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Get up close and personal with the 5 naturally occurring mental harassments that plague our minds and keep us from meditative bliss. Learning how to deal with and relate with these hindrances is an essential skill, necessary for well-being. As you learn to subdue these 5, your mind deepens towards an immensely pleasurable and nourishing state of mind, called Jhana.

“The deeper mind is trying to speak to you, but you’re too noisy.” 

– Ajahn Sona

Two and half thousand years ago, the Buddha identified five nīvaraṇa or hindrances. These are naturally occurring mental phenomena that get in the mind’s way, and obstruct the mind from being in its natural, happy state. 

The 5 Hindrances: 

• 1. Lacking & Unskillful desire

• 2. Aversion, anger, judgment

• 3. Dullness, fatigue, depression 

• 4. Restlessness & worry

• 5. Paralytic doubt & anxiety 

The following passage from an amazing Thai monk, Ajahn Buddhadāsa, is quite helpful in understanding these five mental harassments: 

“We go on to recognize that all five of these are ordinary possessions in daily life. These are things that are coming up throughout our ordinary existence all the time. When life goes in a positive way, then we end up falling into sensuality, into sensual desire. If life goes in a negative way, then the result is aversion, ill will, anger, hatred, where we don’t like things and we even want to get rid of them, destroy them, kill them. And when life is just kind of going on and it is not clearly positive or negative, then various forms of confusion and delusion arise. So we end up with dullness of mind or an agitated mind or doubt. These are happening all the time. Maybe not constantly, but over and over again in our ordinary lives. And they prevent us from having the peace and quiet of mental solitude. If however you are successful in developing samādhi – samādhi (the collected, calm, clear mind)...then these five hindrances will be swept away and the mind will have its very special solitude. So through successful development of samādhi, one can easily be free of these five hindrances.” 

– from a Dharma talk given by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu in 1990

This is meditation 101; it’s absolutely fundamental to understand the hindrances and how they move us and others. It is also appropriate to say that this is a teaching for advanced meditators. When practitioners overlook this subject, their practice often becomes wanting and fails to produce desired results.