ABSTRACT
Sooner or later everyone practising meditation, in whatever tradition, notices that the mind does not necessarily want to focus on the object it has been given and disturbances seem to crowd in. The main obstacles to meditation, that prevent the mind from experiencing calm and alertness, are termed hindrances (nivaraja). The texts indicate that work on these obstructions needs to occur in daily life, but they are particularly associated in the canon with the preparatory stages of samatha meditation. Technically opposed to jhana, they take many and often quite subtle forms: the last vestiges are only finally removed at the attainment of arahatship, when they are cut off like a ‘palm stump’ (S V 327). They are called defilements (upakkilesa): ‘obstructions, hindrances, defilements of the mind that weaken wisdom’ (S V 92-3). While the suttas and the Abhidhamma reveal many different difficulties and obstructions that can cloud the mind at different levels of practice, all are associated with this ‘heap of bad things’ (A III 63):
1 Longing (Abhijjha) or desire for objects of the five senses (kamacchanda) 2 Ill will (vyapada-padosa) 3 Sloth and torpor (thina-m-iddha) 4 Restlessness and worry (uddhacca-kukkucca) 5 Doubt (vicikiccha)
In order to understand the hindrances we need to think of the practice of meditation as an exercise which not only works on cultivating certain states but which also, as a necessary preliminary, averts and, in the final stages of insight, eradicates from the mind the presence of elements which in some way distort or defile perception so that things as they are are not seen clearly.1 In one famous image the mind is compared to a pool which may be troubled or made muddy in different ways. The five hindrances prevent the water from being clear in various ways: with dye (desire) it is no longer clear, with heat it becomes turbulent (ill-will), with a covering of mosses it becomes brackish (sloth and torpor), with a flurry of wind it is not settled (restlessness and worry). In the case of doubt, the bowl is placed in the dark and made troubled (A III 229-36). With the eradication of the hindrances, the water is clear and pellucid.
