred up by the wind. So it's rippling on the surface. It's swirling and churning. And so if you look down in it, you can't see your own reflection.

So "to shake" may be a good description of what this hindrance feels like. There might also be tingling in the body or, just as we talked about, this uncontrollable urge to just get up and move around.

And then the remorse or the regret half of the hindrance for me manifests a little bit differently. I'm not sure what it's like for you, but for me, I get this feeling that's like a sinking belly. My belly has just dropped to the floor, or there's some kind of contraction maybe in the throat or the mouth or the head. The sort of contraction that tells the story: "Oh no. Oh, I wish I had not done that. Oh, I think I made a mistake," or "I know I made a mistake. Oh, no." This is that sort of regret.

Restlessness's story, on the other hand, is something like, "I have to get out of here," or "I can't handle this." And again, our mindfulness practice can be such a support. You can actually tease apart what's happening in the body and what's happening in the mind—teasing apart the sensations from the story that we tell.

This has a lot to do with bringing together our mindfulness of the body with our mindfulness of thinking. Bringing your mindfulness of the body to the foreground and feeling those sensations through the body when the body just really wants to get up out of the seat. Bringing the mind to the sensation and just letting the thoughts, if you can, sort of float by in the background. Just giving them a lot of room to pass by.

This also pertains to our mindfulness of emotions practice. When I was a kid, I grew up near a really big river valley in central Texas. It was one of these big, wide rivers south of town. Sometimes when I would go by the river, it would just seem so still, it was like it was not moving. Just one of these big, still, quiet rivers. And other times I would drive by after a flash flood, and all of this water had coursed through. It was a mud-bottom river, so it was stirred up brown, and it had sticks and trees floating down it.

What occurs to me with our mindfulness practice is that our body and our mind—we can make it wide enough such that anything can flow through, just like this big wide river. Sometimes it feels kind of still. Sometimes it feels just unholdable. But the river lets it all pass through without holding.

It helps if we can recognize the sensations as sensations. It helps if we can accept what's actually happening and really give ourselves some time to feel what's going on. You'll find this helps with all the hindrances, but especially with something like restlessness. It's great to have this capacity to make ourselves really big.

Something else when working with all the hindrances is we recognize when they're present, certainly, and we see them through. But it is really good to recognize when they're not there anymore. Recognize when they're absent. Recognize when their opposite is present.

I was recently really sick in a way that had me really dizzy and losing my balance for about four weeks. I never loved my balance so much as when it came back. Thich Nhat Hanh talks about the "joy of a non-toothache." I really appreciated the "non-dizziness" when I was finally feeling better. James Baraz says of the positive states that come into our mind: don't miss them. Don't miss them when they come. Don't miss the joy. Don't miss the happiness. We can really have joy about being non-hindered. You think you have to have something in your hands to be joyful about, but an absence can be something to really celebrate too.

Dullness and Drowsiness (Thīna-middha)

Third hindrance: Thīna-middha. This one is dullness and drowsiness. The first translations from the sort of Victorian English were "sloth and torpor." It sounds very dramatic. But "dullness and drowsiness" is fine.

Having discussed how we work with restlessness and worry, you're in a really good position to work with sloth and torpor because both of them are imbalances of energy. It just naturally happens in the course of practice or over the course of a day how the energy shifts. Sometimes it's high, sometimes it's low. Knowing that, they're both energetic hindrances.

With sloth and torpor, there's a skill we develop as mindfulness practice matures, and that's learning how to tune the energy. Tune it a little bit up, tune it a little bit down. Apply the mindfulness a little bit more vigorously to generate some energy in the mind, or apply mindfulness a little more relaxed to let some relaxation happen.

Joseph Goldstein used this in a different context, but I think it's a great piece of advice for sloth and torpor. Say we're paying attention to the breathing. He says: just pay attention to the breathing for half a breath. That is your attainable goal. When the mind is going wild, when the tornado is really afoot, just pay attention for half a breath. Just make contact with the breath right at the beginning and then follow it all the way in. That's half a breath. And then make contact again as the exhale begins. And then follow it all the way out. This can help our energy to balance itself. We're not exerting too much. We're not exerting too little. Does that make sense? Yeah.

There's a great image from the early texts of a monk who's been practicing really diligently on his own in the woods and he's getting frustrated because he's not coming to awakening and he's thinking about giving up. The Buddha comes to know this, appears, and questions him about it. Turns out that this monk, Venerable Sona, in his lay life had been a musician. So the Buddha says—I'm going to paraphrase: "When you were playing an instrument, if you tuned it too tightly, did it play a tune?" And Venerable Sona said, "No, no, no." "If you played it too loosely, did it play well?" "Oh no, no, no." So the Buddha says, "Just so, just as you would tune your instrument, not too tight, not too loose, so you do it with your energy, and then you bring in the other faculties of mind to balance with that."

I said this might be the hindrance of the holidays. I can certainly see excessive naps. And so I wanted to say something about wholesome rest. I think it's not easy to distinguish sloth and torpor from wholesome rest. Especially—I don't know about all of you—but a lot of people that I know are constantly stimulated, maybe have a lot of responsibility, they work a good deal, and this is a really good time for them to recuperate. So I think that's something to consider as you head into the holidays and actually make time for wholesome rest.

In this regard, I've been thinking about the way that we don't expect a tree to flower all year long. It drops its leaves in the fall and then the sap goes down into the roots and recharges and replenishes. It has to rest, and then when the conditions are right, it comes back out. I think we do well to have this kind of cycle: rest, recharge, rejuvenate, and come back out.

Instead of being prescriptive about what you should do to discern this, I encourage you to hold the question: how to discern the difference between maybe an excessive sloth and what feels like a really wholesome, nourishing rest? And maybe you'll see this not until long after. Maybe after the holidays you'll know, "Oh, I think that state was a little excessive," or "Oh, I think actually that was really good for me." So, you can notice the effects of the choices that you make. That's one way.

The simile is a bowl of water again, but this time it's covered over with algae and plants. That's sloth and torpor.

Ill Will (Vyāpāda)

All right, I'm going to be brief with the second hindrance: Vyāpāda, ill will, hostility.

This is worth repeating. Guy Armstrong gave a talk in 1994 (he's been teaching for a while!) on the hindrances. And it was on December 30th. He gave an extensive list of just some of the ways that this hindrance shades and can manifest. Here's his partial list:

"Aversion, negativity, disliking, hatred, anger, impatience, fear, sadness, grief, judgment, guilt, blame, resentment, depression, despair, resistance, conflict."

He says, "There's more, but I don't want to bore you."

What's the story that ill will tells? For me, it's [snorts], "This isn't good enough." Or, "Who did this? You did this." Or, "You did this to me." These are all variations on the ill will story that can catch us.

It's good to catch it right at the beginning. Maybe the first little turn in the mind, the first little word in the mind, or you can even hear it in the attitude, the tone of voice that you use to talk to yourself. It's true for all the hindrances, but for this one, I'll really highlight it: it's good to catch these early before they build momentum. With ill will, once it gains momentum, it can be like a tornado in a teacup. But if we catch it early, we may be able to catch ill will when it is just a little bit of unpleasant sensation. And then we'll see what bringing some mindfulness does.

The trouble with ill will, which we know well, is that it blinds us to other people's goodness and it blinds us to our own. When the mind is covered over with ill will, it's hard to see what's real and it's hard to appreciate people.

The simile is of the water this time being heated and bubbly and boiling. So we can't see.

What's it feel like in the body? Heat, tension, faster breathing, elevated heart rate. I don't know about you, but the jaw gets going. Tights up a little bit. It can happen.

This is a good hindrance to remind ourselves that the hindrances are not personal. It's not a personal failing that a hindrance arises. Sometimes the anger comes. Oh, hi anger. Nice to see you again.

So again with mindfulness, working with the feeling. What's happening in terms of sensation? What's happening in the mind? What's happening in the breathing?

Aversion has this amazing power to keep us glued to our stories. I wanted to share this with you. It's a short anecdote I found from the New York Times. There was a collection some years ago called "Seven Stories of Rage and Regret." They're little anecdotes. Here's a short one called "My friends had the gall to continue being cheerful."

"After many months of lockdowns in England, my wife and I were finally able to visit our close friends in London. My wife and I arrived on time for our coffee date, but our friends showed up 10 minutes late. This deeply annoyed me. They had suggested the time and place, and I had cut my run short to accommodate them. Wasn't that inconsiderate?

I said something passive-aggressive like, 'So glad you could make it.' They didn't react, nor did they apologize for their tardiness. This filled me with incandescent rage. How dare they? My friends had the gall to continue being cheerful the entire time we hung out.

Later, I rehashed the incident with my wife. She didn't think it was a big deal, but I burst into sobs. 'I don't want to be friends with them anymore,' I said while my wife stared at me, baffled.

There I was, a 32-year-old woman sobbing on her wife's chest because our dear friends were late for coffee. 'You want us to end the friendship over this?' she asked mildly. 'Yes,' I cried. My wife, bless her, had the awareness to let me bawl it out. Later, we laughed about my temporary insanity.

The prolonged isolation of lockdown had turned me prickly, petulant, and socially brittle. I'd forgotten how to be with people."

Wow. Yeah, I heard some of us laughing and smiling knowingly. It's amazing the way that aversion can arise, totally dominate our perception, and then the story becomes the only filter with which we can see what's happening. But only for a while. It's so persuasive, and then once the intoxication of the aversion wears off, we're kind of like, "What just happened?" So in this case, the wife had the good sense to kind of wait it out, and then they both had a good strong laugh.

Aversion, of course, can give us this sort of laser focus on what we think is not right in a situation. Given the time, I'll just add two very brief things about aversion.

Watch for that moment when unpleasant turns into a demand. When unpleasant sensation starts to say to you, "This must [blank]." That's a moment to look through.

And socially, Gil has this really pithy phrase: "Don't make it worse." If you can make it better, do. But socially, if you feel the aversion come on—I don't know how many of us, if we had the time to share, could tell of a story when we had to really clean up a mess that took a long time based on an action that was just a quick moment of anger. Don't make it worse.

Sensual Desire (Kāmacchanda)

I knew we wouldn't get to greed. First hindrance, sensual desire.

The metaphor is a bowl of water mixed with dye, turmeric, or lacquer, so you can't see your own reflection.

The most brief way that I can talk about this desire is probably in terms of the story of desire: "This thing over there will finally satisfy me. All I need is this one more thing." I've done this with books for years. "Just one more thing and I'll finally have everlasting happiness."

This is a good hindrance to study because it really shows us how the promises that the hindrances try to make for us are so persuasive, and they really don't deliver.

Conclusion

"If you think you're enlightened, go spend a week with your family."

You may notice over these coming weeks that some of these states will arise for you. Don't worry, we are all in this together. Know a hindrance as a hindrance. Turn to what exactly is happening now. See if you can tease apart what's happening in the body and in the mind, and let your mindfulness give you a little bit of breathing room.

Nelson Mandela said, "There's nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered."

So there may be some challenges for the weeks ahead, and you may find you've grown. You're a different being. We've got new opportunities, new ways to make relationships with the people you love, people you care about.

So may our weeks ahead be mindful ones. May they be joyful. And may our deep respect for the hindrances actually help us have more respect for everyone we meet. May it be so.