- Have We Overlooked Several Hindrances to Buddhist Meditation?
According to one early sutta, there are many more than the traditional five hindrances to meditation. We'll look at that sutta, where the Buddha recounts his own difficulties with achieving deep meditative states and describes his…
- Diminishing the Five Hindrances to Meditation in Early Buddhism
In a recent video (linked below) I discussed the five hindrances to meditation from early Buddhism. In this video I'll discuss ways we find in one early Buddhist text to diminish them skillfully, as well as some of my own thoughts on the…
- The Five Hindrances to Meditation: "Armies of Māra"
The Buddha discussed five tendencies of mind that hinder our progress in meditation and indeed that can get in the way of our living a happy life. They may metaphorically be understood as the "armies of Māra". We'll discuss each of those…
- Confronting Laziness and Apathy
Laziness and apathy can be a real drag on our practice. We'll look at various manifestations of these hindrances, as tiredness and then as a kind of generalized lack of effort or energy. We'll see there are a couple of ways these might…
- Mindfulness of Dharmas Part 1
Fourth and last of the foundations of mindfulness is Mindfulness of Dharmas. In this introduction, we will discuss what that means in this context, and begin going through the practices involved in this foundation. In particular we will…
- What are the Five Hindrances?
The five hindrances get in the way of our meditation, and get in the way of living wisely. Here we will look at them and at methods for dealing with them skillfully, mostly from the early tradition.